“I’m willing to take that risk. But if you’re not, then that’s on you, not me.”

Morgan felt each word like shrapnel. She wanted to hold them inside her forever, the pain proof that she’d been wonderfully, beautifully wrong. Suddenly, words weren’t enough. She’d used up all the ones she had anyway, and so she did the only thing she could think of. Morgan Donovan fell to her knees and stared up at a stunned Emilia.

“Please stay with me,” she said. “I need you.”

Emilia’s eyes searched her face, and the wind tousled her hair as it blew off the September ocean. Her hands found Morgan’s chin, holding her steady, and then she knelt to face her. The wood of the dock bit into Morgan’s knees as Emilia rested her forehead against hers with a sob of breath that was more answer than anything she could have said, until she spoke, and then Morgan broke around her like a wave.

“I’ll stay with you forever.”

Epilogue

Epilogue

Emilia dropped her bag on the table and stared around her kitchen. Morgan’s sweater hung over the back of one of the kitchen table chairs, and she touched it lightly with two fingers. Her house. Her kitchen. Her girlfriend.

Morgan wouldn’t be home for another hour or two, and Emilia unbuttoned her shirt as she stretched. Late September light flooded the kitchen, and the golds and reds of the trees beyond the windows stained the glass. Nell nudged her with her long snout.

“Yes, yes, I will feed you, monster.”

She scooped food into Nell’s bowl and put the kettle on to make herself a cup of tea. August’s heat had departed with the month, and the house retained the morning’s chill even late into the evening. She shed her button-up and tugged Morgan’s sweater over her head. The scent of horse, shampoo, and the underlying intoxicating scent of Morgan’s skin wrapped around her.

Friday. The end of her first week at Briar Hill Veterinary Clinic. She warmed her hands over the kettle and let herself feel the stream of joy pour out of her like steam. This work was so different from her old job. Yes, she had euthanized two patients, but they’d been older, and it had been a matter of quality of life rather than overcrowding. There would always be difficult decisions and difficult clients—she was not that naïve—but there would also be continuity of care, joy, and satisfaction.

The kettle’s whistle shrieked, and she poured the hot water into her cup, breathing in the fragrant mint. Tea, Nell, and a detective novel she’d borrowed from Lillian moved with her to the porch to watch from her favorite Adirondack chair the birds flit over the meadow.