“Of course. I’ll call you as soon as I have contact information.” He paused. “Lark, I’ve worked with a lot of small business owners in tough spots. You’re doing everything right. Sometimes the timing just works against you.”
I smiled at him because that was what you did when someone said something kind that you couldn’t afford to feel.
“Thank you, James.”
I shook his hand again. Gathered my notepad and my purse and stood up. Walked past the teller and the older couple and the coffee station. Through the lobby. Out the glass doors into the parking lot.
I made it to my truck.
I sat in the driver’s seat with my hands on the wheel and the engine off and stared at the bank building through the windshield. My blouse was still too tight. My heels still pinched. I pulled them off and dropped them on the passenger seat andsat there in my stocking feet with my toes curling against the floor mat.
I wanted to just sit here forever, but that wasn’t going to help. I turned the key. Pulled out of the lot. Headed east toward Garnet Bend.
The sky ahead had gone dark and heavy over the mountains, clouds stacking up along the ridgeline in thick, dark layers that meant business. A storm was building, and it was building right over the road I needed to take home. If I were a different person, I might have appreciated the symbolism of the storm outside and the storm in my life. Very poetic. Very on-the-nose.
The universe wasn’t even trying to be subtle anymore.
The highway stretched out in front of me, two lanes cutting through open land with the mountains on both sides. The wipers squeaked against the first drops of rain, which meant I needed new blades, which was one more thing I couldn’t even consider right now.
I might lose Pawsitive.
I’d been circling that thought for weeks, nudging up against it and pulling back, telling myself that something would change, that the next grant would come through, that the numbers would shift if I just worked harder and cut deeper and wanted it enough.
But want didn’t pay mortgages. And every door I’d pushed in the past nine months had opened onto another wall.
I gripped the wheel and drove. The rain came harder. The road blurred once and I blinked it clear and kept going, and I let myself sit in the full weight of all of it for the length of that drive because there was nobody in this truck to hold it together for.
The turnoff for Garnet Bend appeared through the gray. I took it, the trees pressing in closer, and by the time I pulled into the gravel lot at Pawsitive, the rain was steady and the sky hadgone the color of a bruise. This storm wasn’t going anywhere, outside or inside.
The barn lights were on. Logan was inside; I could see him through the open doors, moving between the kennels. He’d taken over the evening routine so completely in two weeks that I didn’t even have to ask anymore.
I pulled the heels back on and got out of the truck. The rain hit me immediately, cold and insistent. I held my notebook over my head in an attempt not to get soaked.
I ducked through the barn doors, and Logan turned around with a bag of kibble in one hand. He looked at me. His eyes went from my face to the blouse to the heels and back up again.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Pawsitive Connections is closed for the evening for visitors. You’ll have to come back during business hours.”
“Hilarious.”
He grinned. “Oh, it’s you, Lark. I didn’t recognize you without the mud. And the flannel. And the—” He gestured vaguely at my hair, which I’d actually brushed and pinned this morning instead of twisting it into its usual barely cooperative knot.
“Believe it or not, I do own other clothes.”
“Well, you look nice.”
“Thank you. I feel like a stranger in my own skin, but I appreciate the validation.” I grabbed the clipboard from the hook by the feed room. “How are we looking? Everybody fed?”
“Dogs are done. Cats are done. Princess Whiskers got her Brita water and only judged me a little. I was about to start the rest.”
“I’ll take the outdoor rounds. You’ve been at it for a while.”
“I’ve been at it for twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes is a while when I’m standing here doing nothing.” I was already reaching for the feed buckets, alreadymoving, hands busy with the clipboard and then the buckets and then the latch on the supply bin. If I kept going, there was no room for the weight to settle back in, and I intended to keep going until my body believed what my mouth was selling.
Logan didn’t ask where I’d been. Didn’t ask about the meeting. He handed me the outdoor feed chart and went back to what he’d been doing, and the quiet he left around my noise felt deliberate in a way I was grateful for and unsettled by in equal measure.
I stopped at Tova’s kennel. The yellow lab lifted her head and thumped her tail once against the kennel floor. Those soft brown eyes tracked me with their usual patience, unhurried and seeing more than a dog should.
