Tennessee Vet. Carolyn McSparren

container some distance away. The can landed precisely in the center without touching the sides. “Three points,” he said and stood. “Back to work.”

      “What are you doing out here anyway?”

      “Never-ending checking. Sam, who runs this marina, keeps an eye out for suspicious characters. Couple of the big marinas down on Kentucky Lake have had some break-ins lately. I need to see if he’s had any trouble or noticed anything suspicious.” He picked up his clipboard. “Thanks for the soda. Emma says you’re coming for dinner this evening, correct?”

      He’d completely forgotten. So much for asking Barbara to join him for dinner. He considered asking Seth whether Emma had invited Barbara, but he didn’t want to show untoward interest in someone else’s guest list.

      “Barbara’s supposed to show up if she gets finished at the clinic and doesn’t get called out on an emergency. She doesn’t often go out except to our house,” Seth said. “She’s usually worn out at the end of the day.”

      “I’ll look forward to it,” Stephen said, with a shiver of pleasure that he tried to ignore. No big deal. Just friends. “Should I bring something?”

      “Not a thing. Emma is a great arranger. Just show up.” He walked down toward the marina office at the end of the small pier.

      Stephen collected, bagged and deposited his trash into the bin. Interesting that Seth had not said his wife was a great cook.

      The crow flew off with a final caw that expressed its disappointment at not being given more treats.

      Stephen watched the main and jib sails being raised on a small cruising sailboat in the cove. It was late afternoon. The wind was almost nonexistent, but the boat managed to glide through the water toward the exit from the inlet and out into the lake beyond. A man stood at the helm while a woman lounged beside him.

      He and Nina had owned and sailed a twenty-four-foot boat when the girls were young, but they’d sold it once the girls grew to the age where they resented being away from their friends and their preferred activities on the weekends. Maybe he should invest in a small day sailer while he stayed up here close to the water. Compared to ski boats, day sailers were relatively inexpensive and didn’t need a slip at a marina. They could be towed back and forth to a house.

      As he watched the pair on their small boat relaxing together, content with one another, he felt one of those sudden pangs of grief that hit him like a boxer’s jab in the gut. What did any of it matter without Nina?

      He would hate sailing alone. How could he thrill to a coral-and-peach Southern sunset without being able to share the experience with her? He’d always considered himself a loner, a man who enjoyed his own company. His writing and research were a solitary occupation. He’d been surprised to discover how lonely he was.

      Working alone in his study while Nina read a book in the den—when he could share some arcane factoid he had just discovered simply by calling out to her—was different from working alone and knowing that no one would answer or care.

      Did everyone who had lost a partner find that the little things brought his loss home to him most poignantly? The odor of peaches from her shampoo in the shower; knowing that the special orange marmalade for his toast would be sitting on the breakfast-room table; reaching for a clean shirt and feeling the extra starch she always had the cleaners iron into his collars; the way she rolled his socks—a million small things she did for him he’d taken for granted as a part of his life. The small things he’d done for her in return, he’d often griped about. When he was forced to drive her car, he invariably had to fill up the gas tank or risk running out of gas on his way to the college. Every morning he continued to make their king-size bed because a made-up bed had been important to her. How he wished she was still around to fuss at him if he left it a tangle of sheets.

      This was no way to live.

      Is that the way Barbara felt about the loss of her husband? Was she as lonely as he was?

      He loved his children, but they were building their own memories. He wasn’t building any new ones with anyone at all. Well, he supposed he had built a new memory last night with Barbara.

      But for her, professional challenges seemed sufficient. Clients, not friends—except for Emma and Seth. But was that enough to base a life on? There was more to life than work. More than being alone at the end of the day.

      Deep within him something stirred.

      “Enough with the pity party,” he said as he climbed into his new truck. “I’ve got a life to live, and by God, it is not going to be made up of leftovers.

      * * *

      BARBARA STRIPPED, DROPPED her bloody overalls into the hamper, jumped into the shower and scrubbed her whole body with the face soap with the exfoliator in it. It scratched a little, but it would remove the lingering scent of cow’s blood she’d gotten covered with when she’d pulled out that doggone oversize Brahman calf. He would have killed himself and his mother if he’d stayed in her womb much longer.

      She could live on a diet of miracles like this. It was enough fulfillment for one lifetime. It had to be.

      She badly needed a big miracle to get Orville up in the air again. Orville? At least it was better than Wilbur. And the Wright brothers did finally get up in the air.

      She leaned against the wall of the shower and realized she was sobbing. Miracles were no longer enough. She was desperately lonely for someone to share a high five with after a win, like she’d had with that healthy calf. And just as lonely for someone to share the grief and pain of losing against her old enemy, death.

      She told herself she was simply exhausted. Pure release of tension. But it was more than that. The way the cow had licked her wet, new baby so gently, she could nearly touch the love. She couldn’t go on making do with secondhand love. But could there ever be anything else for her? Did she dare to reach for it?

      She had never been as frightened in her life. Staying the same, protecting the borders of her life and her heart was safe. Did she even know how to change? Did she want to?

      This was Stephen’s fault. Before he strode into her life, she’d thought she was content with the status quo.

      She finished drying off and ran a comb through her wet hair. Then she raced into her bedroom to don clean underwear, a red polo shirt and ironed jeans. No time for makeup—just moisturizer and lipstick. She had to go to dinner with wet hair. She ran a comb through it again, plumped it up with her fingers, put on clean sneakers, grabbed her handbag and ran down the barn aisle to the parking lot. She refused to think. She hardened her heart against the soft, pleading eyes of the latest crop of abandoned fawns she was fostering. They hung their heads over the stall door. Hard to resist, but she knew they’d already been fed.

      “You have been fed, knock it off,” she said as she ran by. “You, too, Mabel. Don’t you hiss at me, you goose. I’ll smoke you for Christmas, see if I don’t.”

      Mabel, used to empty threats, hissed and flapped her wings but retreated. Her goslings fluttered back under their mother.

      * * *

      SHE PULLED INTO Seth’s driveway only twenty minutes late. An animal emergency always trumped dinner plans, but she tried to keep to a polite schedule. Across the street, in front of the house Stephen MacDonald was renting, sat a shiny red truck. Even from here, she could tell it was an outrageously overdressed monster. So, Mayor Sonny had seduced the good professor into a sale. He’d never allow anyone to rent that chariot.

      Seth opened the door to her. She was surprised to hear two voices from the living room—Emma’s voice and a baritone male.

      Her heart gave a lurch. Stephen MacDonald. And here she looked like she’d been rode hard and put away wet. Which she had. He would probably be dressed as though he’d helicoptered in from Savile Row in London, where the bespoke tailors hung out. No woman liked looking like a rag doll with a strange man around. All that emotion that had hit her so unexpectedly while she was in the shower did not