Page 42 of Love Bound

He could have said anything else. Anything else is what I've imagined. Not this. "Oh my God. Finn."

He sighs hard and keeps going. "She was drowned in our swimming pool in the backyard and—"

"—and she was pregnant," I finish.

His nod is slow, deliberate. Then he glances at me, rubs a hand over his eyes, and starts to weep.

I'm up, moving, kneeling in front of him, and then my arms are around him. I try to hold him, try not to hurt him, rock him slightly as he cries. His chest is against mine, his breath with mine, and I stroke his hair. His tears are hot and wet on my neck, and his body, straining to release grief, can't.

He shudders and stops after a few minutes and I reach up to wipe his face with my fingers. He's embarrassed, I think, or too exhausted to engage with anything but his own grief, his own pain.

"I need to go lay down," he says and my heart breaks.

I show him where Devon and Laurel's room is and crack open a new toothbrush for him from a diabolically constructed package of three, leaving one on the bathroom sink.

It isn't until he's in the room and I've closed the door that I suit up—coat, gloves, knitted hat—and go back outside in the pressing cold. I climb into the manger and wrap my arms around my knees. This time when Salty comes and nuzzles around for apples and I realize I've let him down again, the hot sting of my own tears rock me, and I cry quietly for a long time. My own losses, our family's gaping hole—my mother, my father, and, in her own way, Chloe—churn together in a cycle of grief that will always be there.

And I am alone. Always. I am always the one to pick up the pieces, do the right thing, carry on. Be the good example.

But the price is, I'm alone.

Chapter Twelve

Finn

"So, who did you say did this?" asks the emergency doctor, a guy in his fifties with "Dr. Peterson" on his plastic nametag, salt and pepper hair, and a blotchy face. He's peeled off the military dressing Claire placed on the entrance and exit wounds, and other than a massive shot of antibiotics, he hasn’t done much.

He didn't even give me the shot. Some nervous intern with an overactive Adam's apple did. In my ass.

"The veterinarian in Echo Bay. Claire Russo?" I say.

"Oh, a veterinarian vet. I thought you meant a vet-vet," says Dr. Peterson.

He means a veteran.

I wince slightly as Peterson takes forceps and pulls the QwikClot material from each side. It hurts like hell. I'm at the tail end of procedures that began with a sonogram and finishing with me having little patience. The lidocaine burned when that intern prepped me for stitches and now I can't feel my right side from the armpit down. About a third of my torso is numb as well. As I lie more or less on my back, he threads a needle.

The intern was a little heavy-handed earlier with the anesthesia and I know it's going to sting when it all wears off. But at least I'll be tidy.

Peterson whistles slightly through his teeth. "You are one really lucky man," he says. "Sonogram shows it just missed the intestine, nicked the liver, and bruised a kidney, but you're going to be fine." Within a few minutes he announces, "Stitches done on this side. You got a lot of them."

I look down at my iodined side. "You could have glued me shut."

Shrugging, he admits, "I did a visiting doctor thing in Boston as a plastic surgeon."

"So, you try it out every chance you get?"

"You won't even have a scar. You have enough of those," he says.

I'm beginning to like this guy. He notices things. Motioning with gloved hands, he asks me silently to roll over a little. When I shift slightly to my left side, he stops me with a, "Perfect. Right there," and then he's quiet for a few seconds while he selects a new curved needle and a length of dissolving thread.

I've learned it's better to talk in these kinds of situations. A distracted mind doesn't react to pain as much. "Do you know her?"

"Who?"

"Claire. Russo. The vet."

"Not really. I knew her parents, Maggie and Tony Russo. We were in a Friend of the Library group that met monthly and did fundraising stuff. Sorry. You felt that?"