Brakes squeaked and pneumatics hissed as the driver stopped the bus and opened the door to let out Sophie. The girl grinned and waved while Cole hopped out of the truck and hurried around to the passenger side to let her in. He waved at the bus driver as she forced the bus in gear and rumbled off.
“Daddy!” Sophie said as she approached. “Wait’ll I tell you what Cindy Martin got last night!”
“I can’t wait,” Cole said, boosting Sophie up into the passenger seat. “Tell me now.”
“Baby chicks!”
“No!”
“Yes! She brought pictures of them to school and told us all about ’em. She got two, and they have yellow feathers, and she has to keep them under a heat lamp until they grow bigger, and she has to feed them in jar lids because they’re so tiny, and she keeps their water in a special pan that automatically waters them—but only a little bit at a time so they don’t fall in and drown.” She paused for a breath. “And can I have one? Can I have a baby chick, Dad?”
He figured that was coming. “Let’s talk about that. Baby chicks are a big responsibility, Sophie. I’m not sure you’re ready for that.”
“I’ll be nine next week, and I’ll take care of them. I feed Belle and Bruno most of the time.”
True.
“We don’t have a chicken coop, so where would we put them?” Cole asked.
“They live in a box at first. We could build them a coop behind the clinic. Out by Mountaineer’s pen.”
Mountaineer was Cole’s horse, a roan gelding that could handle any mountain trail. He’d been invaluable last fall when Cole rode him up into the wilderness during the first snowstorm of the season to find Mattie.
“Build them a coop? I thought you were asking for just one chick.”
Sophie looked down at her lap for a split second before looking up and grinning. She wasn’t much of a fibber. “One chick would be lonely. We’d have to get at least two. Please, Daddy.”
“Remember, no begging allowed, and no whining,” Cole interjected. He knew Sophie could escalate quickly, and he wanted to nip it in the bud. “You’ve made your point. Let me think it over.”
Sophie settled back in her seat, obviously trying to control herself. “Just one more thing, okay?”
“Okay . . .”
“The chicks are on sale at the feed store, so we wouldn’t have to go anywhere far to get them, and they could be my birthday present, and I would take care of them and help you build their pen.”
“That was several more things, not just one. But you’ve presented your case well, and now I’ll think about it while we go have a snack.”
“Okay, but we’ve got to decide soon, because they’re on sale now, and we might miss out if we wait too long.”
“Enough,” Cole said, ending the discussion. “Now, tell me what else happened today?”
Sophie’s face fell as she told him about how her teacher had broken the news about Candace’s death at school. “Robby Banks came to school today, but he started crying and had to go home.”
Cole slid Sophie a sideways glance as he drove slowly down the lane toward home. “Maybe that was better for him anyway. To be home.”
“Yeah, but Robby likes school. He’s real smart too.”
“Maybe that’s why he decided to come to school this morning. You know, because he likes it there. Then it got to be too much for him.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She leaned back against her backpack, a frown on her face as she considered it.
Cole was sorry to see her mood had shifted. He decided to go get the chicks as soon as she’d had her snack. He would let her pick out three, just in case one didn’t make it, and he would set them up at the clinic until the chicks grew large enough to be transferred outside. But he’d tell her later, after she’d eaten a snack and cheered up. He didn’t want to reinforce her melancholy by giving in now.
The chicks peeped and cheeped while Moses Randall, the feed store owner, rang up the sale of three of them, a sack of chicken feed, a heat lamp, and a water dispenser, the supplies costing quite a bit more than the chickens.
“So this is your birthday present, huh?” he said to Sophie, raising his silver eyebrows. An elderly man, Moses had kept the feed store going for over a decade and catered primarily to ranchers and farmers.
“Yes, I’m going to be nine,” Sophie said, looking up at him and hopping on one foot in her excitement.
“Well, I’ll throw in the cardboard box for free then.”
Big of him, Cole thought as he paid the bill. But the price to pay for Sophie’s joy over these chickens was more than worth it.
A kid with a scruffy beard helped carry out their purchases while Sophie twirled and danced on the way to the truck.
“Careful now, Sophie. Don’t run into anything,” Cole said as he followed her. He opened the truck door and shoved up the seat so the kid could deposit the cardboard box containing the chicks in the back. Cole thanked him while he helped Sophie get in.
“I’ll sit in the back with the chicks,” Sophie said.
“You take care of those little birds now, you hear,” the kid said to Sophie with a teasing smile.
Sophie grinned back at him, her freckled cheeks bunched. “I will.”
The kid waved as he turned to go back inside the store.
“Don’t forget your seat belt,” Cole said as he turned on the engine.
“Be careful, Daddy. The chicks aren’t buckled in. Drive slow.”
Cole did as he was told, driving one mile out of town to their lane and then going past the house to the clinic. His cell phone rang as he pulled up in front of the building. He took it from his pocket and answered: “Timber Creek Veterinary Clinic.”
“Hey, doc. This is Gus Tilley.”
This was the fourth time Gus had called him since bringing Lucy in this morning. “What can I do for you, Gus?”
“Something happened to Lucy’s eye. Can you take a look at it?”
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure. Looks like she got hit. Or something.”
Unbidden, Cole’s mind conjured a memory of a horse he’d seen when he was in vet school. The horse had been hit in the face, and the blow had popped its eye out. Although the owner swore the horse must have hit its head against something, the faculty vet had shared with the students his suspicion that the owner might have actually hit the horse with a rope or a whip himself, although it couldn’t be proven. The sight of the injury to the poor horse had been unforgettable, but in all his years of practice, Cole had never found cause for an eye injury to be anything other than accidental.
“How bad is it?” Cole asked.
“It’s swollen. Tears coming out of it. She keeps it shut.”
It was almost four o’clock, and Cole still had a couple hours of patients scheduled. Besides, if true to form, Gus was probably calling from a phone at the edge of town. “Can you bring her in?”
“Yeah. I can get there in about forty minutes.”
“I have other clients scheduled, but come on down. I’ll work you in.”
After disconnecting the call, Cole realized that Gus must have straightened out the phone situation at his house. Earlier, he’d expressed concerns about pretty much everything, from wanting to know if he should still be treating Dodger’s ear to wondering how a person could impregnate a horse. Cole had found himself delivering a talk on Artificial Insemination 101 between seeing other clients. It seemed odd that Gus was still fixated on Lucy being pregnant, despite the fact that she wasn’t.
He helped Sophie carry in chicks and supplies, and they set up the cheeping babies in the kennel room.