Page 84 of Sometimes You Stay

Squatting down, he checked their water bowls. Fresh and full. Bella and her puppies were good too. Sonny and Cher bleated their greeting, and Abner scraped his horns along the wall of his pen. The rabbits squeaked their greetings too. Even Roberta practically smiled at him as he rubbed her face.

Probably because Cretia wasn’t with him.

The thought simultaneously made him laugh and made his heart hurt.

“It’s going to be like that for a while,” he said out loud as he pressed a fist to the middle of his chest. Joe shot him a concerned look, but he waved it off. Cretia had said she talked to herself sometimes—that was how she had processed much of her life while traveling alone.

Well, he figured he was just as much on his own as she was most of the time. And if a little bit of his inside thoughts made it out into the barn, there was no one else to bother.

“But there could be.”

Closing his eyes, he saw Cretia’s face right before him and heard the urgency in her voice when he’d told her he needed to prove to his dad that he could make the business into something more.“You don’t have to.”

His dad had said the same thing the night before. His mom too.

He didn’t have to do it all by himself.

And he didn’t have to do it just like his dad and his grandfather before him. He could do something different. Something special. Something new.

Taking a slow spin around the barn, he looked at all the changes he’d made over the years and the animals he’d rescued. This wasn’t the barn his dad had managed. The walls and the roof may have been the same, but there was more to this place.

Just like Cretia had said.

He snapped open his phone and called Justin to thank him for helping out for a second night.

“Anytime,” Justin said. “Seriously. I mean it.”

Finn smiled. “I’ll take you up on that offer sometime.” Then he closed his phone and tucked it in his pocket.

Another thought rocked through him—a familiar face around his barn, the spindly arms of a boy hanging around Joe’s neck. He’d thought Jack might be helpful in a few years. But maybe ... with a little bit of training...

Patting his leg, Finn called Joe to follow him, and the big dog bounded around the house and down the lane, eager tostretch his legs after the ride in the car. They walked around the dock, past the spot where Cretia had fallen in, and along the boardwalk.

For just a moment Finn let himself remember what it had felt like to carry her in his arms, the weight of her body against his, the warmth of her hands on his shoulders. She’d smelled like seawater and fish, and somehow it was still the sweetest memory.

He let himself remember it—remember her—even as he traipsed up the steps where she had said goodbye. Where he’d kissed her cheek and let her go.

He wanted to call himself every name in the book, but it had been the right decision. Begging her to stay, making her feel guilty that she couldn’t—that wouldn’t help either of them. Or make the impossible possible.

Her memory wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But it might help him to have something else to focus on.

That had been his mom’s suggestion. And, of course, his dad had agreed with her.

As Finn topped the stairs up the embankment in front of the inn, Joe let out a bark and raced across the street, dashing over the Red Door’s lush lawn to bowl over an unsuspecting Jack. The kid cried out in excitement as Joe landed on top of him, the two of them wrestling.

“You okay, Jack?” Finn called.

The only response was a laugh as the dog licked his face.

Yeah, this could work.

“Finn, you’re back!” Marie waved from one of the white Adirondack chairs on the inn’s porch, Seth by her side. “We missed you at church this morning, but Kathleen said you stayed an extra night with your folks.”

Finn smiled and nodded. Maybe he didn’t even need to share his plans with them. Once he’d thought them, the whole town probably knew about them.

Bounding up the steps, he reached out to shake the other man’s hand. “Good to see you, Seth.”

“How are your parents? Everything okay?” Marie’s words were laced with fear. Probably because she knew that he’d asked Justin to take care of his animals at the last minute.

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