He was out at the Hendricks place, checking a two-year-old heifer with an abscess on her gum that had swollen to the size of a golf ball. The heifer was not cooperating. She was expressing her displeasure by trying to crush his fingers between her molars every time he irrigated the wound.
“You’re not helping,” he told her.
The cow lowed mournfully and rolled her eyes at him.
Cal Hendricks leaned on the fence, arms folded, watching with the amusement of a man who was paying someone else to get bitten. “She don’t like the taste of that rinse.”
“It’s antiseptic. It’s not supposed to taste good.”
“You could add some molasses.”
“I could also add a bow and a thank-you card. She’d still rather eat my hand.” He packed the abscess with antibiotic paste, dodged one final attempt at finger amputation, and stepped back. “Keep her on soft feed for a week. I’ll come back in a week to check the drainage. Call me if the swelling gets worse or she stops eating.”
Cal nodded. “What do I owe you?”
“We’ll settle up next time.” Which was his way of saying Cal could pay him whenever the next milk check came in, and they both knew it.
He cleaned his instruments, stripped off his gloves, and climbed into his truck. His phone showed two texts. The first was from Hank: You coming to Sunday dinner or are you too busy playing house with the widow and her daughter?
He ignored that one.
The second was from Makayla: Can you pick me up after school? Mom has a call with Charlotte about the New York contract. She said it’s okay if you can.
He texted back a thumbs up and checked the time. Forty minutes until school let out. Enough time to swing by the clinic, wash cow saliva off himself, and pretend he hadn’t rearranged the rest of his afternoon the second he read her message.
She’s a good kid. That’s all this is.
His phone buzzed again. Hank: That’s what I thought. Tell them I said hi.
Brothers were a plague upon humanity.
Makayla climbed into the truck and tossed her backpack in the back seat. She set her violin back there more carefully.
“How was school?”
“Fine. I got an A on my history test and Madison Burke told me my boots were weird.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her they were custom and cost more than her entire outfit.”
He frowned. “No, they’re not.”
“Of course they’re not. But Madison doesn’t know that.”
He coughed to cover a laugh. She was her mother’s daughter through and through. They both had that lethally dry sense of humor.
They drove in comfortable silence, the valley unfolding ahead of them. The snow line on the mountains had crept up noticeably in the past two weeks, and the pastures along the highway were greening up and getting lush. A pair of hawks circled above the Beecham ranch in a lazy thermal.
“Dillon?”
“Yeah.”
“Mom’s been sad.”
He glanced over. Makayla was looking out the passenger window, her profile backlit by the afternoon sun. She had her mother’s bone structure and her father’s coloring—lighter brown hair than Tessa’s, big blue eyes instead of warm brown. She was also pretending a little too hard to be interested in the scenery.
“Sad how?” he asked carefully.