He heard her car start.Heard it pull out of the lot.Heard the sound fade until the station was quiet again.
He went back to his textbook.The wordsstillwouldn’t cooperate.He opened his laptop instead and pulled up his spreadsheet tracking Jenna’s calving situation.Numbers.He could do numbers right now.
Tucker was waiting for him by the ambulance when Gray arrived at four o’clock for his Tuesday driving shift.
His brother was leaning against the rear bumper with his arms crossed, but Tucker had the same restless energy as always, the faint vibration of a man whose internal engine never quite idled.
“You look like hell,” Tucker said by way of greeting.
“Good afternoon to you, too.”
“Did you sleep last night?”
“Enough.”
“Liar.But that’s your business.”He tossed Gray the ambulance keys.“We’ve got a transfer to Apple Pie Creek.Non-emergency.Eighty-five-year-old with a hip replacement follow-up.”
Gray caught the keys and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Driving the ambulance was the one part of his day that required his full attention in a way that crowded everything else out.The vehicle was large enough to demand respect and just unwieldy enough to keep him honest.It wasn’t the fire engine, but it still required focus.
Focus was good.Focus was the thing he’d relied on his whole life when everything else felt uncertain.
They picked up Mrs.Olafsen from her house.She was a tiny woman with a titanium hip and strong feelings about the current state of the county’s road maintenance.She shared those feelings in vivid detail for the entire thirty-five-minute drive to Apple Pie Creek.
She’d insisted on being loaded onto a gurney even though she was perfectly capable of sitting in a seat, saying, “I’m eighty-five.I’ve earned the right to lie down in a moving vehicle.”
Once inside the ambulance, she announced, “The potholes on Highway 12 are big enough to lose a Buick in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tucker said from the back, adjusting her pillow.
“And tell your brother to slow down.I’m not in any rush to die.”
“I’m doing thirty-five,” Gray called back.
“Thirty-five is too fast for these roads.The county commissioner should be ashamed.”
Tucker caught Gray’s eye in the rearview mirror and grinned.Gray grinned back.
This was good.Driving, helping, being useful.The simplicity of transporting a woman with a titanium hip and a feisty attitude from point A to point B.No evidence.No cover-ups.No enigmatic woman with hazel eyes carrying a secret she wasn’t ready to tell him.
Just a road, a destination, and a job that needed doing.
By the time they dropped Mrs.Olafsen at the rehab center and drove back to the Foster Ranch, the sun was low and the mountains had turned the bruised purple of late afternoon in Montana.
Gray swung by the calving barn to check on the cows before heading back to the bunkhouse.Sully met him with a look on his face that Gray had come to recognize as Sully’s version of cautious optimism.
“Induced two more today,” Sully reported.“Both ended up being natural deliveries.Cows and calves all healthy.One bull calf, one heifer.”
“Weights?”
“Ninety-eight and one-oh-five.”
“That’s on the smaller end for this group.”Gray pulled out his notebook and recorded the numbers.“Which cows?”
“Numbers 14 and 22.”
Gray nodded, mentally updating the tally.Fourteen calves born so far, eighteen more to go.Five C-sections, nine natural births.All cows and calves healthy.Better than anyone had hoped.
