Charlie slammed the dash. “What does it matter? God, Mom!” she yelled. “I did it, it’s over.”
Kit knew she had to leave it there or risk making things worse between them. From the look in Charlie’s eyes, a smoldering determination, she knew she couldn’t pry any more from her if she had a crowbar.
“What the hell am I going to do with you if you’re not in school?” Kit said, not so much to Charlie but to herself.
“Well, I guess you’ll have to figure that out,” Charlie mumbled. Kit breathed and stretched an angry knot between her shoulder blades.
“All right, as soon as we get something to eat you’re coming with me to Doc’s,” Kit said. She walked away a little looser for having made a decision and, in case her meaning had been lost, shouted over her shoulder, “I’m putting your ass to work.”
As soon as she walked inside the cramped quick mart, an internal countdown gave Kit a minute or less before she would need to bolt out of there. She could reason all she wanted that she was safe, but she still spooked at gas stations. She grabbed a gas cap, two oily dogs hot off the rollers, and a package of Fig Newtons, and went up to pay for them along with her fuel. The cashier, skinny and ball-eyed, put down his jerky to chew her a “Howdy do.”
“Hi, Kenny.” She lay her money on the counter and looked out the glass door at the truck, rehearsing her exit.
“Ain’t Charlie s’pose to be in school?” he said and sorted her change, and by the way he played it real casual she could guess that he had heard about Charlie and Leigh. And if he knew it, soon everybody would know.
“Not today, Kenny,” she said, rubbing the fat of her earlobe. Suddenly, it felt like the temperature rose by twenty degrees. “Can you hurry please? I’m late for work.”
“I just run out of pennies, hang on,” he said and stood up to fish around in his pockets. “It’s just three cents I owe you. Should be able to dig it up if ya just gimme a minute.”
A dark feeling came over her. The gasoline fumes, the scrape and ting of the cash register, the subtle flicker of fluorescent light. Her heart beat high in her chest and she began to sweat. She took the food and the change he’d laid down, shouldered the door open, and hustled back to the truck.
Chapter Three
Kit and Charlie stamped the dust off their boots on the cheery welcome mat and stepped inside Pecan Hollow Veterinary Clinic, where Kit had worked odd jobs since Charlie was a baby. The front office was about two hundred feet square, cluttered with plants and paperwork and nearly every inch of wall space tacked with pictures of Doc Robichaux’s patients. Lame horses, mangy dogs, coyote-bitten goats, and hen-pecked chicks, many accompanied by thank-you letters from their owners. The office adjoined a much larger space used for exams, surgeries, and when the time came, euthanasia. Out back, she had a couple of acres with eight stalls, a riding ring, and a barn for hay, feed, and equipment storage.
Animals were as important as people at her clinic. Doc stood just over five feet tall with natural, springy brown curls around a cheerful, chubby face. Though heavy, she was also very nimble and stronger than the average man. In vet school, she had been known for tearing a phone book in half for free drinks. Known to no one by her full name, Clothilde Hélène Robichaux, Doc called herself a Creole from West Baton Rouge. Why exactly she ended up in Pecan Hollow of all places was unknown. According to her own account, it was divine intervention. Having recently graduated, Doc had asked the powers that be to lead her where she was most needed. She had taken I-10 across the Texas border with nothing but her degree, her car, and the gas that was in it. The tank had gone empty just outside Pecan Hollow and she had pushed the car a half mile until she made it into town and, seeing her prayer answered, there she stayed.
Kit liked to think Doc was a runaway, like her. The people of Pecan Hollow, of course, had spun their own mythology about Doc. There were rumors she had been sent away after a woman she had spurned called up her family in a rage and told them the shameful truth about their Clothilde. Kit didn’t put much stock in the rumors since any woman over thirty who hadn’t found a man was deemed a lesbian, but neither did she dismiss them. It simply wasn’t her business.
“You’re later than late!” Doc said and pointed to the Felix clock with its wagging tail. Half past eleven. Dorelle Chapman, a tall, thin woman with sun-dried skin and a beautician’s cap over her hair, waited at the counter to pick up her cat. When she saw Kit, she scowled like she’d tasted something nasty and shook her head. Kit could imagine Mrs. Chapman biting her tongue so she didn’t say what was really on her mind. You’re a better woman than me, Doc, I wouldn’t trust her for a second. Uh-uh. I just hope you don’t let her touch the money, now. You can be a good Christian without being stupid. Kit scowled right back.
“Sorry, it was Charlie’s school,” Kit said to Doc. “I’ll stay as long as you need me.” Kit hated being late, not because Doc would be mad, but because she didn’t like to take advantage of Doc’s kindness. She owed her boss more than she wanted to admit. Doc had always given her steady work and time off for Charlie whenever she needed it. She had given her a job when most people in town wouldn’t leave her, an interloping brown girl, alone with their wallets. Some thought she was a grifter, others just didn’t like the look of her, most were mad she didn’t attend church. The summer after Charlie was born, Kit ran out of money. She spent what little she earned from odd jobs on the mortgage and the rest went to diapers. She got so hard up one month, she hunted squirrels and nutria, lived on meat, mostly, boiled pasta, and what little she could glean from the garden. Hunting to eat wasn’t so bad, and Charlie was content to feed from her breast, but she lived in fear of losing the house. She couldn’t bear to ask anyone in town for help. And though the temptation was always there, she was determined not to steal. More than once she had pushed a cart through the aisles of the market, with Charlie in the basket, taking food off the shelf—a box of cereal, a gallon of milk, cans of soup, and bottles of Coke—and thought how easy it would be to slip a few things into her backpack, to push the cart to the register, and once all the food had been tallied pretend like she had forgotten her money and go home, her backpack full of food. Then one day she saw a Help Wanted sign at the feed store and went to the vet with Charlie in arm. She told Doc she had no experience and would have to bring her daughter, but would work harder than anyone else. Doc had hired her on the spot.