There was nothing soft about the way she used that word—fucking, fucked, fuck.

“I’d give you anything.” He lifted a hand and reached for her. She allowed him to make contact, but it felt like grabbing a marble statue. “You just lost your job of ten years, Ruby. And you’re obviously in a lot of discomfort right now. Why don’t you come back to my house? I have some medical supplies, and without Caleb there, you’re free to crash if you need to. We can—”

“She doesn’t need to crash at your house.” A now-familiar woman’s voice sounded behind him. Spencer turned to find Mrs. Orson standing in the doorway to her house, her slight frame swathed in a colorful quilt, a pair of pink-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. There shouldn’t have been anything intimidating about an eighty-year-old woman who weighed as much as a sack of potatoes, but Spencer felt a quaver unlike any other.

That woman would end him, if given half a chance. Both of these women would.

“I have enough medication around this place to perform heart surgery, should Ruby require it, and she has a place on my couch for as long as I continue to live and breathe on this planet. There’s no need for you to stick around.” Mrs. Orson held out a hand. The quilt fell from around her, opening like a queen’s robe. “Come, Ruby. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Spencer glanced back and forth between the two women, so far out of his depth now that he might as well have been buried at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle. The look of understanding that passed from Mrs. Orson to Ruby and back again made him realize that they were both upset. With him.

He wanted to defend himself, to point out that he was only trying to help, but if there was one thing Spencer was good at, it was knowing when he wasn’t wanted.

From the rough way Ruby picked up the box containing ten years’ worth of both nothing and everything, Spencer could tell he definitely wasn’t wanted.

She hoisted the box against her hip and held it there for a moment—no more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

“Thank you for helping Wheezy today.” There was a chill in her voice that he’d never heard there before. “And for all your assistance in training him. But I’d rather you didn’t fix your dog show in my favor, if it’s all the same to you.”

“That’s not what I—” he began, but there was no use. Everything about her posture indicated that she was done with this conversation and, by extension, him.

Chapter 19