Except for something on top of the fireplace mantel.
Two things, actually.
A business card.
Balefire Industries.
And something else as well.
A golden casino chip with black notches.
I turned with it in my hands, Savea's gaze falling on it.
"No way."
But, then again, it was the only thing that made sense, wasn't it?
"Is there an address on the chip?" Savea asked, coming up beside me. I turned it in my fingers and, sure enough, there was. "I guess we are invited back."
And we were.
And we went.
Often.
Eventually, everyone stopped letting Savea win.
It turns out that there were still some things to learn about someone you had been living with for over a year and a half.
Savea had what it took to become the best poker player I had ever seen.Savea - 11 years"Wells, take the skirt off the pig," I called through the open kitchen window.
I found that motherhood was an endless cycle of you catching yourself saying phrases that you never could have seen yourself saying before.
Don't let the dog lick you in the mouth.
Why are there GI Joes in the toilet?
We do not pee on our siblings.
Why is there a bucket of earthworms under your bed?
Kingston and I had settled on having two children.
That was the plan.
But plans were a funny thing.
And we could practically hear God laughing when we went for the ultrasound appointment for my second pregnancy and there were two heartbeats instead of one.
Wells was our first, coming just a year after our wedding. He reminded me a lot of his Uncle Rush - light, easy, confident, prone to pranks and troublemaking.
Three years after he came into our lives, Sullivan and Rani followed.
Sullivan was a mini version of his father. Calm, patient, generous, kind-hearted. If Rani was too small, too weak - taking after me in the height and size department - you could always count on the much taller and stronger Sullivan helping her out.
Rani took after me in the way of looks. The same long, dark mass of hair, the same eyes. And she - like all her siblings - loved animals. But Rani, personality-wise, was much more like a mix of her Aunts Peyton and Jamie. Unpredictable, yet mothering. Crazy, but also able to sit and work on puzzles or other tasks that required intense concentration for hours on end.
The farm had finally become a farm again, slowly over the years.
The chickens were first, providing fresh, cruelty-free eggs every morning.
The ducks came on their own every spring, landing in a stream that ran through the more wooded strip of our property. Kingston and I would go out onto the back deck, listening to their quacking as they swam around, as they ate all the insects that would have driven us crazy otherwise.
The pig, Mortimer, had come next. From the rescue, as I once told Kingston I had wanted.
And, of course, there were the dogs.
Paddy was still with us, a little slower than usual, not quite the crazy thing he had once been, but happily occupying one of the many dog beds scattered all around our home.
Petunia hung with him most of the time too, not having the patience to handle the younger guys - Prim, Paulie, and Puck. They hadn't come into our lives all at once. Prim had been three years after Petunia, a poor abandoned dog we had seen on the news. Kingston took every opportunity when I grumbled about watching the news to remind me that we never would have found Prim if not for it. Paulie was next, two years later. Wells had latched onto him at an outdoor adoption fair at the farmer's market. And, finally, Puck chose us. In a way. He'd been a feral puppy in the woods, crying for his lost mama at night. We'd tried for weeks to find her, but had no luck, figuring he had come to us for a reason.
Eight chickens.
Six ducks.
Five dogs.
Four caged, furry creatures.
Three kids.
And two parents.
Hopelessly outnumbered, that was what we were.
But we wouldn't have had it any other way.
In my humble opinion, the best way to raise your kids was on a big plot of land, surrounded by animals to play with, nature to explore. It was a rare occasion that one of them would come in the house not dripping with dirt, trailing in mud.
Over time, I had needed to loosen my hold on the reins of Howie's, learn to accept that I was not the only person in the world who loved the animals, who would do everything in their power to help them live long, happy lives. Some of the part-time kids Harry had hired when I was laid up with a busted ankle had eventually come on full-time, becoming the me I had been a decade ago. And I guess, that was how it was supposed to be.
Harry held the name of owner, having paid off his debt to the Mallicks, gotten some help for his addictions, eventually finding a woman to settle down with. But I was still the manager, in charge of all the books, the updates. Which we had made many of over the years, bringing the store into this century with the top of the line equipment for the animals we sold, eventually expanding into the store beside ours, allowing us to offer training, grooming, adoption fairs of our own.