Page 32 of Forget That Guy
Holly looked over at Jetty and winced. “Uhhh…”
“I heard about it,” Jetty muttered darkly. “I’m sorry that they called you out to do that.”
“What happened?” DeeDee asked.
Catalina stopped scooping her ice cream to level her gaze on Holly.
“I…”
Holly didn’t have to finish.
Jetty did.
“My parents’ bison were attacked by the same wolves that got your cows,” Jetty grumbled darkly. “My parents let them suffer in agony until Holly got there. She had to euthanize all of them.”
I cursed.
Farming and ranch work wasn’t fuckin’ easy.
In fact, it was really hard.
Sometimes you had to do things you didn’t want to do, and you couldn’t let your animals needlessly suffer. It bothered me to no end to see people who had no clue what they were doing owning animals and—intentionally or unintentionally—hurting them with their ignorance.
“Something needs to be done about those wolves,” Holly said quietly, moving her mashed potatoes around on her plate for ashort moment before taking a bite. “Now that they know there’s easy prey here…”
That’s exactly what I’d said to Creed.
“What do you think about the fish fry tomorrow, Holly?” DeeDee pushed.
“I…” She hesitated, unsure what to say. How to turn down a thirteen-year-old gently. “I think I have to pack.”
“We can help you with that,” Cat suggested as she held up the dog in her hands. “And we can spend some time with this little guy!”
I blew out a breath, rather grateful that she hadn’t straight-up asked to keep it.
Out of all of my kids, Cat was the damn bleeding heart.
That was why we always ended up getting lame ducks and chickens that didn’t lay any damn eggs.
Hell, just last week, she’d asked if we could keep an alpaca.
I’d been sort of, maybe a little bit, kind of happy that the alpaca had died before I could say no.
The damn thing was older than dirt, and the farmer that’d had it had died. Everyone had scrambled to make sure that all the animals had homes, but the alpaca had been mean and no one else had wanted it.
“I don’t know…”
“Dad, we can use the farm truck, right?” Cat asked. “I don’t think that everything will fit into Holly’s car. Holly, you still have that car, right?”
Holly grimaced. “I do. But I think I might need to sell it if I’m living out here again. Its suspension is kind of a mess…”
That was an understatement.
The entire car had been a fuckin’ mess.
Court, our resident mechanic, had taken one look at it and declared it a disaster unfit to drive.
A few months ago, Holly’s car had broken down at work. Boone’s girl, Nettie, had let Holly take her car home.
