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2017
LETTIE
“Mrs. Fitz,you can’t feed Bernice chocolate anymore. That’s why she’s having diarrhea. Chocolate isn’t good for dogs.” I handed the leash of the English Bulldog back over to her owner and tried to maintain my gentle yet firm veterinarian voice.
Mrs. Fitz and Bernice looked astoundingly similar. From the flat face to the neck rolls, Mrs. Fitz even had a slight underbite that matched her bulldog’s almost perfectly. It was often true what they said about owners looking like their pets. I had seen so many matching pairs, I was beginning to wonder if I resembled Gilbert to everyone else. Ignoring the fact that Gilbert was a gentle giant and I was barely five foot two… in shoes.
“It’sdarkchocolate, though,” Mrs. Fitz replied in her wobbly old woman voice. “Isn’t dark chocolate healthy?”
I sighed. “Not for dogs. Make sure you stick to the kibble, and her gut will feel better in no time.” I smiled and signed the paperwork as I fed Bernice a dog treat.
“Now, Dr. Carlton, do you think the chocolate is causingmydiarrhea too?” Mrs. Fitz tilted her head to the side, staring at me from behind her Coke bottle glasses.
My eyebrows pulled together and I tried to keep my face expressionless. “Well, I can’t say for sure. I’m notthatkind of doctor. But that would be a good question for Dr. Parker down the road.”
Mrs. Fitz nodded and walked out the door, both her and Bernice’s bottoms moving side to side with each shuffle of their feet.
I looked back at Flo, the secretary who had been around since Teddy hired her back in 1980. Even when Teddy had retired, Flo said she would be “bored to tears” if she ever left, and therefore, would work for the clinic as long as I would have her.
Which would be forever because no one could possibly do what Flo did.
We both chuckled, and Flo asked, “You think she’ll stop giving the dog chocolate?”
I handed her Bernice’s chart. “Not a chance,” I replied, stepping back through the door and behind the desk. “But I’ll just keep telling her.”
I grabbed the next chart—a cat with a possible ear infection and an affinity for biting me—and knew I was going to need the assistance of my best friend, Darcy, for that one.
I’d met Darcy the summer I turned eighteen, and the two of us had become fast friends. We’d gone to college together. While I’d gone on to vet school, she’d graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and set off to write a great American novel. She had quickly discovered how difficult it was going to be and sought out other writing opportunities such as ghostwriting, personal blogs, and the occasional Wattpad story, but while she was still working on her dream as a novelist, she also worked in the clinic as my vet assistant.
“Hey, Darce, can you help me with the next one? It’s Katy Purry, and you know how aggressive she is.”
Darcy came in from one of the exam rooms but remained silent. I looked up and noticed the solemn look on her face. She was moving slowly, something Darcy never did, her face sheet-white as though she had just seen a ghost.
Something was wrong.
“Darcy?” I moved closer to her, and Flo stood up as well. “What’s going on?”
Darcy stood still as a statue in her blue scrubs, her phone in her hand. “That was my dad.”
Darcy’s dad was Poe Miller, beloved owner of the hardware store downtown, and a man of few words. Poe had suffered from three heart attacks in the previous five years and had just recovered from a triple bypass heart surgery eighteen months ago. Even so, we all still worried about him and his fondness for salty foods.
“Is he okay?” I asked, worried that something else had happened to him.
Darcy rubbed her fingers under her eyes. “My dad is fine.” She opened her mouth and then closed it again.
“Okay, then what is it? Is your mom okay? Your brother? What happened?”
She inhaled deeply, and then held her breath for a moment before slowly exhaling. “No, they’re fine. Lettie… it’s Tuck.”
It took a full ten seconds before I registered what she’d said. The name rang in my ears as though I’d been blasted back, and my senses were inhibited. I couldn’t hear, couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. I grabbed onto the desk as the room around me began spinning.
Tuck. Tuck Anderson.
I’d avoided that name for twelve years, and in a town as small as Aveline, that had not been easy to do. At first, Teddy or Lenora had given me updates about him, but eventually, it had become too much to bear. I’d finally told them that I didn’t need to know how Tuck was doing, that I had moved on, that all his name did was dredge up memories that had taken me years to heal from.
And, eventually, everyone had stopped mentioning him to me at all.
Until today.
