River grinned. “Definitely not.” He pulled something from under his arm. “Here, there’s a pile of these in the office. It’s the story of the rescue.”
“Put it on the bed; I don’t want to get sandwich fingers on it.”
Shaking his head fondly, he dropped the brochure on the bed and looked around. “You think this could be home?”
I looked around and compared it to how I’d lived in the before times. “Absolutely. How’s your room?” Biting into the sandwich, I made a happy sound and shimmied in my seat.
He smiled. “It’s good. Really cozy. I like this IKEA-meets-country a lot.”
Nodding, I reached out for my drink. “Go. Unpack. Makes Lake happy to see we’re settling.”
River looked at me as if he was trying to read me or something. “Huh, I guess you really know us by now.”
Then he saluted and left me be.
I scarfed down the sandwich and went to wash my hands. I dried them carefully, then slumped on my bed to take a look at the brochure.
There was a round logo, a horse looking up at two stars in the night sky, with the words Twin Star Rescue written underneath. The photo itself was horses on a pasture. Must’ve been part of the yard outside.
Sighing, I settled more comfortably, opened the thing, and started to read. I sank into reading about Ruth’s first rescue horse and the foals she’d lost. The happier stories were great, too.
Maybe one day I could actuallygooutside to take a look at everything. Today was not that day and neither was tomorrow.
Chapter 2
Cook
I was a wreck still. Losing Ruth so suddenly felt worse than when I’d realized my mother never really knew how to love her children.
Ruth had been a mother figure, and I hated that I’d been on a yacht on the Aegean Sea when she passed away suddenly from a heart condition nobody knew she’d had.
Luckily, that Greek Islands job was about to end by the time I got the call from Hudson. I made sure my clients—a millionaire Frenchman and his family—had enough food pre-prepped that theirau paircould handle cooking it, and gladly accepted the use of the family’s private jet to get back to the States as quickly as I humanly could. Not all my clients were as understanding, but at least the universe chose to balance shit out somehow.
It turned out I couldn’t stay for long after the funeral in March. Partially, it was the atmosphere of numb shock that lingered around Twin Star Rescue. That place was my only real home in the whole world, and I just…couldn’t stay there right then.
But there was another reason, too. My oldest sister Rhiannon’s daughter was going through rough times, and I needed to be there for her. Samira was my favorite niece, and at sixteen, she’d been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and it had been bad.
Now, at twenty, she had been in remission for a few years and everything looked good, except they’d found a lump on her breast. That, on top of having the loss of Ruth still weighing on me, I got on a bus and went to Nevada.
The thing about my family is that it’s messy as fuck. I have five siblings, and I’m the second youngest at thirty-six. The youngest ones, a set of twins, came when I was six years old. By the time I was sixteen and the twins were ten, all our older siblings had fled the home situation, and when someone finally paid attention, me and the twins were taken and put into the foster system.
For me, it was two years before I turned eighteen and could enlist, but the boys were just ten. Worse than that, they were separated for fucked-up reasons because people are evil.
None of my older siblings could take any of us in, and we didn’t really have any other relatives.
These days, Rhiannon and I were the closest and the rest…well, I tried to email or call them occasionally. Except Danny, one of the twins, because none of us knew where he even was.
* * * *
Samira had been in college when her girlfriend noticed the lump. What a way to come out to your parents, eh? Especially when Rhiannon’s ex, Ahsan, was Muslim, although not super conservative or anything. He didn’t mind that me and some of the other siblings were queer, but facing the fact that his own daughter was…well, that couldn’t be easy.
I got to Sparks around five in the afternoon, then chose to walk from the bus station to Rhiannon’s place two miles away. I liked walking, it gave me time to chill, which was something I really needed after sitting on a bus for…I didn’t even want to know how long total. Sure, the changing from one bus to another gave some relief, but whoa boy, was I not a people person at heart.
Rhiannon lived in a modest little house she was renting since the divorce. Their old house, also a rental, had been too big for her when Samira would only be home during holidays. The divorce had been amicable, but when two medium-to-low-income people divorced, there weren’t assets to divide.
I jogged up the few steps and rang the doorbell.
The door opened and Samira beamed at me. “Uncle Jack!” She threw her arms around me like she had since she was a toddler, then winced.
