Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay

by Babette de Jongh

  At least here at the farm, the animals kept Abby from burrowing under the covers and staying there until her body petrified. The farm, Abby decided, was a place of healing, not just for the animals who found their way here, but for people, as well.

  Georgia stretched out with a groan and snuggled up close. Abby turned out the lamp and stared at the moon through the guest-bedroom window’s sheer curtain. The animals were all snug in their paddocks, stalls, coops, and cages, with full bellies and plenty of companionship.

  Abby sighed, expecting the usual feeling of contentment that followed a full day of hard, satisfying work with the animals on the farm.

  But instead, she felt sadness. Loneliness. Betrayal. Abandonment.

  Sadness, yes of course. Abby was still learning to live with despair over the child she’d had to leave behind in order to save herself. When faced with the decision of being a whole person alone or a half person with someone else, Abby had looked to her parents’ example and chosen to be whole, even though she’d had to cut her heart in half to do it. So now, she was walking around bleeding but whole, except for the part of her heart she’d had no choice but to leave behind.

  Even though she knew that Emily wasn’t in physical danger, Abby mourned the loss of a child she’d come to love as her own. Knowing Blair’s self-centered tendencies, she feared for Emily’s tender spirit. Abandoned first by her birth mother at the age of two, and then by Abby at the age of five, what chance did Emily have to form a concept of motherly love, of compassion, of belonging? Abby had struggled with those concepts herself, though her mother had never divorced her father or physically abandoned Abby.

  Abby had hoped to do better by Emily but had fallen woefully short.

  And because she had no legal claim on Emily, Abby had no recourse, no way of making things right. She had no choice but to let Emily go and hope—pray—for the best. The despair she felt over being banished from Emily’s life would never leave her. As Aunt Reva said, that kind of sadness never goes away; it becomes a part of you that gets easier to bear over time. So when Abby explored the feeling of sadness the way the tongue explores an aching tooth, she had to conclude that the sadness she was feeling right now wasn’t her own, but someone else’s.

  What about the feeling of loneliness? Did that feeling reflect her own emotion? No, not at all. Who could feel lonely surrounded by all these animals that asked for nothing and gave everything in return? Animals provided good company without infringing on Abby’s need to retreat from entangled human relationships. Aunt Reva’s gift was a place of solitude and connection, where Abby could heal and build a foundation of strength to launch a new beginning.

  Betrayal? Well, yeah, but she’d put that pain behind her when she accepted responsibility for choosing an untrustworthy man with a charming smile.

  Abandonment? She’d been the one to abandon Emily to her father’s indifferent care, though only after two years of trying to make a relationship work when it had been wrong from the beginning.

  So where were these feelings coming from?

  An image flashed through her mind like a movie reel on fast-forward. An image of the big dog escaping without the chicken he had grabbed from its roost. He had run past Georgia, when he could have killed her with one bite on the scruff of her neck and one quick shake of his big, wolflike head. He had run past Abby, past Quinn, wanting not to harm, but only to flee.

  Some predators, given the opportunity, would break into a chicken coop and kill for the sake of killing, leaving the carcasses and eating nothing. This dog had plucked one chicken off the roost without biting down hard enough to break the skin.

  The dog hadn’t taken Biddle out of meanness or mischief. Starving and alone, he killed only what he needed to survive. And now, somewhere in the dark, he waited for another chance to feed himself, a chance Abby had denied him.

  She felt his hunger and loneliness as if it were her own.

  Was this what it was like to communicate with animals? After all the summers that Reva had tried to teach Abby to trust herself, was she finally opening the door to her own telepathic abilities? Was she feeling the emotions of the big dog, or just imagining things? Abby glanced at the digital clock’s readout projected on the ceiling. Ten p.m. here meant it would be eleven in south Florida. Too late to text Reva—who’d surely gone to bed by now—but Abby knew what Reva would say: “Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Your heart knows more than your head does.”

  Abby shivered and pulled the covers over her shoulders while her thoughts returned to the hungry dog she’d chased away. How many lost chances stood between a homeless dog and death?

  Should she get up and take a bowl of Georgia’s kibble out to the road? “No.” Abby flopped to her other side and tried to relax. “Go to sleep, stupid.” Getting out of a warm bed to traipse down the driveway in the dark would be the height of foolishness. She’d be eaten alive by mosquitoes for her trouble over a dog who had certainly run several miles from here by now.

  But when Abby closed her eyes, an image of the cat’s-claw forest bloomed in her mind, and she realized for the first time what Georgia had been barking at yesterday. The gold eyes, the feeling of being watched… Of course.

  Why hadn’t she figured it out before?

  “Fine.” She sat up. “Mosquitoes, here I come.” If she didn’t take food out to that stray dog right now, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She patted her aunt’s good dog who snuggled on top of the quilt, warming Abby’s legs. “Get up, Georgia. We have one more thing to do today.”

