Linda Lael Miller - Holiday in Stone Creek

For Sandi Howlett, dog foster mom, with love. Thank you.

S OMETIMES , ESPECIALLY in the dark of night, when pure exhaustion sank Olivia OBallivan, DVM, into deep and stuporous sleep, she heard them callingthe finned, the feathered, the four-legged.

Horses, wild or tame, dogs beloved and dogs lost, far from home, cats abandoned alongside country roads because theyd become a problem for someone, or left behind when an elderly owner died.

The neglected, the abused, the unwanted, the lonely.

Invariably, the message was the same: Help me.

Even when Olivia tried to ignore the pleas, telling herself she was only dreaming, she invariably sprang to full wakefulness as though shed been catapulted from the bottom of a canyon. It didnt matter how many eighteen-hour days shed worked, between making stops at farms and ranches all over the county, putting in her time at the veterinary clinic in Stone Creek, overseeing the plans for the new, state-of-the-art shelter her famous big brother, Brad, a country musician, was building with the proceeds from a movie hed starred in.

Tonight it was a reindeer.

Olivia sat blinking in her tousled bed, trying to catch her breath. Shoved both hands through her short dark hair. Her current foster dog, Ginger, woke up, too, stretching, yawning.

A reindeer?

OBallivan, she told herself, flinging off the covers to sit up on the edge of the mattress, youve really gone around the bend this time.

But the silent cry persisted, plaintive and confused.

Olivia only sometimes heard actual words when the animals spoke, though Ginger was articulategenerally, it was more of an unformed concept made up of strong emotion and often images, somehow coalescing into an intuitive imperative. But she could see the reindeer clearly in her minds eye, standing on a frozen roadway, bewildered.

She recognized the adjoining driveway as her own. A long way down, next to the tilted mailbox on the main road. The poor creature wasnt hurtjust lost. Hungry and thirsty, tooand terribly afraid. Easy prey for hungry wolves and coyotes.

There are no reindeer in Arizona, Olivia told Ginger, who looked skeptical as she hauled her arthritic yellow Lab/golden retriever self up off her comfy bed in the corner of Olivias cluttered bedroom. Absolutely, positively, no doubt about it, there are no reindeer in Arizona.

Whatever, Ginger replied with another yawn, already heading for the door as Olivia pulled sweatpants on over her boxer pajama bottoms. She tugged a hoodie, left over from one of her brothers preretirement concert tours, over her head and jammed her feet into the totally unglamorous work boots she wore to wade through pastures and barns.

Olivia lived in a small rental house in the country, though once the shelter was finished, shed be moving into a spacious apartment upstairs, living in town. She drove an old gray Suburban that had belonged to her late grandfather, called Big John by everyone who knew him, and did not aspire to anything fancier. She had not exactly been feathering her nest since shed graduated from veterinary school.

Her twin sisters, Ashley and Melissa, were constantly after her to get her act together, find herself a man, have a family. Both of them were single, with no glimmer of honeymoon cottages and white picket fences on the horizon, so in Olivias opinion, they didnt have a lot of room to talk. It was just that she was a few years older than they were, that was all.

Anyway, it wasnt as if she didnt want those thingsshe didbut between her practice and the Dr. Dolittle routine, as Brad referred to her admittedly weird animal-communication skills, there simply werent enough hours in the day to do it all.

Since the rental house was old, the garage was detached. Olivia and Ginger made their way through a deep, powdery field of snow. The Suburban was no spiffy rigmost of the time it was splattered with muddy slush and worsebut it always ran, in any kind of weather. And it would go practically anywhere.

Try getting to a stranded reindeer in that sporty little red number Melissa drives, Olivia told Ginger as she shoved up the garage door. Or that silly hybrid of Ashleys.

I wouldnt mind taking a spin in the sports car, Ginger replied, plodding gamely up the special wooden steps Olivia dragged over to the passenger side of the Suburban. Ginger was getting older, after all, and her joints gave her problems, especially since her accident. Certain concessions had to be made.

Fat chance, Olivia said, pushing back the steps once Ginger was settled in the shotgun seat, then closing the car door. Moments later she was sliding in on the drivers side, shoving the key into the ignition, cranking up the geriatric engine. You know how Melissa is about dog hair. You might tear a hole in her fancy leather upholstery with one of those Fu-Manchu toe-nails of yours.

She likes dogs, Ginger insisted with a magnanimous lift of her head. Its just that she thinks shes allergic. Ginger always believed the best of everyone in particular and humanity in general, even though shed been ditched alongside a highway, with two of her legs fractured, after her first owners vengeful boyfriend had tossed her out of a moving car. Olivia had come along a few minutes later, homing in on the mystical distress call bouncing between her head and her heart, and rushed Ginger to the clinic, where shed had multiple surgeries and a long, difficult recovery.