Page 1 of An Endless Memory

One

Eliot

“Push it hard, Wilder. Just get down in there.”

My brother was on his hands and knees. He aimed his glare up at me. “Not helping, Eliot.”

I grinned. “It’s a dryer vent. Don’t let it beat you. Mind over matter.”

“I like it better when you’re cranky,” he muttered and continued working on the dryer we promised his wife, Sutton, we’d install in the clinic. The expansion of her clinic hadn’t stopped. Instead of the two-room, one-veterinarian clinic she’d opened, she now had four exam rooms and three veterinarians under her.

It was Saturday, but the newest vet tech Sutton hired arrived earlier. I heard her cooing to the two cats and one dog being held for monitoring over the weekend.

“Fucking finally,” Wilder grumbled and groaned as he backed out from behind the dryer, still on all fours.

“You gonna be okay crawling around on the ground with those babies?”

That earned me another glare. “I’ll be fine. I can tell them what a jackass their uncle is.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.” We had two other brothers and a brother-in-law.

He gave me a dubious look. “No. I won’t.”

I chuckled. “What else do you have on your honey-do list?”

He rose, cutting his groan off and giving me a warning glare. I did my best to appear innocent.

“I need to change a couple of light fixtures and then she wanted the garage rearranged so Doc Julio can load his equipment and pull the trailer out easier.”

Doc Julio was the large-animal vet. From what Wilder said, the guy preferred to be outside and working all day. If he had to work on anything furry without cloven hoofs, he got cranky.

“Is the new girl working with him?”

Wilder adjusted his grungy ball cap and shook his head. “No. The plan was the new hire would work with him, but Lily just had a baby. Sutton asked the other techs if one of them wanted to work outside the clinic more, so they made a rotation schedule.”

“All that to hire the new girl?” Sutton was known to go out of her way for her employees, but she was already rearranging work schedules for someone brand new?

“Lily was going to vet school and dropped out. So Sutton’s getting a highly knowledgeable tech.”

“A vet school dropout?” A knowledgeable tech was one thing. A high-maintenance hire right before having twins was another.

He shrugged. “I don’t know the reasons. Sutton clicked with her.”

Whatever. It was my business to keep the ranch going so Wilder got his inheritance payouts. He’d been in house-husband bliss since he’d quit his job, moved to Crocus Valley, North Dakota, and dove into helping Sutton expand her veterinary clinic.

I was here to lend a hand or moral support. And because weekends in a big empty house were starting to wear on me.

“How’s Sutton? For real this time.” I’d asked before, and he’d given me the standard “fine” answer, but there was an edge to him I hadn’t seen since he’d gone through the divorce with Sutton.

They were remarried, and she was expecting. He should be elated, and it wasn’t this dryer stressing him out.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “The doctor mentioned bed rest at the last appointment. Her blood pressure is starting to creep up.”

“What’s that mean?”

“To keep herself and the babies healthy, she’ll have to park it in bed until she delivers. No work.”

“Shit.”

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