“Oh my God! No! He took a tumble over at Kate’s Cafe and knocked himself on the head pretty good. Your lunch is all over his shirt.”
Stacy put a hand out for stability, afraid her knees would stop working and she’d fall down. Her heart knocked around in her chest like it was looking for a way out, and a high trill of laughter escaped her. “Don’t tell me the antlers got him again.”
“It—yes, I think they did, but—again?”
“He forgot he didn’t have two feet of hair last night and tossed his head and hit a waiter at the Italian place with the antlers,” Stacy whispered. “I bought him a deadly assault weapon. You’re sure he’s okay?”
Kendra compressed her lips together so hard her eyes visibly watered as she tried not to laugh. Her, “He didwhat?” came out scratchily, and she took a moment to put her face in her hands and give in to one quick fit of giggles.
But Stacy thought maybe she was worried about her brother, too, from the way she looked up a few seconds later with a watery grin. “Poor Keith. Yeah, he really is fine. A concussion, probably, but he just needs to—” Her gaze skittered beyond Stacy to the young woman waiting in the salon chair, then at the other clients, and dropped her voice. “He just needs to,you know. And then he’ll be fine.”
“Rest?” Stacy asked in bewilderment. “Or no, not rest. Or at least not sleep. You’re not supposed to sleep with a concussion, right? Oh my God. Is he at the hospital? I’ll come right over. As soon as I can.”
“The hospital?” This time Kendra sounded bewildered. “No, he’s at the veterinarian.”
* * *
A long silencefilled the salon after Kendra said that. Long enough for Stacy to look around to see if anybody else had heard it, because if they had, maybe they couldexplainit.
Long enough for Kendra’s big brown eyes to get even bigger, and for her hands to creep up over her face as if she was realizing she’d said something wrong. “Oh my God,” she whispered through her fingers. “You don’t know yet.”
“I don’t know…what…yet?” Stacy looked around again, but Robin, the young woman in the salon chair, had picked up a magazine and wasn’t listening, and the other two hairdressers were busy washing and blowing hair dry, so nobody was within ear shot. “Are you…are you serious? Keith’s at thevet? Wh—he should be at the hospital if he’s got a concussion! What the hell is wrong with—who brought him there? Did you? Why did you do that?”
Kendra whispered, “Oh my Gooooood,” again, and shook her head hard enough that her ponytail bounced. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, he said you were his faaaaaah no I can’t say that either, oh, God, I’m ruining everything, look,Robin, can your haircut wait, Ireallyhave to take Stacy to see my brother likeright now.”
“Oh yeah,” the girl in the chair said. “I can definitely go around for the rest of the holidays with half a haircut. I’ll tell everybody it’s a fashion statement. No, seriously, it’s fine, this is clearly an emergency. Go on. I can come in early tomorrow morning to get it finished?” she said to Stacy.
“At no cost,” Stacy promised. “Eight thirty? Is that too early? You’re my heroine, Robin, thank you. Lynn, Cameron, can you two possibly take over my next couple of appointments? I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“As long as none of them are the judge,” one of the hairdressers said. “She hates me.”
“That’s mymom,” Robin said in outrage.
“That’s amazing,” the other hairdresser said to Shelley. “You really know how to put your foot in it.”
“She does hate me,” Lynn said with a shrug. “We haven’t gotten along since high school.”
Robin, still outraged, said, “I wonder why!” but Kendra grabbed Stacy’s coat and dragged her out of the salon before she heard any real gossip.
“What is goingon?” Stacy demanded as she shrugged herself into her coat. “Honestly, Kendra, why is Keith at the vet? Was he hurt so badly you couldn’t bring him to the hospital.” Sickness swam up, making her dizzy. “You said he was okay, though.”
“He is, he is, I promise that he is but this isn’t something I should be explaining, it’s somethingheshould—I can’t believe he didn’t tell y—well, I guess you’ve only known each other three days but oh mygodI don’t know how these things are supposed to work, I’ve never met my—” For a girl who didn’t seem to be able to finish a sentence, Kendra stopped that one particularly short and eyed Stacy. “True love,” she said after a few seconds, as if even that was dangerous to say.
“What is with—you’re the second person today who’s said true love about me and Keith.”
“Who was the other?”
“Donna Arnesen. The deputy!”
Kendra actually cackled. “Yeah, I bet she did. Yeah, true love, that works, look, I’mverysorry for messing all of this up, butreallyit’s not for me to explain and it’ll all make sense when you talk to Keith, Ipromise.” She tugged Stacy along, crossing one of the least snowy, or most-compacted, stretches of the town square in a shortcut toward the veterinarian’s office.
Stacy was torn between stopping dead and demanding an explanation, and a conviction that no matter how much she asked for one, she wouldn’t get it from Kendra. That left stomping through the snow to the vet’s office to hear from her boyfr—nota boyfriend, they hadn’t gotten anything like that far—from her…herfriend…why he was seeing a vet instead of a doctor. There had to be a good explanation. She couldn’t think of one, not unless the entire world had gone post-apocalyptic since she went in to work that morning. Vets always seemed to do well in the apocalypse, but given that there were tons of cheerful people shopping, kids playing in the snow, cars creeping down snowy roads, and a general sense of well-being, she didn’t really think there’d been a ten A.M. apocalypse.
She hadn’t been in the vet’s office before, but it looked perfectly normal. A couple people with cats in carriers and a dog who couldn’t decide if he wanted to say hi or pee on the floor, a receptionist, and a cork board with pictures of peoples’ pets pinned to it. Kendra said, “We’re here for Keith,” in a rather grim tone to the receptionist.
He waved them to the hall, saying, “Out back,” and Kendra pulled Stacy down a somewhat antiseptic-smelling hall, around a couple of corners, and out the back door.
Two things struck Stacy immediately: one was that the veterinarian’s office had an unexpectedly enormous back yard. One wall—and they were walls, not fences—was lined with kennels, and the back half was corralled off, obviously for larger animals. But even more surprising was the fact that the walls went up at least twenty feet before tilting inward like big cat enclosures did at zoos. Stacy didn’t think there was anywhere in Virtue high enough to see into the vet’s back yard, except maybe the church bell tower, which was on the wrong side of the square.
