Epilogue
Ten months later…
“Here you go!” Linda Fae chirped, holding out a plastic bowl which contained a wallet and keys. She’d just lifted them from Houston when she was taking his vital signs.
“Linda Fae!” Krista said with exasperation.
“What? I gave them back!” Linda Fae said indignantly. She was training to be a medical assistant in the new clinic that Michael Coffman had funded. Krista worked at the clinic three days a week and spent the other four working in Crystal Bay.
Linda Fae just couldn’t help herself, though. But at the end of every exam, she returned everything that she pilfered, so there was that.
“Yeah, yeah.” Krista hurried out to the parking lot, where Houston was headed for his car.
“Houston! You, uh, dropped your stuff!” Krista called out.
“Sure, sure. Right into Linda Fae’s paws, huh?” Houston grumbled as took his possessions back, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He was walking tall now, and he looked twenty years younger. He hadn’t touched a drop of moonshine since last year, and he’d gotten a job at the mines, which were now back open.
Krista had been able to help alleviate the symptoms of a lot of the victims of Dawnie’s moonshine. Roy wasn’t blind anymore, although he was so near-sighted that he had to wear glasses the thickness of coke bottles. Those whose brains were addled, she’d been able to help restore to some semblance of their former selves.
She’d tried treating Gummi when he’d eventually emerged from the woods last summer, but his problem wasn’t moonshine, it was permanent brain damage from one of his mother’s beatings. He was always going to be his big, simple self. He lived in his family’s main cabin by himself, surviving off the land as he always did, but much happier now that he no longer lived in fear of his mother and brother.
Houston waved goodbye to Krista as he headed to his pickup truck. He was her last customer of the day, so she went inside to tell Louise, the office manager, that she could close up, then she headed out to wait for Blake.
A car screeched into the lot and pulled up right in front of the clinic, smashing into a garbage can when it parked.
Hattie leaned out the window of Floyd’s Pontiac and waved at her niece. Floyd was in the passenger’s seat with a frozen, terrified smile pasted on his face. Krista didn’t feel too bad for him. After all, he’d been the one that called Dawnie and told her that Krista was at the party asking around about Ethan – he’d confessed as much.
Oh, he’d come around in the end and been willing to risk his life to take down the Reeds, but he had plenty to atone for. And what better punishment than being a passenger when her great-aunt was driving?
“Hey, Krista! Need a ride? Me and Floyd are headed for the diner, you can join us.” Krista’s car was in the shop for the next few days. She’d broken an axle going over a pothole. Good old Flowering Dogwood roads. Really, really old roads.
Krista’s gaze wandered over the Pontiac, which he let Hattie drive everywhere. Both headlights cracked, front bumper dented, scrapes down the passenger and the driver’s side…
And did Hattie have a black eye?
“What the heck happened to you?” she demanded.
“Aw, that ain’ nothing. I caught Marigold cheating at bridge last night, and we had a little to-do out in the parking lot.”
Krista spluttered in protest. “She’s one of your best friends! She risked her life for you last summer!”
Hattie’s face set in stubborn lines. “Still no call for cheatin’. Hop in the car already! I’m hungry.”
Fortunately, before she could answer with a firm “hell to the no”, Blake pulled in to the parking lot in his big SUV.
He pulled right up next to Hattie’s car, giving it a look of alarm. He’d been gone for four days with Mal and Dexter on a protection detail for Michael Coffman. Michael only trusted Shifters, Inc. with his son’s protection, and yes, the lion shifter was a little smother-y when it came to his son’s safety. The protection detail had been for their trip to Disneyland. Ethan didn’t go anywhere without a small swarm of bodyguards these days, but who could fault his father after what he’d been through?
Ethan had recovered from his ordeal quite well, though. He was in great spirits, and back in school – with bodyguards – and getting excellent grades, and he and his father came to the holler on a regular basis, treating Krista to lunch at Floyd’s diner. She tried to pay, but Michael refused.
Krista had been running to work in fox form every day—it was only two miles, and these woods were like home to her. She’d managed to beg off Hattie’s offers of a ride with various excuses.
And now she had an even better one. “Sorry, Hattie. Appreciate the offer, but I need to spend some time catching up with my mate.”
“Is that what you young folks call it?” She glanced at Floyd and winked at him. “Maybe we should skip the diner and go spend some timecatchin’ up.” Floyd’s wrinkled face split into a huge smile.
“Oh, give me strength.” Why did Hattie have to put that image in Krista’s head? “I am throwing up myentire soulright now.” Krista backed away in dismay as Hattie grinned at her, rolled up her window and backed out of the parking lot, clipping a hedge on the way.
Krista quickly slid into the driver’s side seat of Blake’s SUV.
