Gracie was six, and she’d been angling for a pet for a while now, so that was probably why we weren’t to mention the dog in front of her. She was the daughter of Wilder, our former roommate, and she’d lived with us until they’d moved a whole twenty feet next door to live with Wilder’s boyfriend, Avery. There was no sign of Wilder or Avery when I got inside, but Gracie was sitting at the dining room table doing some coloring.
“Uncle Cash!” She dropped her pencil and hurried to give me a big hug. “Avery has a meeting, so guess what? Me and Daddy are staying for dinner!”
I gave a pleased-sounding hum.
“Want to help me color?”
Chase stomped past the doorway on his way to the kitchen, so I gladly sat down with Gracie and colored. She had the good brand-name pencils that I’d never gotten to have as a kid. I was halfway through a pony when Wilder walked into the room.
“Hey, sweet pea,” he said to Gracie, holding out his arms for her as she darted to him for a hug. Then, his arms around her, he caught my gaze. “Hey, Cash.” I lifted my chin in hello. “Can I talk to you for a second? In the kitchen?”
I didn’t want to go in there, but I nodded anyway and stood up while Wilder redirected Gracie’s attention to her coloring. He followed me through.
It was like one of those interventions. Chase looked pissed, though that was mostly just his face. Miller, Danny’s boyfriend, was wearing an expression of concerned interest that probably looked real convincing in a courtroom. Danny and Wilder just looked regular worried.
“I called the vet,” Danny said, keeping his voice low. “He wants to see you this afternoon. You want me to take you over there, or Wilder?” He wrinkled his nose. “Because we gotta sort this out, Cash.”
“Igotta,” I whispered.
Chase jutted his chin out. “I’ll come with you!”
Miller winced.
I pulled Chase in for a hug. He was tense and jittery, like he was itching for a fight, and that wasn’t going to help, but I understood his need to come with me. We’d looked out for each other our whole lives. I put my mouth against his ear and whispered, “I want Wilder to come with us, okay?”
Wilder was… It was dumb, because Wilder was barely any older than us, but he was a dad. Aproperdad. A few times when I’d had nightmares and clocked Chase in the face, it was Danny who patched Chase up, and it was Wilder who came and sat with me and talked to me until my heart stopped racing, and he sometimes rubbed my back until I could breathe again.
My heart was racing now with the thought of having to go see the vet, my breath starting to catch, but it felt like if Wilder came with us, it might help Chase and me keep our shit together.
“I want Wilder to come,” I whispered in Chase’s ear again.
Chase pulled back, his brows tugging together, and said, “He wants Wilder as well.”
“Works for me,” Wilder said. “We can let these boys get dinner ready while we’re out, huh?”
I forced a smile, but I didn’t feel it. I was sick to the pit of my stomach. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room, and there was nothing in my lungs but the heavy weight of something bad about to happen. I didn’t want to go and see the vet. I wanted to hide in the closet until someone else made the problem go away. Except this was my problem, and I had to face it.
I thought of Mr. Conrad and the story he’d told me about his son, and how sometimes you walked into a place even knowing you were gonna get a punch in the face because it was the right thing to do. I thought about how Chase had done that for me our whole lives, and if he could do it for me, then I could do it forthe dog. And mostly, I thought about how even if they thought I’d done something stupid, my twin and my friends always had my back. This was going to suck, and there was nothing I could do about that, but it would be okay, because in this house my brothers looked out for me. All of them.
And I really needed to know if the dog was all right.
“Come on, guys,” Wilder said. He pulled the keys to his truck out of the pocket of his jeans. “Let’s go.”
The vet’slooked different in the daylight. It was just a regular house on one of the town’s nicer streets. Golden afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees that lined the street. There were kids playing in a sprinkler on the lawn a few doors down, and a man across the road was mowing his grass. The vet’s house was two stories, with one tiny round window at the top that might have belonged to an attic. It looked like most other houses in the neighborhood except for the extra wide driveway in the front that had parking spaces painted on it, and a sign on the porch railing that said Veterinarian in black letters and, underneath that in curling ones, Dr. Jim Ross DVM.
Wilder pulled his truck into one of the marked spots on the driveway and turned the ignition off. His door creaked when he opened it and got out. I wished I could stay in the truck, probably until I died of old age, but I couldn’t. So I got out too and trudged with Wilder and Chase toward the porch.
The door opened as we reached it, and a woman in pink scrubs walked out, a handbag over her shoulder.
She stopped and did a double take between Chase and me, and I hunched in on myself. I should have been used to peoplestaring when they saw us together, but it still took me back to when we were kids and no attention was good attention.
Chase must have caught my reaction because he gave her a hard stare. I reached out and squeezed his hand.
“Are you here about the abandoned dog?” the woman asked, narrowing her eyes as we nodded. “Dr. Ross is expecting you, but some of us aren’t paid enough to wait around after hours.” And then she stopped, staring at Wilder, and blinked. “You look familiar.”
Wilder’s face got a little pink. “Uh.”
“Oh, I know where I’ve seen you! At ladies’ night at Easy Rider over in Brodnax!” She smiled, and her entire expression lit up with it. “Not for a while, though.”