  Chapter 6

  Wolf dragged the mangled possum off the road when the car’s taillights disappeared in the distance. Dropping to his belly in the damp grass, he tore into the still-warm carcass and gulped down massive mouthfuls without chewing.

  His eyes half-closed in bliss, he ate until his shrunken belly expanded like the hard, round ball the kids in his family had played with every evening. He remembered the tall boys bouncing the hard ball in the concrete drive, then tossing it into the air and whooping when it hit the round metal hoop.

  Wolf had sat close by, watching his kids and making sure no harm came to them. The bad dogs who roamed the block knew not to come close. But the bad people whose energy leaked avarice or cunning were invited in by Wolf’s human family. They showed up with sideways glances that didn’t match their smiling faces. When Wolf growled, the alpha human beat him with a shovel.

  Wolf stopped growling.

  But he kept watch.

  He watched the alpha’s friends most closely. Especially the one who eyed the alpha’s oldest girl and tried to catch her alone. The sneaky man only got close enough to corner her that one time, but Wolf stopped him with little effort. Before the girl recognized the danger, Wolf’s well-placed bite changed everything.

  Wolf knew his job: protect his family. He did his job. The screaming, the yelling, and the severe beating Wolf received afterward confused and humiliated him, but he learned his lesson. Humans, even those he thought of as family, could not be trusted.

  A wavering, bouncing beam of light crossed the road. Gravel crunched; footsteps on the narrow drive where chickens and rabbits and other tasty animals slept behind wire mesh and locked doors. Wolf snatched up the possum’s remains and ran into the forest. He dropped the dripping mass of shredded skin and bones onto a thick carpet of dry leaves.

  Scraping metallic sounds announced the unlocking of the gate across the road; it swung open with a loud screech. He heard the light pattering noise of Georgia racing toward him, zigzagging over the trail he had taken with his dinner. He imagined her, nose to ground, tracking his location. When she burst out of the underbrush, Wolf backed up and sat, letting the carcass lie between them rather than guarding it, as was his right. “A gift,” he offered.

  Excited and happy, Georgia rolled in the carcass. “Thank you.” Covered in the rich, oily scent of the possum’s bloo
d and fur, she shook herself and wagged her white-tipped tail. “I have a gift for you, too. Come see.”

  Wolf looked away from the flashlight’s beam that pierced the draping vines of his hiding place.

  “Puppy, puppy,” Abby called. She placed a large metal pot on the grass and made the loud kissing sounds his girl used to make. “Come here, puppy, puppy. Come get some food.”

  Wolf hadn’t been called puppy in a very long time. He whined at Georgia.

  “Yes, she means you.” Georgia trotted a few steps toward Abby, then turned back. “Come on. She’s bringing you food.”

  Wolf dropped to his elbows. “Not hungry.”

  Georgia’s tail drooped. “Come on, try some. It’s good.” She showed him an image of dry kibble, resurrecting his memory of the crunchy food he used to eat.

  His mouth watered at the taste memory, but his stomach was full for the first time in days, and his heart felt strangely heavy at the memory of being loved and cared for. Wolf stood and followed Georgia to the edge of the forest. He hid beneath the overhanging vines, close enough to Abby to smell the animal dung clinging to the soles of her boots. Close enough to smell the dried-meat scent of her offering.

  But humans, even the ones he thought of as family, couldn’t be trusted. And this woman, who wasn’t family, didn’t deserve his trust. Besides, he wasn’t hungry. Wolf sat.

  “Come on, girl,” Abby called to Georgia, who gave Wolf one last hopeful glance before obeying.

  Abby turned the light away from Wolf’s hiding place. “Maybe he’ll eat it later. Let’s go back to bed.” Abby and Georgia crossed the road, then Abby closed and locked the gate. “Whew, Georgia. What is that smell? Please tell me you didn’t roll in something dead.”

  Abby and Georgia disappeared behind the hedge, taking the light with them. Their sounds faded, first the crunching of gravel under Abby’s boots, then Abby’s voice growing fainter, sending up only snippets of her words on the night breeze. “…bath…sleep…food…puppy.”

  Puppy. Something Wolf hadn’t been called in a long time, though Abby’s voice made it clear she was referring to him. Longing for the sweetness she seemed to offer but unable to trust, Wolf waited in the darkness until the crickets and the night birds sang again. With his heart racing as if he were cowering from a mean man with a shovel, he crept toward the metal pot she’d left for him.

  Cautiously, he sniffed the food. Dried meat, rice, carrots, berries…peas… He sniffed again. Just food, nothing else. Not the sweet chemical odor of the green slime that had killed Wolf’s friends, the feral cats of his old neighborhood. Not the bitter smell of poison-laced meat the bad man had tried to feed him.

