The house was all natural wood inside, but the first thing he noticed was not any of the cute décor. It was the raccoon on the kitchen counter.
“Hello,” Lydia said in her best baby voice. “It is so good to see you, Pascal.”
Pascal wobbled across the counter toward them.
Then he stood on his hind legs and lifted his front feet up.
Remy felt his lip curl against his will.
“You don’t like him?” Lydia asked.
“I find it . . . It’s a lot, Lydia.”
“Well. It’s not your problem.”
She turned away, and her blond hair swung with the motion. Just as the sun came through the kitchen window and illuminated her profile. He felt a tug of fondness in his chest. For this girl he had known all his life.
It reminded him why he was doing this.
The light shifted just slightly, and the blue of her eyes became more intense. A little bit of color flooded her cheeks. She smiled. Her mouth was softer than he had remembered, and it was as if the wordgirlshifted right out of his brain, and the wordwomantook its place.
Oh hell.
He blinked. “Where’s the stuff? And you said something about a crate. Because I really can’t have him running around the place at night.”
She snorted. “I don’t think Hank is going to run around anywhere. But it’s not a bad idea to see if he’s crate trained. I don’t think your dad had him inside the house at all.”
“So he isn’t house-trained?”
“Probably not. There were a lot of animals at your dad’s place. They were all in pretty rough shape.”
Guilt kicked him square in the chest, and he didn’t know why it should. Whatever the fuck his dad had been up to had nothing to do with him. He hadn’t had any contact with him. Distance was a necessary part of surviving the Hunter Lane experience.
“What happened to them?”
“The horses are at a sanctuary.”
“I would’ve been a better bet for the horses,” he said. “At least I know what to do with them.”
“Some of them had to be euthanized.” She said it very softly, tears filling her eyes.
He felt regret. Rage. Because nobody should treat fine animals that way. And yes, he had a difficult time understanding why people wanted their house full of animals, but there was no question in his mind that if you consented to take care of an animal, then that was an agreement you made with the earth itself. Violating it . . .
That was why his dad had found an early grave, frankly.
Because how dare you put animals in a cage, where they couldn’t even take care of themselves, and let them suffer?
“He’s a bastard for that,” he said.
“He’s a bastard for a lot of things,” she said.
“No argument from me.”
“I can check on some of the other horses and see . . . if you’d like them.”
“Yeah. I’d like you to do that. He shouldn’t have been allowed to have animals. Or kids, frankly.”
“I know growing up with him wasn’t a great experience.”
