I wiped the sweat from my upper lip with the sleeve of my T-shirt. “I don’t think she will,” I said breathlessly, trying to keep up with Holly’s long strides. “She knows she almost screwed this up for us.”

No admonishment from Holly, no blaming me for bringing Summer along. We were going to get Peanut out of here and to Katie. We were working together without a fight. My heart whispered like an excited sorority girl, OMG!

Inside the adoption office, Holly pushed past me and spread her hands on the counter. “We need to adopt some animals,” she said with the intensity of a parched cowboy approaching a barkeep and demanding a shot of whisky. “ASAP,” she added.

The staffer said, “Yes! Griff called. I have the papers right here for Peanut and Moose.”

“And Utah,” said Holly. “I’m taking Utah with me.”

The kitten that had slowed Holly down from confronting Tom was on her shoulder, the threadlike fluff of a tail curled lightly under her chin.

I wanted to examine Holly’s face. This was not a development I had predicted. Instead, I said to the adoption staffer, “Okay. And apparently Utah.” I drummed my fingers on the counter, wanting the laid-back woman to speed up and catch our turbo-charged energy.

Holly looked at my fingers. “What, Sammie. What? Only you can make a snap decision and adopt an animal willy-nilly?”

The staffer blinked, and I said, “Please allow my friend to adopt Utah willy-nilly.” Holly lashed out when she felt vulnerable, and I let our shoulders touch to demonstrate, however subtly, unity.

The woman pulled out a form, and I watched her write Willy Nilly for the adoptive pet name. I considered correcting her for one-half a second, but decided instead to not say a thing.

I touched the map app on my phone. “Kanab, Utah, to Madison, Wisconsin, is twenty-four hours of driving. Three of us driving all night, we will be home by noon tomorrow.”

“Three of us? Summer’s not coming.”

I stepped back, examined Holly’s face. She looked like a little kid testing a parent, like she knew she was expected to protest, but there wasn’t any conviction there.

“I think she’d like to come, and I hope that’s okay with you.”

“First Moose, then Summer? Are you that afraid to be alone with me?”

Instead of firing off a defensive comeback, I examined her face. Pragmatic but vulnerable Holly looked back at me.

“I’m not afraid to be alone with you, Holly.” I did not look away.

Holly’s expression didn’t change, but she cleared her throat. “Three people is better. Also, we can shave off some time if we speed.”

“Oh, we’re going to speed, all right.” I knew that for all our differences, we had the same goal in that moment. To get home.

It took an hour for Summer to get back, but she’d done the job. With our adoption papers in hand, we met her in the parking lot of the clinic. She had our luggage stuffed every which way in the trunk of what Holly and I simultaneously saw was a sky-blue Prius.

“Oh boy,” I said. Three grown women, two dogs, and a cat would be stuffed into that sustainable vehicle all the way to Wisconsin. A clown car if clowns had dogs. I didn’t dare complain; Summer looked proud, with a few strands of blonde hair stuck to her damp forehead and her cheeks flushed from exertion.

At the car, Summer whispered, “I think Griff likes you” and bumped me playfully with her hip.

I peered around for him, nervous, and saw him moving toward us. “It’s nice to be liked. Get in.”

Holly, with her long legs, moved out of the clinic, and we all stood back as Griff coaxed Peanut into the back seat of the Prius.

I skidded to a stop, knowing how readily Peanut passed out when faced with a tiny space. Griff, with steady hands, ushered Peanut toward the car. He said something we couldn’t hear, and the dog stepped into the back seat and settled like a Victorian traveler waiting expectantly for the train whistle to blow.

“What the heck?” Holly said. “How did you get him in there?”

Summer dumped a bag of dog food into the trunk.

“We noticed he had trouble with small vehicles when he came, but we move animals around in golf carts. We had to get him comfortable. This thing he’s wearing isn’t a harness; it’s a ThunderShirt, and that helps a lot.”

“A ThunderShirt?” Holly asked, holding Utah close to her chest.

