“Why do you think Dad bought the schoolhouse? The rooms are two stories high.”

“I bet it’s nice inside.”

“It is.” They had reached Kelly’s office.

“I’ll unlock it,” he said, and got out.

She stayed in the Jeep and watched him. Maybe Forey was right, she thought. Maybe she was pulling into herself. Since her breakup, it had become just her and her dad. They were too isolated.

Caitlyn had a vision of herself in the future and she was alone. She couldn’t marry, of course, but there were other things she could do. Maybe she’d be like Kelly’s famous sister, Vera. She was on the news often, and was known globally as a major do-gooder. And look at her. She’d never married, never had kids. Caitlyn wondered if Vera had ever been in love.

I’ll ask Dad, she thought. Maybe he’d met Vera Exton. Maybe he knew what she was like and what had led her to a life of helping others.

Dr. Jones had unlocked the door and turned to her.

Maybe I can take him on as a project, she thought. I’ll get him involved in the town. When Kelly returns, everyone will say she should keep him.

The idea that there were other things to do in life made her smile. She got out and went inside.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Cait had spent her life with men, so working with Coop, as he told her to call him, seemed natural. But still, it was extraordinarily easy. They agreed on every aspect of what to do.

Their first thought was to rearrange the contents of the drawers while making a minimum amount of mess.

“Betty covered all three exam tables,” he said. “I assumed she knew what she was doing.”

“Pompous know-it-alls project that image.”

He looked at her and it was like mind reading. They knew what they had to do. “Floor or tables?”

“Floor!” Caitlyn said. “Unless you’d rather not do all that bending.”

“Try me.”

They dumped the hundreds of cards into a pile, then started twenty-six categories by the first letter of the last name of the owner.

She stood back and looked at the piles. “This does need to be put on a computer. I’d want to be able to search how many dogs were dewormed in 1991.”

“That would help us find out if they were eating something that was infected. Know any high schoolers who could do the data entry?”

“I know the principal and maybe he could give extra credit for the job.”

“Good idea,” he said. “But you set it up.”

The way he said it made her feel good.

They went back to the boring task of separating hundreds of cards.