Tennessee Vet
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Carolyn McSparren
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Chapter One
“THE CLOSEST SERVICE station that has snacks and drinks is eight miles away in that direction,” Emma Logan said and pointed out the window down the two-lane road to her left. “And it’s twelve miles in the other if you want to drive into Williamston. Can you stand to be so isolated? Seth and I live right across the road, but I’m either helping out down at the veterinary clinic or looking after whatever animals we’ve rescued. And in this condition—” she pointed down at her sizable belly “—I can’t pick you up if you fall.”
Stephen MacDonald thumped his Malacca cane with the silver wolf’s head against the floor between his knees. “I do not fall, Emma. I limp. I am not an invalid.”
“Then why hide out here? I’ve known you and your daughters since you all moved into the neighborhood years ago. I know you’re hiding. Takes one to know one. I came out here to hole up and lick my wounds when I lost my job and my fiancé, and look what happened.” She waved her hand at the living room of the farmhouse. From behind the back wall came the thud of nail guns and shouts of men. “It’s already nearly October. With Kicks almost here, we have to finish the nursery and the kitchen and the new bathroom fast before he, she or it arrives.”
“Kicks?” He gave her the barest flicker of a smile. “I remember my Nina nicknamed our Elaine Salsa when she was carrying her. Anne was quieter. I can’t remember Nina’s name for her.” He turned away quickly, but not before Emma caught the flash of pain in his eyes.
When Anne had called to make the appointment for her father to view Emma’s rental house, she’d warned her that she might not recognize Stephen.
“He looks even taller now that he’s lost so much weight—like Abraham Lincoln without the beard. He’s also angry,” Anne had told her. “It’s almost as though he blames Mother for dying on him.”
“I’m sure he does,” Emma had said. “She protected him from the world. I was terrified of him when I used to come to your house after school, until Nina showed me what a pushover he really is. And then his accident—it’s no wonder he’s bad-tempered. Pain makes everybody angry.”
“Not like this. I hope he does rent your cottage, Emma. He’s not teaching until spring, and he’s driving us all nuts. Maybe writing his new textbook will pull him back into life.”
Sitting across from him now in her living room, Emma saw what Anne meant. Stephen was perfectly polite, but he wasn’t quite there.
“I assume you are calling him, her or it Kicks because it does?” Stephen asked as he nodded toward her midsection.
“Does it ever. The doctor assures me it is not twins, which is all I cared about. Seth and I decided not to find out, which means the nursery will be your basic buttercup-yellow. Okay, enough about me. Why are you coming up here to hide out? I thought you were still in rehab. And you have a perfectly good house in Memphis. You could lock the door and turn off your phone if you want to write, couldn’t you?”
“I do not intend to spend a day longer in rehab, Emma, even if our government would pay for it—which they wouldn’t. And I refuse to allow either of my children to become caregivers. If I were where they could get to me, I’d be up to my ears in casseroles and being ‘checked on’ a dozen times a day. I would get nothing done. Anne usually calls ahead when she comes to see me. Elaine always ‘just happens to be in the neighborhood.’ Nina...” His voice caught. He took a deep breath before he was able to continue. “Nina was my guard dog at the gate. No one disturbed me when I was working. Or if I was simply feeling curmudgeonly.
“The official story is that I am moving to your cabin in the wilderness to work on my new textbook. You know, publish or perish? I already have tenure, but it doesn’t hurt to keep one’s name out there.”
“Be careful. This place will suck you in. You’ll discover all sorts of interesting ways to take up your time that are not academic.”
“Fine. I need a quiet place where I am totally alone or surrounded by strangers. I am fed up with everyone I know commiserating with me over the accident. Nobody mentions Nina any longer. After three years, it is assumed I have gotten over my wife’s death. I have not. I’ll never be fully alive again without her, but that’s nobody else’s business.”
“I suspect she would have kicked your butt if she thought you used her death as an excuse to stop living yourself.”
“No doubt. Up to now I could hide in rehab and in hospitals. Since that is no longer an option, I am hiding in your rental cottage. At least I can avoid being checked out to see whether my limp is any better as I walk across campus.”
“What do you expect?” Emma said. “You nearly lost your leg, Stephen.”
“I know. I was there.”
“If that truck had been any bigger, you probably wouldn’t be here to complain about your leg.”
“No doubt. But I am here and I do complain on a regular basis, and I intend to finish my rehab out here in what my daughters call the middle of nowhere. My dean says ‘write, write, write that blasted textbook.’ The doctor says ‘walk, walk, walk on that leg.’ I’ll probably always have to use a cane, he says. No way, say I. I’ve already missed teaching the spring semester, I dropped my classes for summer school and I’m being allowed to take the fall semester as a sabbatical to write. By next spring I expect to be back a hundred percent.
“Now, about the rent on— What do you call it? The Hovel?” He pointed across the street toward an old-fashioned Tennessee farmhouse sporting a fresh coat of pale gray paint and dark red shutters. “Doesn’t look very hovel-like to me.”
“Not now, maybe, but you should have seen it before my stepmother, Andrea, came up and redecorated.”
“I’m sure Andrea did a good job. She always does. So, how much rent? I may only be here for a couple of months full-time, but I will probably continue to use it on weekends, so I’ll be happy to sign a lease for six months with automatic renewal for another six.”
“I wouldn’t dream of charging you rent.”
Stephen cut her off by raising his hand. “No. Unless I pay the going rate, I cannot come. I am hardly destitute, Emma, and Andrea said you had redone the place to rent. So, how much per month?”
“What do you think of this for rent?” She gave him a figure.
“Much less than it would be in Memphis or Nashville. I accept. I’ll drive back up this evening with the rest of my stuff and move in, if that’s all right,” he said.
“And I’ll feed you dinner.”
“Give me a rain check for tonight. I’ll be back much too late. How close to the stove can you stand?”
“Now, was that a nice thing to say?” Emma patted her belly and chuckled. “Close enough. In a sense we’re both invalids.”
The smile he gave her was real. Fleeting, but real.
“Your problem will disappear in a few months,” he said, still smiling. “Mine will last a good bit longer. My doctor says the knee will never be perfect. Maybe not, but I refuse to dodder into old age with a cane in my hand. I’d have to grow a beard and wear glasses with a little chain attaching them to my jacket so I don’t lose them. I don’t think so.”
“Do you need to go look at the house again?” Emma asked.
“I have to drive an hour and a half back to Memphis to pack.” He set the ferrule of his cane on the floor between his feet, then began to lever himself up.
Across the coffee table, Emma grabbed the arm of the sofa and began to hoist her heavy body to a standing position.
Halfway up, they caught sight of each other’s predicaments.
And fell back grinning at one another.
Five minutes later, as she waved him down her gravel driveway to the road in the Triumph Spitfire sports car he had owned as long as she had known him, she wondered how on earth to drag him back into life.
Well, it might be kicking and screaming, but she’d manage somehow. She owed it to Nina and his daughters. Nina would have wanted him to find someone else wonderful to spend the rest of his life with. Emma knew a dozen women who would jump at the chance.
