For which Sage was grateful. Sometimes distraction worked.
Sometimes not.
Gray texted Sage as he walked to his SUV outside the second shelter he volunteered at on Saturday.
How soon will I have a first draft of company bylaws and regulations, specifically pertaining to the multiple clinic model and multiple veterinarians?
She could be working. She’d said she sometimes worked on Saturdays.
In its current state, his whole life consisted of work.
And he’d had a great conversation with two other veterinarians from San Diego, who’d been visiting the shelter he’d just left. Doctors he didn’t know, who knew all about him, and when he’d said he was in the process of working with a corporate firm to reestablish himself, they’d both expressed interest in joining him.
Not at all put out by his reputation.
On the contrary, they’d been impressed by what he’d managed to accomplish, by the business practices that had largely become public knowledge as, piece by piece, his life had been laid bare.
They’d chosen to believe that he’d had nothing to do with the illegal drug dealing going on at GB Animal Clinics.
And yet, when he’d gone to speak with established clinics—hoping to find work for himself in the interim between his clinics being part of large-scale criminal charges being brought, and the case actually being adjudicated—he’d heard an entirely different story. By and large, established, successful practices hadn’t wanted to be associated with him.
With the news hounds and viral social media posts, there were a lot of people who believed he was guilty by association.
GB Animal Clinics was his corporation. Therefore, he had to have known what was going on inside at least one of the sites.
Gray was in his car, debating about what to do with the rest of his day—deciding on piling his back end with moving boxes and tape, and heading to his house to begin the onerous task of packing—when the clonk sounded again.
Deciding not to wait until he got to the store, he drove another block and pulled over instead.
I’m not working today. Will you be back at Scott’s in time for a cookout on the beach?
He read. He sat. He stared.
And read again.
No.He spoke the mental answer in total silence.
What did that mean,I’m not working will you be back in time for a cookout?
That she wanted personal time with him?
Wanted to know if she could have a cookout with her brother—and he assumed others since it was on the beach—without worrying that he’d invade her space?
If she wasn’t working, the question had been personal. Not part of the strictly business mandate between them. But couldn’t really be part of the one established exception—that he be nice to her kid if he ran into the little one on the beach.
Bothered by how much weight the text was carrying into his day, he typed:
No.
Stared at his phone some more.
Considered his quiet, remote, locked-up and sold home.
The hours of packing with only darkness outside. Mirroring the darkness that had fallen over his world.
Hit Delete.
Typed again.
