The night after that it was pizza.
I wondered what it said about him that he got up at 3 a.m. to make me dinner, with that jagged barbed wire between us, ready to cut the person who dared to cross it.
I wondered what it said about me that I let him.
21
STEVEN
The hardest partabout working with animals was that you couldn’t save them all. Most of the horses I shoed were healthy and had healthy hooves that only needed basic care. Some were healthy but had feet issues that we could mitigate or even solve with specialized shoeing. But occasionally, we saw a horse with feet so bad that nothing we did could save him.
It fucking sucked.
“Jacob made the right call.” Terry laid a hand on my shoulder. “We did everything we could.”
“It wasn’t enough,” I grunted.
“That’s life. Sometimes your best isn’t good enough. Don’t let it eat at you or this career will burn you out.”
Jacob Gunnell, the vet, inserted the needle into the gelding while its owner stroked its neck. I grimaced.
Pedal osteitis wasn’t usually a death sentence, but this had been a particularly severe case. When Dr. Gunnell brought us on six months ago, he had explained that this was a last-ditch effort with a low likelihood of success. The coffin bone in both front legs already looked moth-eaten on the x-rays. But I had taken it on anyway under Terry’s supervision, and for a while I had evenbeen hopeful. I built the gelding customized shoes to keep the pressure balanced and protect his weak points, but now even that wasn’t working. The horse was in too much pain. It was the end.
Dr. Gunnell approached, looking weary. “Thank you.”
“For what?” I asked. “I couldn’t save him.”
“I never expected you could.” His dark eyes were kind as they looked at me. “He needed an expensive operation years ago, and we don’t have those kind of facilities around here. You gave him six months of life with minimal pain. You gave his owner time to come to terms with it. You did good work, McAllister. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
I nodded, but I felt like shit.
I still felt like shit an hour later, standing on my front porch with my keys in my hand.
Amy was inside—I could hear her music blasting—and I knew the moment I stepped through the door she’d be on me, chatting a mile a minute about school, her new friends, and whatever hike she was planning next. Chloe tended to get home later, so it was just me and my sister for an hour or so. I’d make dinner while she bounced around like the extrovert she was, pretending to help cook but mostly just talking.
I loved our evening routine, but right now I couldn’t face it.
Fuck, I didn’t want to be my dad. I didn’t want to be the angry man who dumped all his problems on the people who loved him. Dad would walk in that door after work and drop straight into his chair. He’d stay there until dinner, shouting all about the terrible things that had happened to him that day—some real, some imagined—a beer glued to his hand. He’d go right back to that chair after dinner. The drunker he got, the louder he got, and the quieter my mom and sister became. Mostly I disappeared to my room. Once I looked more like a man than a child, Dad tended to leave me alone. Mom and Amyweren’t so lucky. If Amy tried to escape, he called her back. Mom never even tried to leave.
Damn. A bottomless beer and shouting at the world would feel fucking great right now.
I didn’t want to be him, but I didn’t know if I had it in me to be anything else.
My chin dropped to my chest. The cold November air bit at my neck.
The door flew open and I jerked in surprise. Chloe stood in the doorway, backlit by the light, looking every bit as startled as I felt.
“What are you doing here?” I asked gruffly.
“I live here, sorry to remind you. Also, my last client of the day cancelled so I came home early.” She stepped back to let me in.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and stared at my boots.
“Bad day?” she asked.
I grunted.
“Come inside,” she pressed.
