Author: Kristan Higgins

He looked at the girls like a wounded calf might regard a school of underfed piranhas. “Hello,” he said.

“I have three dogs!” Keira Kinell shouted, lifting her skort and dancing in place. “They’re purebreds! They cost $4,000 each!”

“I have a cat named Eddie and he’s so cute!” Hayley McIntyre claimed.

“No, you don’t!” said Josephine hotly. “You don’t have a cat. I was just at your house! That cat is fake!”

“He’s not fake!” retorted Tess McIntyre, Hayley’s twin. “He’s imaginary! And he didn’t like you, so he hid!”

“I have a pony and two dogs and a hamster,” Kayelin Owens said, “except the hamster died and I found it in the cage and it was all curled up into a ball and I cried and my mother said it was in heaven so we buried it in the backyard!”

Ian looked as if electrodes were being applied to various parts of his body. Again, I grinned. “Dr. McFarland is going to give us a tour, girls! You can see where he does all that vet stuff that keeps our pets healthy. Right, Dr. McFarland?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “All right. Um, please don’t touch anything and follow me.”

“Good luck!” Carmella said, booting up solitaire on her computer. Michaela and I herded the girls into the rough approximation of a line and followed Ian down the hall.

“This is the operating room—please don’t touch that,” he said, as Keira began fondling an oxygen tank. Keira looked at him assessingly—she was a piece of work, that one—and, correctly assessing his efficacy, touched it again.

“Hands in your pockets, Keira,” I said, and she obeyed with a mutter.

Ian took a deep breath. “Well, this is where we operate when—”

“Do you cut out uteruseses?” Josephine asked, proud of her vocabulary, given that her mommy was a doctor.

“Um…sometimes,” Ian said. “We call that spaying.”

“What about peniseses?”

I bit my lip, trying not to laugh.

“Well, not exactly, no.”

“What’s a girl dog called?” Tess asked, smiling angelically. “It rhymes with ‘witch.’”

Ian, sensing that he was being led into a trap, glanced at me. I shrugged. Ian decided to ignore that question and attempted to educate the girls. “It’s important that a dog or cat or any pet doesn’t have a litter unless—”

“I never litter,” said Caroline Biddle.

“Not that kind of litter!” Keira shouted. “Dummy!”

Caroline looked like Keira had slapped her. “Keira, apologize to Caroline immediately,” I ordered.

“Sorry!” Keira sang with great insincerity, and my jaw clenched, something like hatred rising hot and ugly in my chest. Keira was the daughter of New Vermonters and new money, and a nastier, more spoiled child there had never been. And Caroline, who often played with Josephine, was a special-needs kid, sweet as a butterfly. I wasn’t sure what her official diagnosis was, but since I volunteered in Josephine’s kindergarten, I knew that Caroline was a few years behind her peers.

I took Caroline’s hand and kissed it, and she gave me a watery smile, making me wish all sorts of misery on Keira. That the Jonas Brothers would come to Georgebury and forbid Keira to come to the concert, where Caroline would have a front-row seat. That her purebred dogs ate the heads off all her Barbies. That…well…other bad stuff. But not too bad. She was just a kid, after all. It was her parents who really deserved to be punished.

“Do dogs sometimes die in here?” Hayley asked.

“Yes,” he said. We all waited for more. More never came.

“Are there ghostses?” she persisted, clearly hoping for something a little more colorful.

“No,” Ian answered, jamming his hands in his pockets.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Marissa said, and Michaela led her from the room.

“Dr. McFarland,” I said, “can you tell us some of the most common operations you do?”

He shot me a grateful look. “Okay, well, we neuter and spay animals so they can’t, um, have babies. Sometimes, animals get something stuck in their intestinal tract, their stomachs, so we might have to operate for that. Uh…I remove tumors, set broken bones—please don’t touch that,” he said as Hayley began squeezing the pump on a blood pressure cuff.

“Maybe we could move on, Dr. McFarland,” I suggested.

“Sure,” he said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

“I broke my leg once,” Paige offered. “I screamed so loud. Then I got candy at the hospital.”

“My mommy screamed when she had my little brother,” Leah Lewis said. “She said it was beautiful, but I heard the screaming and I’m never having babies. I only want puppies.”

We herded the girls back into the hall. “Ian, why don’t you examine Angie and sort of show them what you look for,” I suggested in a low voice. “And if you gave out a souvenir, that would be great.”

“I don’t have souvenirs, Callie. This is not a gift shop,” he said tightly.

“Tongue depressors, Ian. Cotton balls. They’re five. They won’t care.”

He nodded. Swallowed.

“You’re doing fine,” I said, laying my hand on his arm. “They’re just kids.” He gave me a dark look, as if I’d just said, It’s just a pit of poisonous vipers, Ian, but he went down the hall to his office to fetch his dog.

Michaela and I crammed the girls into an exam room. “Crisscross, applesauce,” I called out, and like magic, all the girls collapsed Indian-style on the floor. When Ian brought Angie in, they squealed in delight.

“She’s so pretty!”

“I want a dog like that!”

“Can I ride her?”

