the past couple of months.
He hadn’t meant anyone any harm. Hadn’t meant to ignore the needs of those around him. He just hadn’t noticed.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Redmond, I didn’t realize you were here. I’ll come back later....”
Sara, one of the three full-time caregivers he employed to see that Michelle had everything she could possibly need, stepped back through the archway leading to Michelle’s bedroom.
“No, it’s okay, Sara,” he said, standing. “You can come in. I was just leaving.”
“I hear you’re leaving town, that you won’t be coming by here anymore,” the middle-aged widow said. He knew Sara best. She lived in the suite with Michelle.
“That’s right.” She could castigate him for his callousness. All Michelle had left was his visits. Her parents couldn’t bear to come. Couldn’t bear to see her this way.
And her sisters, all their friends...they considered Michelle dead and buried.
But Michelle didn’t need him there as much as the rest of them, her family included, needed him gone.
“It’s about time,” Sara said, smiling at him with a warmth he wasn’t used to seeing. People in his world banked their emotions, their expressions, showing the world a blankness that preserved their ability to walk in and out of rooms, do the business they’d come to do, without drama.
Or shame.
Without anyone getting one up on them—or being able to manipulate them.
Their walls protected their reputations.
And they protected the money.
The gray-haired woman moved quietly to Michelle’s side, running her fingers tenderly through the young woman’s hair. “We’ll be just fine without you,” she said. “Missy here has no idea you’re killing yourself over something you didn’t do. She ordered those drinks and she drank them. You wasn’t even in the same room as her. And she gets no benefit from these visits. But you...you’ve got a whole life to live. Things to do and people to help. It’s time for you to let go.”
Let go?
Michelle had taken that last irrevocable step—she’d drunk herself into a stupor, but she’d done so because of his negligence.
And she’d been without oxygen for so long because he’d left her alone in a nearly comatose state. If he’d been committed enough, devoted enough, even aware enough to stay with her, they’d be on their honeymoon now.
Let go? Never.
No matter what Sara said, Michelle had lost her life because of him. It was a fact that couldn’t be denied. Or changed. And her family had made that plain to him.
His friends, too, had blamed him, even as they commiserated with him. He’d have to live with the aftermath of guilt, and the whispers that condemned him for having left her alone that night.
But Sara was right about one thing. He had to get out into the world. To live among those he’d spent his entire life ignoring.
To find something human in the selfish bastard he’d become.
CHAPTER THREE
DANA AND LORI fed the dog.
“We should name him,” Lori said as they watched him gulp down a bowl of instant rice with canned chicken mixed in.
“Uh-uh.” Dana shook her head. “You name him, you take on ownership—and he’s not ours.”
She couldn’t keep him. He wasn’t house-trained, as they’d already discovered. And as he grew he was going to need more space than her little duplex would give him.
They bathed him. And fed him again.
Or attempted to. As soon as Dana put down the second bowl of chicken she’d boiled for the puppy, Kitty Kari darted out from behind the refrigerator and over to the bowl.
“You have a kitten! How cute.” Lori grinned, watching the tiny calico put her front paws on the bowl and dip her head inside until she reached her goal.
The puppy, easily five times her size, cowered back and watched as the kitten ate his food. And Dana felt a kinship with him.
“Kari, that’s not yours,” she said, reaching over and plucking the cat out of the bowl. “Little Guy’s a lot hungrier than you are,” she explained.
“Did you bring her with you from Indiana?” Lori asked, reaching over to pet the kitten.
Shaking her head, Dana watched the puppy, hoping he’d head back to the bowl on his own. It was best if siblings could find a way to coexist.
Not that he was, or would be, a member of their family. Still, while he was in their home...
“She was left on the side of the road in Missouri. I’d stopped for the night on my trip out here and saw the box on the entrance ramp to the freeway. There were three kittens inside, but only Kari survived.” Holding the cat up to her face she said, “And you’re doing just fine, aren’t you, girl? Healthy and sassy as can be.”
Kneeling, Lori coaxed the puppy slowly to the bowl and told Dana that she’d never had a pet, which led to a conversation about the younger woman’s life in Bisbee living alone with her miner father after her mother died.
Dana had no idea who her real father was. But she didn’t offer up that information.
Over a glass of iced tea, while they sat on her back patio waiting for the little guy to do his business, Dana offered the younger woman her spare bedroom for the night. And any night that her roommate had her boyfriend over. Marissa couldn’t get away with sneaking a boy into an all-girls’ dorm too often. And Dana understood Lori’s predicament. Sometimes you had to choose to look the other way for the greater good.
* * *
TWO DAYS AND TWELVE HOURS later, on Friday morning, Dana was almost late for her freshman English class because she’d had to clean up two puppy messes left by Little Guy in the fifteen minutes between taking him outside first thing in the morning and getting out of the shower. Lori, who’d caught a ride with her back to campus in time for their English class on Wednesday hadn’t been over since, but had offered to babysit the dog over the weekend.
Dana was hoping she wouldn’t need her. After class on Friday, she headed straight home to the bathroom where she’d been locking up the puppy while she was away, groaned at the toilet-paper-strewn floor, scooped up the unrepentant offender, and the jarred sample she’d collected from the backyard that morning. Leaving the mess, she headed back out the door.
Cassie Tate Montford, owner of the Shelter Valley animal clinic, was waiting for them and she didn’t want to be late.
Zack Foster, the only other veterinarian on Cassie’s staff, had taken care of the kittens for her when she’d arrived in town, and she’d called him first thing Wednesday morning only to find that he was out of town. The clinic’s receptionist had assured Dana that
