Maren: Scale of 1 to ceiling.
She means the motel ceiling in Bend. The one I memorized because the alternative was closing my eyes, and closing my eyes means the quiet sneaks in, and the quiet has a sound I don’t want to hear. She doesn’t say any of this. She doesn’t have to. Maren speaks in Grady shorthand because she’s been watching me run from the same thing long enough to stop counting and she’s given up trying to name it directly.
Me: Town’s got good coffee and a bar with a fish that judges you. I’m fine.
The lie comes automatically. So automatically I don’t even feel it leave my thumbs anymore.
Maren: You’re always fine.
Me: See? Consistent.
Maren: That’s not the selling point you think it is, big brother.
She sends a heart emoji, and I put the phone away, stand on the sidewalk, and just breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The trick the department counselor taught me before I stopped going because talking about it was worse than carrying it, and carrying it was already plenty. I don’t think about why the quiet is loud. I’ve gotten good at not thinking about it, the way you get good at anything: practice and repetition and refusing to let the thing you’re avoiding sit still long enough to become a shape you have to name.
The air smells like pine, dust, and river water. And underneath all of it, barely noticeable, dry brush. The ridge above town is golden and brittle in the fading light, and somewhere up there the fuel loads are waiting for a spark—patient, inevitable, a season’s worth of kindling pretending to be scenery.
The firehouse porch is cool and empty. The bench is overbuilt the way firehouse furniture always is, designed to survive the same events the crew does. Inside, the station is settling: laughter through the walls, boots on the stairs, the particular sound of a place where people belong.
Diaz comes out to the porch and stands at the railing. Looking at the same ridge I’m looking at.
“Scanner has something east of town,” he says. “Small. Brush fire. Probably nothing.”
My shoulders come forward and my weight shifts to the balls of my feet. Somewhere between the river and the ridge, something is burning, and my whole body knows it before my brain catches up.
Chapter 2
Sloane
The goat doesn’t want its hooves trimmed.
This isn’t unusual. No goat in recorded history has ever wanted its hooves trimmed. But this particular goat, a Nubian with ears like velvet curtains and the disposition of a dictator, has decided that today’s appointment is a personal insult, and she’s making her position known by screaming. Not bleating. Screaming. A sound that makes the dogs in the back kennels go quiet out of professional respect.
“You’re being overly dramatic,” I tell her. It doesn’t help in the slightest, but narrating the situation to animals keeps my hands steady, and steady hands are the only currency that matters in this job. Animals are ideal for this. They don’t ask follow-up questions.
The goat screams again. Her owner, Mrs.Harding, who’s been bringing livestock to Copper Ridge Veterinary longer than I’ve been alive, watches from the doorway like a woman who considers a screaming goat barely worth ranking.
“She does this all the time,” Mrs.Harding says.
“I believe you.”
The trim takes less than a minute once I get hold of the hooves. My hands know this work: the grip, the angle, the steadypressure that tells the animal’s nervous system that fighting is optional but will be ignored. It’s the one constant across every practice I’ve filled in at: the animals don’t care who you are. They care what your hands do.
Mrs.Harding pays and leaves. She doesn’t ask where Dr.Fenn is, which puts her ahead of most. Every other client asks where Dr.Fenn is, as if I might have hidden her somewhere between the autoclave and the supply closet. I haven’t. I want to be clear about that.
Dr.Fenn is recovering from hip surgery. I’m here until she’s back. That’s how locum work goes: I fill the gap, I do good work, I leave clean. Copper Ridge is another town in a string of them, and I’ve got the pattern down to muscle memory. Learn the filing system. Memorize the regulars. Be warm, be competent, don’t become a real person to anyone. Becoming a real person means the clients stop treating you like a substitute and start treating you like theirs, and that’s when leaving gets complicated. I don’t do complicated.
The practice is well-run. That helps. Dr.Fenn keeps meticulous records: every vaccination, every procedure, every note written in handwriting that suggests she was either a doctor or a seismograph in a previous life. The equipment is decent for a rural clinic. The exam room smells like antiseptic and hay, the same smell as every rural vet clinic I’ve ever worked in, and the familiarity is the whole point.
The afternoon is quiet. A Lab with an ear infection, standard: clean, irrigate, medicate. A cat whose owner is convinced it’s depressed. The cat isn’t depressed. The cat is a cat. I recommend environmental enrichment and a feather toy, which is veterinary for “your cat is bored, not existential.” The owner nods like I’ve handed her a prescription for enlightenment and leaves feeling better, which is sometimes the actual job, treating the human so the animal gets left alone.
Between appointments, I eat a sandwich at my desk and review tomorrow’s schedule. Farm call at the Breslin ranch, a mare with a hoof abscess. Wellness exams. A puppy vaccination series. A day that fits inside a box, edges clean, nothing spilling over.
My apartment is above the clinic. A studio that came with the position: a bed, a counter, and a shower that treats hot water like a personal favor it may or may not grant depending on its mood. The commute is a flight of stairs. The view from the one window is the clinic parking lot, which is less a view and more a daily confirmation that I live where I work and work where I live and neither space contains much evidence of an actual person. My suitcase is still packed. I’ve had time. Unpacking is a statement I haven’t agreed to make. The apartment looks exactly like someone is here temporarily. We are in complete agreement about this.
Through the window, Copper Ridge does its thing: trucks on Main Street, someone walking a dog past the feed store, mountains sitting on every horizon like a screensaver. My first week, a man came into the clinic to introduce himself, shake my hand, and ask how I was settling in. He wasn’t a client. He didn’t have an animal. He was just introducing himself. I kept waiting for the pitch, the church invitation, the nephew he wanted to set me up with, something—but he shook my hand, said welcome, and left. I stood in the exam room afterward and tried to categorize what had just happened, and the closest I got was: a town being friendly at me on purpose, which is something I’ve encountered before but have never developed the antibodies for.
The phone rings mid-afternoon. Janet, the receptionist Dr.Fenn shares with the insurance office next door, pokes her head in.