“No, you can’t ride her,” Ian said, but he smiled. He gently lifted Angie up onto the metal exam table. “This is Angie, my dog.”

“Does she know any tricks?” Josephine asked. “Auntie’s dog pulls her up the hills when she rides her bike!”

“Is that right?” Ian asked, glancing at me. His eyes smiled, and something fluttered in my stomach. “No, Angie doesn’t know too many tricks, but she’s very well-behaved. Now, the first thing I do when someone brings in a dog is try to make friends with it. Like this. Hi, Angie. You’re a good dog, aren’t you?”

“Does she ever talk back?” Hayley asked, and the girls dissolved into giggles.

Ian smiled a bit uncertainly, almost like he wasn’t sure if he was included in the joke, and my heart lurched. Suddenly, it occurred to me that despite the fact that he looked like a Russian assassin and acted like an iceberg, Ian McFarland might be a little…well…shy.

It was oddly appealing.

For the next few minutes, Ian showed the girls what a routine exam looked like, holding their interest pretty well, considering that they had the attention span of hummingbirds.

“I think I want to be a vet,” Caroline said, pushing her thick glasses up her nose. “Do you have to be smart to be a vet?”

“Yes, dummy, so that means you can’t,” Keira answered immediately.

The words were as sharp and vicious as a razor, and for a second, I was knocked speechless. Caroline bowed her head. “Keira, you’re done!” I said sharply, jolting out of my seat. “Out in the waiting room, right now.” Oh, would that the Brownie handbook would allow me to…I don’t know…do something to change her evil little heart and make her see how cruel she was. My own eyes filled with helpless, angry tears, and my fists clenched.

“I’ll get this,” Michaela whispered, taking Keira by the shoulder.

“What?” Keira demanded as she was steered out of the room. “I didn’t lie! She’s not smart enough!”

The room was silent, the other ten girls realizing that Keira had crossed a line. Josephine, God bless her, put her hand on Caroline’s back, but Caroline didn’t move, just stared at the floor.

“In order to be a vet, Caroline,” Ian said matter-of-factly, kneeling down in front of her, “you have to have a big heart. Do you have one of those?”

Caroline didn’t look up. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“She does,” Josephine confirmed.

“You do, Caroline,” Hayley seconded.

“Would you be very gentle? Sometimes the animals are scared,” Ian said seriously.

Caroline gave a minuscule nod, still not raising her head.

“You also have to love animals. All different kinds.”

“I do,” she whispered. “Even snakes.”

“Well, then,” Ian said. “Sounds like you’d make a great vet.”

She looked up at him. “Really?” she asked, her voice wobbly. Ian nodded.

My tears sloshed over, and in that moment, I loved Ian McFarland. Quite a lot, in fact. And Josephine and Hayley should get medals of honor, as far as I was concerned. I wiped my eyes surreptitiously, not wanting the other girls to see me cry.

Ian stood up and took a stethoscope out of his coat pocket. He held it out to Caroline. “Want to listen to Angie’s heart?”

“Can I, too?” Marissa asked.

“Can I? Can I?” the other girls chorused.

Caroline forgot Keira’s nasty remark in the thrill of using real live medical equipment, and Angie, who must’ve sensed that the little girl needed some extra love, licked her face. Caroline’s smile lit up the room.

Half an hour later, the girls were once again shrieking with glee in the waiting room, as Ian had given them each a pair of latex gloves and my gifted niece had blown hers up into an udder-like balloon. As they played makeshift volleyball, I went over to Ian, who was watching from behind the half door that led to the exam rooms.

“You did great,” I said. “Especially with Caroline.”

He gave a formal little nod of acknowledgment. “Thank you for your help.”

“Was it hell?” I asked, smiling.

“A bit,” he admitted. One corner of his mouth rose a fraction. He could use a shave, I noted, and suddenly my knees were a little weak.

At that moment, Hester came in through the door. “Hi, Josephine!” she boomed, scooping up her daughter and kissing her loudly. “Did you have fun with the vet?”

“I did!” Josephine said. “We saw his dog!”

Hester set Josephine down and lumbered over to Ian and me. “Guess what?” she said to me. “My fifty-four-year-old patient is pregnant! Isn’t that great?”

“So great,” I said. “Um, Hes, this is Ian McFarland, the new vet. Ian, this is my sister, Dr. Hester Grey.”

“You know,” Hester said in her loud, bouncing voice, “I thought about being a vet. But I’m not really fond of animals, and my scores weren’t high enough. Had to go slumming in plain old medical school. Johns Hopkins. Where’d you go?”

“Tufts,” Ian said.

“Impressive,” Hester practically shouted. “Our brother just dropped out of Tufts.”

“How was your seminar?” I asked.

“It was great. All sorts of new hormone therapies, just waiting to plump up Miss Egg for Mr. Sperm. Well, gotta run. See you soon, Callie. Nice meeting you, Owen.”

“It’s Ian,” I corrected, but my sister was already halfway out the door. “She’s a fertility doctor,” I informed Ian.

“I remember,” he said. At my look, he added, “From the DMV.”

“You love to bring that up, don’t you?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Her daughter looks just like her,” he observed.