  Just food. Only food.

  Wolf grabbed the pot’s metal handle in his teeth and tugged the bounty he’d been given across the slippery grass and into the forest.

  * * *

  The Sunday morning sounds next door woke Quinn hours earlier than he would have preferred. He rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head, but the screeches and brays and whinnies still managed to slice right through.

  Oh well. He had work to do; might as well get up and do it. Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, he’d be in New Orleans every day, building custom shelves for a new indie bookstore on Magazine Street. He could paint Sean’s room and assemble the furniture he’d bought in the evenings—the Big Easy was only an hour drive from Magnolia Bay—but today was his last full day to work on the estate. He’d use it to get the pool ready for Sean’s visit next weekend.

  Quinn rolled out of bed and padded into the kitchen, yawning and regretting his foolish decision to stay up late and watch a stupid movie he couldn’t even remember.

  With a fresh cup of coffee and a slice of the delicious cake brought by his delicious almost-neighbor, he sat in the canvas stadium chair by the pool. Exchanging his coffee cup for the legal pad he’d put on top of an overturned Home Depot bucket, he made a list.

  1. Clean the pool filter.

  2. Turn on the pump. (And hope to God it works.)

  3. Shock the pool with chemicals.

  4. Say bye-bye to the tadpoles and frogs.

  5. Clean the filter again.

  The shrubbery at the fence line shook. With steady determination, a large animal climbed up through the branches. Quinn set his legal pad aside and sipped his cooling, too-weak coffee. Yesterday’s brew had been too strong. After a year of single life, he hadn’t mastered the fine art of coffee making.

  A cat’s head popped up from the foliage, followed by the rest of its body. The hedge trembled as the cat scrabbled for balance on the topmost branches. The thing was huge. With its buff-colored long hair and tail-less backside, the cat looked more like a miniature polar bear than a feline. It spied Quinn and leaped down onto the leaf clutter on Quinn’s side of the fence. It landed with a loud murf, and sauntered over. Purring like Quinn’s Harley, the enormous cat rubbed against Quinn’s jeans leg.

  “Hey, cat.” He stroked the cat’s big head. Its fluffy, cashmere-soft fur didn’t feel like regular cat hair. “Are you some fancy breed, or what?”

  The cat hopped up onto Quinn’s lap. “Murf.”

  “Nice to meet you, Murf.”

  The cat sniffed Quinn’s coffee mug, then stuck its nose right in and tried a couple of laps.

  “Fine, go ahead.” The strange-looking feline could have the tepid brew. “I’m done anyway.”

  Given permission, the overly puffy feline changed its mind. It hopped down to crouch at the pool’s edge and lap at the green water. When Quinn opened his toolbox and took the cover off the pool pump, the cat inspected everything—the toolbox, its contents, the upturned pump cover, the pleated filter. “You haven’t heard that line about curiosity killing the cat?”

  Purring loudly, it climbed into the toolbox and sniffed around. Apparently finding everything satisfactory, the cat sat in the box. Perched on the jumble of hard-edged hammers, wood-cutting tools, screwdrivers and other tools, it stopped purring and stared at Quinn with unblinking gold eyes.

  “That can’t be a comfortable place to sit.” But Quinn didn’t mind the company. He dragged the hose over and cleaned the filter, spraying water into the accordion pleats. A few droplets hit the cat; it hissed and leaped out of the box.

  Quinn chuckled. “Sorry about that.”

  The cat gave a disgruntled murf and moved to the splash-free zone of Quinn’s stadium chair. Quinn put the filter back in, fastened the lid, made sure the switches were all set correctly, then turned the pump on.

  Nothing.

  He went into the pool house and rechecked the breakers.

  No problem there.

  Hands on hips, Quinn studied the situation. “Guess I’ll have to take the motor apart.” Kneeling, he reached into his tool box for a socket wrench—

  A dripping-wet socket wrench.

  A dripping-wet socket wrench that smelled of cat piss.

  Quinn rose up with a roar and lobbed the wrench in the cat’s general direction. As Quinn had expected, the wrench landed a good five feet away from the cat. But the clatter of metal bouncing on concrete scared the feline, who shot straight up into the air, then hit the ground running.

  Straight into the pool with a mighty splash.

  Eyes wide, lips pulled back in a grimace of fear, the cat struggled to the pool’s edge and scrabbled at the algae-slick tiles. It yowled a bone-chilling feline scream, then fell back into the pool and went under.

  “Griff?” Abby called from the other side of the hedge. “Griffin? Where are you? Here, kitty, kitty.”

  The cat came up sputtering, splashing, and moaning in fear before it sank again.

  “Griffin?” Abby’s voice sounded panicked. “Kitty, kitty?”

  “Dammit,” