Eventually, I did manage to get to sleep and woke up early enough to have a semi-nice breakfast and a very nice coffee before my ride was there.
I’d packed efficiently and as lightly as I could. I didn’t need much, but I had my laptop and my backup laptop, my wireless keyboard, mouse, and headphones, and of course my iPad I used for anything during my off time.
Because I liked to dress simply in slacks and shirts or chinos and T-shirts, I didn’t need to pack much clothing. I knew there’d be laundry options at the house, and I’d live right upstairs from Ruth’s, now Lake’s, office. I enjoyed the idea of having it all there in one place. No commute was the best commute.
I wasn’t always so lucky, and while I hadn’t been at the Twin Star Rescue before, my predecessor had told me that the place was great, because she’d visited a couple of times over the years.
If I was completely honest, the only thing I was nervous about—in addition to the traveling—were all the animals. My mother was allergic, so I had never had any pets, and because I’d been bitten by a dog when I was a toddler, something I couldn’t remember myself, she’d kept me away from all dogs since.
In the place where I was going, there would be mainly horses but also a lot of other animals. I hoped I’d be fine there.
* * * *
The airport was familiar to me by now. It still didn’t mean that it wasn’t horribly noisy and full of everything that messed with my senses. By the time I got through the security check after having been in the line between two different very strongly perfumed individuals, I was about done with humanity.
Sadly, that was just the beginning. There were kids running and screaming, an infant who was clearly getting on the same flight with me, and an elderly couple who I assumed would’ve both needed hearing aids but had none between them.
I started to feel that itchy not-quite-pain under my skin, and it kept climbing higher towards my head with every passing minute.
Luckily, I’d brought my noise-canceling headphones, so I put those in and turned on the audiobook of Ruth’s last novel. It was both a comfort listen and work in the sense that I could use it to reacquaint myself with her work.
I hadn’t read all of the unfinished manuscript she’d left behind; I needed to still read the stuff she’d written right before she passed, but the cadence of her words even read by someone else lulled me into a state of if not calm, then something close to it.
At least the flight itself was short, but then, once I had my luggage and went to find the company I had my rental reservation with, there were lines of people because something had gone wrong with the power or something. For all the rental places, so it must’ve been that side of the airport maybe?
I wondered if I really should’ve just taken the offer from Lake to have someone pick me up. He’d made the offer earlier through Maria, Ruth’s agent, but I didn’t want to disturb the rescue’s daily operations. Their work was much too important to interrupt.
And so, it took me longer than I’d thought to get into a car and start the hour or so drive. At least there wasn’t too much traffic going toward Joliet, so I could listen to the radio and chill as I drove.
The funny thing was, my mom hadn’t let me get a driver’s license, so I hadn’t had one until I gained my independence when I went to college.
I’m glad I got a license, because it allowed me freedom when I went on these jobs on location every so often. It wasn’t common for me to leave my home to go to an author’s chosen workplace or home to help them out, but it happened. There were also some events I went to even though I didn’t necessarily enjoy most of them.
The route the GPS directed me to bypassed Joliet, but I didn’t mind in the least. I hadn’t driven with such concentration in a while, and I felt that getting away with not going through a city was better for now.
Even though I’d wondered about being in the countryside, I found the right place pretty easily in the end. The property was fenced in, and there was a pond by the road, with some cabins behind it. On the other side of the driveway sat a small building and some ways behind it the main house where I assumed Ruth had lived.
I parked in the lot that the two buildings shared and got out of the car. I noticed two men and a couple of horses nearby inside some sort of a fence. An arena, maybe? My horse-lingo would take some training despite horses having always been a part of Ruth’s books. When I glanced around again, my eye caught one, no three, oh shit,fivelarge dogs guarding the yard in different shady spots. In my mind, I saw my mother freaking out over them.
Swallowing hard, I forced myself to move past them and toward the men.
“Hey, I’m Ben Harries.” I tried to sound casual and leaned on the fence. “Is one of you Lake White?”
The younger man who had a giant gray horse on a rope smiled. “That’d be me. I might’ve forgotten it was Wednesday today.”
“Oh, that happens; it’s okay.” I couldn’t help but to smile back at him. I I understood more than he probably knew.
I caught one of the dogs, a black one, getting to its feet and ambling over. I tensed; I couldn’t help it. The fear reaction was as imminent as it was annoying.
“Not a fan of dogs?” The older man who had a lighter colored, sort of dappled gray horse on a rope asked with no judgment in his tone.
How did they stay inside such a flimsy looking fence? Sure, the boards were sturdy to lean on, but these animals must’ve weighed more than the vehicle I’d driven there, each.
“Uh, I’m wary of them. I got attacked as a kid. I’ve gotten over it some, but…” There was no need to explain how the fear wasn’t mine as much as it was embedded in me by my mother.
“But they’re still five pit bulls you don’t know,” the guy concluded.
I wince-smiled. “Yeah.”
