MIDNIGHT FEEDING went okay, but at four, Emma hated slipping out of her warm bed and into the cold house to heat up...whoa, she should’ve asked Seth how warm the jar of milk that presently resided in her refrigerator should be. She put her hand on her cell phone to call him, then set it back on the kitchen counter. The man was exhausted. She couldn’t repay his kindness by waking him from a sleep he obviously needed.
She ran the jar under hot water in the sink to take the chill off, but not enough to heat it up. That should be safe.
As she cradled Sycamore, who already had this nursing business down pat, she wondered whether her semiconscious state was what human mothers felt during the late-night feedings. Remembering her half brother and half sister as newborns, she decided that these skunk babies were a bunch cuter than their human counterparts and didn’t scream blue murder between feedings.
Would she ever have that mother feeling with her own newborn? Didn’t look like it at the moment. She wanted a man she could count on, who believed in fidelity. Trip obviously did not. If he could cheat on his fiancée, what would he do to his wife?
The whole situation had looked so perfect at the start. Even her father had finally agreed that marrying Trip would be a good choice. Well—goodish. Daddy’s take was that no man who’d ever lived was good enough for his Emma, but Trip would keep her safe and happy.
Now, she’d come to the realization that even if Trip wanted her back, she did not now or ever want to marry him. Whatever she’d thought she felt for him, she knew it was never love. Convenience? Appropriateness? Timing? She wasn’t sure she’d recognize real love if she ran into it like a brick wall.
Maybe she’d move to Montana or Alaska or somewhere there were more men than women. The pool of eligible bachelors in west Tennessee that she hadn’t already crossed off her list was getting smaller and smaller.
Okay, she’d been raised to be picky. Even in high school her father had second-guessed her crushes.
He’d guessed wrong on Trip. Daddy simply couldn’t understand why she’d broken her engagement. If she had her way, he’d never know.
Actually, losing her job working for Nathan was worse than losing Trip. Maybe she should take up fostering abandoned baby scapegoats. She’d be right at home being the mother of that herd. Accepting blame for something that was her fault was one thing. Being fired because of someone else’s screwup made her angry. She hadn’t even had a chance to plead her case before Nathan fired her.
She settled Rose next to Sycamore and picked up Peony. She could already tell them apart not by their looks—although their stripes were different—but by their personalities. Sycamore was a bit of a bully and certainly greedy. Rose was gentle and liked to be cuddled. Peony was sweet, but Emma decided she didn’t have a brain in her soft little head. The poor baby tried to figure out the nursing thing, but the practical aspects simply eluded her.
Eventually Emma managed to get enough milk down Peony’s throat, rather than on her fur, that she felt comfortable returning her to the nest. She put the remaining milk back in the refrigerator and realized she’d have to make a run to the grocery for another gallon or so come morning. She had enough for only one more feeding.
Seth had left a couple of cans of dog food on the kitchen counter, but she’d better do some internet research on how to feed her charges before she offered them dog food. She’d ask Seth tomorrow, as well. Maybe just a tiny bit mashed up in the milk. But how would she get the solid food into their mouths through that syringe?
Relishing the still-warm bed, she snuggled down again. This time sleep eluded her. The whole country-life thing had turned into a major fiasco. She ought to pack her duffel bag and go home. What did she know about living in the country? Rehabbing a run-down house? Feeding skunks?
A niggling voice in the back of her mind whispered, “But Seth knows how to help me.”
Another niggling voice followed. “Yeah, but I’ll bet he won’t.”
* * *
BARBARA CAREW’S MOBILE vet van was already sitting in the parking lot at the Forked Deer Café when Seth pulled in beside it. She was reading the Marquette County Gazette in the back booth of the café and cradling a giant mug of coffee.
“You ever sleep?” he asked as he slid into the banquette across from her.
“When the animals let me,” she said. She folded the paper, put it down on the patched leatherette bench and took a swig of her coffee. “This helps. Good morning, Seth.”
A brawny arm and hand carrying a mug of coffee the size of Barbara’s reached across his shoulder and set the cup on the table in front of him. “Hey, Seth,” a gravelly voice said. “The usual?”
“Thanks, Velma.”
“You have bags under your eyes,” Barbara told him.
“Those bags probably have bags,” Seth muttered.
“Rough day yesterday?”
“No worse than usual. At least not until last night. Then things got complicated.” He laid out the entire scenario, from Emma’s knock on his front door until he left her with her black-and-white invaders.
“Here ya go, sweet thing.” Velma set the plate with sausage, hash browns, eggs and grits on the table, then added a large glass of orange juice.
“If I ate like that, I’d be even fatter than I am,” Barbara said. “Here I’ve got one country ham biscuit. Life is not fair.”
“You are not fat,” Seth said. “Just not skeletal.”
“Way I work, I should be—skeletal, that is.”
Seth cut into his eggs. “So, what should I do?”
“About what? The woman or the skunks?”
“Take your pick. I doubt the woman will stick around for long, but if she does, what should I do about the rules on skunks?”
Barbara got up, went behind the counter and brought back the coffee carafe. She refilled both their cups, then returned the carafe to the hot plate. “Okay. I’m going to give you a bit of motherly advice.” She scowled at him. “I am a mother, you know, even if mine are both semigrown. This, however, is advice from my mother. When Patrick hit the terrible twos, John and I had just taken over my practice and were trying to keep from throttling him. Seemed he was into something every minute. River otters are said to have two states—asleep or in trouble. I swear that kid has river otter genes instead of human. Anyway, one day when I was absolutely at my wit’s end, and my mother was visiting, she said, ‘Barbara, dear, do not see so much.’”
“What if he’s hanging off a precipice by his fingernails?” Seth asked.
“That, of course, you do see. But if it’s nondangerous stuff that you don’t know how to handle, simply don’t see it. In most instances, the problem resolves itself without you or the kid going to jail for first-degree murder. If this Emma is doing something that’s against the rules—rules you say you don’t believe are appropriate in the first place—is she doing it under your nose? Can you see or hear those skunks from inside your house or your car?”
“No, but I know