With surprising energy Summer heaved the last piece of luggage into the diminutive trunk, along with an empty ice-cream bucket and a milk jug of water. “It’s that thing that came from Temple Grandin’s research on reducing animal stress. You wrap them in a kind of Spanx, and they feel secure.”

“She’s right. Not Spanx exactly, but it’s the same girdling principle,” Griff said. “Plus, I put this pheromone ointment on his nose. Moose is with him. Peanut is ready for travel.”

This was happening! I was more than ready to say goodbye to the sanctuary with a new roommate in the loyal and adorable Moose.

Griff hustled to my side, holding what looked like a man’s travel shaving kit. He unzipped the case filled with syringes and insulin, and I steadied it. Our hands brushed, and we made eye contact. He wanted to say something to me, but while I felt his attraction, I didn’t want to encourage it. I saw that I could enjoy someone, even feel attraction to them, but hold myself apart. That if someone showed interest in me, I didn’t have to or wouldn’t just slide into a relationship without making an active choice. Most of all, choice didn’t have to entail a conflict, but it did require knowing what I wanted.

“What are you going to do if Tom completes the paperwork?”

“He won’t. He doesn’t want Peanut. We protect animals here. We do not hand them over to people who don’t take care of them. Remember what condition Peanut came here in? Summer saved me from having a confrontation.”

“Good. I’m glad. We wouldn’t be happy if we’d compromised the ethics of you or this beautiful place.”

“You have his feeding schedule and food. Try not to deviate from it. Under no circumstances should you give him one of those whip-cream cups from Starbucks.”

With her kitten on her shoulder, Holly said, “We don’t have cat food.” She pivoted on her heel and jogged into the vet clinic.

“Not to be mean, but whenever she moves fast, she looks exactly like a daddy longlegs,” said Summer.

“Have you tried NoDoz? For the sleeping thing?” Griff asked me. He pulled a plastic container out of his lab coat pocket, lifted the top with a pop, and extracted one oval capsule. “It might help.”

“You are a full-service veterinarian, aren’t you?” I asked, wanting to say something lighthearted but also as a segue to something deeper.

Summer’s phone whistled, and she yelled, “Shotgun!” And dove into the passenger seat.

“I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done,” I said to Griff. I considered offering my hand to shake and rejected that idea.

“I’d like to see you again,” he said, his brown eyes warm and direct. “You should come back.”

Summer stuck her head out the passenger door. “Get in, Sam. We gotta get on the road.”

Griffin looked at the spot on my forehead that I’d heard other mothers call the elevens. The two vertical lines that developed after years of world-class brow furrowing from worry and trying to understand Common Core Math. With a calloused thumb, he brushed softly at the bridge of my nose. I closed my eyes, and he swept his fingers over my brow. It felt nice, but I felt no zing, no magic. Not like I did with the few moments I had spent with Drew, and we hadn’t even touched. I wanted that for myself. Even if it wasn’t with Drew. I wanted the rush and tumble of chemistry plus possibility.

Holly came scuttling out of the clinic, one hand on her shoulder anchoring Willy Nilly and the other clutching a bag of cat food and a cup. I smiled at the physical comedy of the legs, the kitten, and the determined look on her face.

He opened the door, and I dumped myself into the front seat. I lifted my eyes, my hand with the keys automatically finding their place in the ignition. Griff pushed the door shut and secured it with his hip. I tried to find the window control, only succeeding in locking and unlocking the doors in frantic succession.

The car swayed as Holly heaved the cat food into the trunk.

I finally got the window to roll down, and I said, “Thank you, Griffin. You’re really something. But I don’t think it’s good for either of us to consider something so far away, on such a small time together. But I won’t forget what you did for me here. Or what you do for these animals.”

Griffin didn’t look disappointed or hurt. Instead he seemed to understand and appreciate my candor. For my part, I realized that putting your thoughts and emotions into simple sentences was easier than building a life where those sentences would never have to be uttered.

At the front passenger-side door, Holly rapped hard on the window.

“Out, Summer. That’s my seat.”

I saw Summer silently mouth shotgun. Out loud she said, “We have got to go!”

Summer hit the door unlock, and Holly, without her usual outrage, slid into the back seat next to Peanut and Moose.