Page 102 of Finding Gideon

“The trio became a family of four,” Malcolm said the day after Toast left, standing at the front counter and fiddling with the jar of dog treats.

He sounded… content. The kind you feel, deep and warm in your ribs.

A couple weeks later, the phones still hadn’t stopped ringing. People dropping by. Notes taped to the gate. A voicemail from the high school principal, asking if we could take a one-eyed guinea pig from the art room because “she seems depressed since the school play ended.”

Apparently, word got around. About us. About Toast. About the way his tail wagged for Junie when it hadn’t for anyone else.

Someone dropped off a blind kitten with a folded note tucked into the box that read:Heard you take the ones nobody else wants.

Malcolm read it aloud, eyebrows lifted.

“Since when are we the place that takes the ones nobody wants?” he asked, leaning against the wall with that tired amusement he got after long days.

I shrugged, brushing sawdust off my jeans. “Guess we are now.”

He didn’t argue.

Didn’t seem to mind.

When I made the spreadsheet, it was half a joke. Titled itSanctuary Intake Login all caps, like we were running a top-secret government agency instead of a hopeful patch of dirt behind the clinic.

I showed it to Malcolm over lunch. He nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Then a couple days later, we were out back clearing out the storage room that smelled like old hay. We were dragging out an old kennel—rusted but still solid—when he said it:

“I can’t run both the clinic and a sanctuary.”

I straightened up, sweat clinging to my shirt.

He didn’t stop moving. Just kept sweeping the back corner.

“But you could run the sanctuary.”

Everything in me froze.

Not in a dramatic way. Just in that quiet internal jam-up that happens when you suddenly feel both honored and absolutely in over your head.

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m not trained for that. Didn’t go to vet school. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Malcolm leaned the broom against the wall and turned to me like he’d been waiting for that exact response.

“You didn’t have to go to school to know how to love broken things back to life.”

God. That hit harder than I was ready for.

It didn't matter how many times he said things like that. It always felt like standing in the sun after a long winter.

Still, I tried to play it off with a half-grin. “You really trust me with that?”

“You’re already doing it.” He bent to pick up a cracked water bowl, his tone maddeningly practical. “Just do more of it. Officially.”

I sat down on the upturned bucket beside the kennel. Heart doing this weird two-step between hope and panic.

“I don’t want to let you down,” I admitted.

He paused in the doorway, looked back over his shoulder.

“Then don’t failthem.”