“No, thanks. I’ll take a rain check. I want to be by myself for a while.”
“I understand, Shelby. Go on. Get some sleep.”
I stood up and bent down to kiss him on the top of the head. While I was there, I put my arms around him and didn’t let go. He held on to me, too. We didn’t need to say anything. There was nothing we could do about the future.
I turned and left the gazebo and hurried upstairs to my bedroom. When I stood by one of the windows looking down on the backyard, I saw the light of the gazebo go out, and I could just barely make out my father as he returned to the house. With him gone, there was nothing but wilderness outside. I opened the window and breathed in the humid air through the screen. The night was quiet and still after the wild storm, with barely a leaf moving in the trees.
Then, out of nowhere, a barn owl swooped down in front of me, its huge auburn wings spread wide. I jumped back with a shout. For an instant, I saw its monk-like face staring at me as it crashed against the second-floor screen, and then after the impact, it spiraled away down to the ground. When I peered out again, I could see the bird on the grass below me, hopping as it tried and failed to fly on a broken wing. I sprinted for the stairs to rescue it.
You know me. I believe in signs.
That one felt like a bad omen of what was to come.
Chapter Nineteen
I do regular transports of injured birds for the Stanton Raptor Center, so I keep heavy cardboard boxes and falconry gloves in a shed near the house. With Dad’s help, I was able to get a blanket over the owl and secure him inside a box, which I put on the floor of the front seat of my cruiser. I called my friend Jeannie Samper, who runs the center, and she said she’d be there to meet me. Jeannie was used to calls at all hours during the summer season, and I’d never once seen her fail to get up in the middle of the night to receive an owl, hawk, or eagle in need of help.
Stanton is an hour’s drive east from Everywhere. The highway was dark and empty and still slippery from the heavy rain. There was a lot I could have been thinking about as I drove, but I put it all out of my mind and simply stared down the tunnel of my headlights and kept a watch for deer and moose. I could hear the occasional rustle of the owl shifting inside the box.
I made it to the raptor center just before midnight. The facility was really just Jeannie’s house and a few acres of land, located well outside the busier Walmart section of town. She and her husband and four kids were squeezed onto the upstairs floor, while the downstairs, garage, basement, and outbuildings had been converted into areas to treat and house several dozen birds of prey at any given time. Jeannie was a ruthless fund-raiser, and the equipment and care she provided rivaled anything you’d find at a veterinary hospital.
The garage was open as I drove up the muddy, twisting driveway through the woods. However, the person who met my car wasn’t Jeannie. A man I’d never seen before came up to my driver’s window with a smile, and I rolled it down.
“You must be Shelby. Jeannie said you were on your way. I’m Dr. Lucas. I understand you have a little patient for me.”
“Yes, it’s a barn owl that flew into my window. I’m worried he may have a broken wing.”
“Well, let’s get him inside and take a look.”
Dr. Lucas didn’t look more than thirty years old. He wore a white lab coat over a red-checked flannel shirt and stonewashed jeans. He had long sandy hair that hung loose to his shoulders. I’d never been much of a fan of long hair on men, but on him, it worked. He had a thin frame and narrow face, and his eyes were warm and very blue. When he smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled and made you want to trace the lines with your finger, as if you were exploring a map of an exotic new place.
When I got out of the car, I saw that he was taller than me but not a giant, only about five-foot-ten. He shook my hand. His grip was firm, and his hands were soft. I took him around to the passenger side, and he reached inside to take the box with the same gentleness you would use with a newborn’s cradle. As the box moved, the owl inside got scared and began moving about, and Dr. Lucas murmured, “It’s okay, buddy, we’re here to help. Don’t worry.”
I liked this man.
“I’m sorry to get you out of bed in the middle of the night,” I told him.
“Oh, I wasn’t sleeping. Wide awake and staring at the ceiling. I was actually pleased to get Jeannie’s call.”
“And you’re a vet?” I asked, which sounded like a stupid question as soon as it came out of my mouth.
“Two years now,” he replied with a grin, as he carried the box inside the garage. I followed him past the lineup of glass windows at the back into the treatment room. “Don’t worry, I passed all my tests. I can take a dog’s temperature like nobody’s business.”
I laughed. In fact, I may have blushed a little.
“Sorry, what I mean is, I usually see Dr. Tim over here.” Dr. Tim was the sweetest, most capable vet on the planet and about two hundred years old. He’d volunteered his time at the raptor center ever since Jeannie started it.
“Yes, I recently joined Tim’s practice in Stanton,” Lucas told me. “He’s planning to retire in a couple of years. When he does, I’ll take over the business.”
“Dr. Tim retire? That’s hard to imagine. I was pretty sure they’d have to take him out of the clinic feetfirst.”
“Well, that may still be true. It took me a few months to convince him to let me come on board, and so far, all he’s done is cut back his hours a bit. But that’s okay. When you do something you love, why would you want to quit? Anyway, I’m in no hurry. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay on as long as he likes. I’m just happy to learn the ropes.”
There was something refreshing about meeting someone else like me who wasn’t in a huge hurry. Sometimes I feel like the world is filled with nothing but Violet Roka’s, who rush to finish one day in order to get to the next.
“Do you live in Stanton?” I asked.
“I do. I moved here about a year ago. I was actually born around here, but my family moved away when I was ten. I grew up in Kansas City, and then I went to vet school at Kansas State.”
“But you moved back here? I don’t hear that a lot.”
“Oh, it’s a complicated family drama. My grandfather needed help, and I was the only one willing to uproot myself to go back home. I guess the fact that I still thought of Stanton as home even years after we moved away made me realize it was something I needed to do.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
I was enjoying my conversation with Dr. Lucas, but I heard a tapping behind me on the row of windows that separated the treatment room from the garage. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw Jeannie Samper waving at me.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Dr. Lucas told me. “You don’t have to stay in here. Go talk to Jeannie.”
“Are you sure? I’m happy to help. I’ve done it before. I’m practically a vet tech.”
“It’s fine. If I need another pair of hands, I’ll shout.”
I felt the tiniest twinge of disappointment at being dismissed, but I left him alone with the owl. Outside the treatment room, Jeannie greeted me with a hug. I apologized for coming so late, but she waved it off as if it were nothing. The two of us watched Dr. Lucas through the glass as he tended to the owl. You can always tell someone who loves animals. His movements were quick, firm, and tender as he prepared to sedate the bird in order to X-ray its wing.
“So Dr. Tim has a partner now,” I said. “Amazing.”
“Yeah, I never thought I’d see the day,” Jeannie agreed. “I like Lucas. He’s very capable. And very charming.”