“Hey, no, none of that,” River said and pulled her closer but didn’t hug her. “We’ll make sure that won’t happen, okay? Either you’ll stay at Dr. Cobb’s house, he has plenty of room upstairs, or you stay here, we have space, too.”
“How old is Madden?” Lake asked quietly from inside the arena.
“He’s s-seventeen,” Mona hiccupped.
“Yeah, he’s just turned seventeen.” River sighed.
“Lake, come move the poles!” Theo called out.
Lake jogged to him and Reina.
Bucky noticed Mona was upset, and he came to comfort her. Her arms immediately went around him, and she sobbed quietly into his fur.
“It’ll be okay; I promise,” River said, and I hoped he could keep that promise.
Then again, from what I’d gathered, there were ways to dodge the stuff that scared Mona if you knew the right people. Somehow I had no doubt that someone in our family would have those kinds of people among their friends.
* * * *
We all had lunch together at the house before I went back to work and Mona got her riding lesson. I tried to concentrate on editing, but it was hard when I could see her on top of one of the ponies in the arena. She was giggling like crazy and having such a great time.
I wondered if River and I would ever be parents. Maybe that fostering thing was something to look into down the line if we lived somewhere with more room?
In the evening, Toby came to pick Mona up. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and I could tell Toby was relieved to have her close again. They’d visit Madden in the hospital and then go to Toby’s house for the night. He’d decided to open the clinic tomorrow but limit the hours, and he also said something about needing to explain Mona to his other employees.
Lake suggested that Toby could drop her off in the morning if he wanted to. It wasn’t as if she was going to school or anything, so she could easily spend the day at the rescue instead. That way, Toby could work and then come pick her up to go visit Madden in the afternoon.
Theo looked fondly at Lake when he seemed so enthusiastic about taking care of Mona. I wondered if everyone around us was going to start having kids at some point. It would be easy to think—at least in my opinion—that Theo and Lake had their hands full with the rescue, but people who worked hard had kids every day. So, who knew?
That night, as River and I went to bed, he curled up against my side and I held him for a long time in silence.
“I thought he was younger,” he said quietly in the dark. “Madden, I mean.”
“Oh?”
“I thought he was maybe fourteen max. He’s smaller than he should be.”
The way River was speaking, carefully and with great sadness, made me hug him even closer.
“Malnutrition growing up, maybe?” I hazarded a guess.
“I think so. And I think Mona is better off only because he’s been taking care of her for so long.”
I sighed, the breath leaving me as I felt the sorrow from my love enveloping us. “That’s…horrible.”
River sighed, too. “Yeah.”
“I was thinking today, that maybe it would be a good idea for someone here to become a foster parent. I know Toby said he’ll be doing that, but some of us here, too?”
“I thought about it, too. I mean…” He gathered his thoughts for a while, then pulled away a bit so he could look at me in the near darkness. The only light was coming from the one we left on in the kitchen each evening just so that going down the stairs in the night would be safer.
“What?”
“It’s hard to know what to tell you about Mona and Madden what with confidentiality and so on.” He grimaced.
“I understand. Please know that if you need to talk to me about anything, I will never tell anyone. So speak freely, don’t think about it too much. Theirs is not my story to tell anyway, right?”
I kissed his forehead and he hummed happily, then seemed to make a decision.
