Carolyn McSparren - Tennessee Vet

“This is for the pimento cheese last night and for keeping Orville alive.”

“Orville?”

“Better than Wilbur.”

Barbara said over her shoulder, “Emma, explain to him about naming rescues, will you? Don’t do it, Stephen. If you don’t keep your distance, keep your objectivity about your rescues, it’s a disservice both to the animals and yourself. Besides, it can break your heart.”

He felt as though Barbara had taken a tiny bit of peace with her when the door shut behind her. Ridiculous. But he made a mental note to call her in the afternoon and offer to drive back to Williamston in whatever new vehicle he would be driving to pick up a pizza for their dinner. After all, he needed to check on Orville. Orville? When had the blasted bird become Orville? Just happened. But Orville he was, for better or worse alive or, heaven forbid, dead. So much for not naming your rescues. Please, let Orville not break his heart.

“Stephen,” Emma said and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Everybody hates advice, but I’m going to give you some anyway. Barbara is a wonderful person and a great veterinarian. She is also a one-man woman, and that man died five years ago.”

He felt as though she’d slapped him. “And that has to do with me how?”

“Come on. I saw the way you looked at her. If you’d been a puppy, you’d have rolled over to have your tummy scratched.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was impressed at the way she handled Orville.”

“There is not an unattached—or in some cases attached—male in the county or beyond who has not tried to court Barbara since John died. She ignores them. She works too hard, and when she relaxes, it’s with friends like Seth and me. She’s never moved on from John and has never shown the slightest interest in doing it. She says she’s comfortable with the life she has and hasn’t room for any complications.”

“Fine. We should do well together, then. She has her John. I have my Nina. Never the twain shall meet. Shall we go? I need wheels. Then I need to go check on Orville.”

As he climbed into Emma’s SUV, he admitted that he didn’t want to lose touch with Barbara even if Orville died. She didn’t want to move on from her John, just as he wouldn’t ever move on from Nina. Nothing wrong with a friendship.

Maybe offering to build an extension to Emma’s cage, making it suitable for Orville’s flight training, might lift his credit with Barbara a hair.

Two hours later, he drove out of the mayor’s automobile dealership in a bright red crew cab pickup with every bell and whistle the mayor could cram into it. Remembering their discussion about status and trucks at breakfast, he figured this particular truck would qualify as “honkin’” and give him the status of a knight in the good-ol’-boy hierarchy.

He was used to sitting in the confined quarters of his Triumph, freezing in the winter and roasting in the summer. This particular truck could no doubt reverse that—it was capable of freezing him in the summer and roasting him in the winter. For the first time since his accident, however, he could actually stretch out his bum leg and not have to stop every twenty miles or so to rub the pain out of it.

Silly to pay so much attention to a truck, but he felt as though he’d stepped through a portal into a weird new era in his life. How Nina would have laughed! She’d have presented him with a straw farmer’s hat and a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

God, how he missed her! All those years she had kept him on an even keel whenever he was exasperated about his students’ lack of interest or annoyed at the frequent idiocy of his colleagues. His former dean had once warned him that the smaller the academic fiefdom, the harder the faculty fought for control of it.

Until Nina had died he’d been right up there on the front lines, battling as hard as his colleagues for the optimum teaching schedule, the best teaching assistants, the most lucrative contracts for writing textbooks. Even the closest parking space to his office.

Since she’d died, none of it meant anything. He understood for the first time what it meant to want to swap places to save a loved one. He’d always thought Sydney Carton in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities was an idiot to go to the guillotine to save someone else. To save Nina, however, he’d have chased that tumbrel down the Champs-Élysées and jumped on board.

Rather than drive straight back home, he decided to wander along the back roads. He and Nina used to enjoy driving out and getting hopelessly lost on Sunday afternoons. Not so easy to do in the familiar environs around his house in Memphis. Here, however, every road was new to him. And beautiful. In southern fall, the trees were finally changing colors. He drove past his new house without turning into the driveway and on down past Barbara’s clinic. He hadn’t seen it in daylight and had not expected to see the parking lot filled with trucks and vans.

The mayor’s advice had been right on. The Triumph would have stood out like a Roman chariot. He wanted to turn in and told himself it was to check on Orville, but Barbara would be working, possibly saving some other animal’s life. Without Emma’s holding down the phones, he had no idea how Barbara coped. From the number of vehicles in the lot he could see her need for an additional vet.

He would certainly need a break from his writing. Maybe he could offer to walk down—emphasis on the walk part—to add his volunteer efforts to Emma’s.

Down the road a bit farther he caught the sparkle of water off to his left. Seth had said there was a good-sized lake over there that emptied into the Tennessee River. Maybe he should see if he could rent a canoe.

He drove for over an hour without crossing the same path twice. For him driving was a method of getting from one place to another, but in this behemoth he was actually having a pleasant time.

He stopped at the convenience store that he’d been headed to last evening and discovered it also served takeout. Not what he was used to in the drive-throughs in town, but fried chicken, barbecue, fried catfish and steamed vegetables. Heavy on the fried, but it all looked delicious. He left with enough supplies to provide lunch, dinner and tomorrow morning’s breakfast. Dinner for Barbara as well, if she’d agree to join him. It would be better than pizza. If Emma was correct, Barbara probably would not agree to have dinner with him unless he could convince her that he wasn’t intruding on her solitary lifestyle. Both of them had to eat. Why not together?

He turned off the main road by a sign that read Marina, found the lake and ate lunch at a picnic bench in the trees.

How many meals had he eaten alone since Nina’s death? How much of it had been tasteless hospital food, eaten while staring at blank walls in rehab?

Here he didn’t feel alone. A cheeky crow landed two feet from him and, after alerting every creature in the vicinity that there was a human being around, stalked back and forth demanding that Stephen share.

He did.

He was preparing to toss his last morsel of biscuit to the raven when he heard a voice behind him.

“Better watch it. He’ll mug you for that biscuit.”

“He’s getting up his nerve to attack,” Stephen said as he turned. “Well, Seth Logan. Won’t you join me? I have an extra ham-and-cheese sandwich, some potato chips and a couple of sodas.”

“Already had lunch, thanks,” Seth said as he took the seat along the other side of the picnic table. “I’ll take one of those sodas, however. Diet, if you have one.”

“Yep, diet, and no longer terribly cold. My fancy new truck has a built-in cooler, but I have no idea how it works. I may actually have to read the manual—something I avoid doing if possible.”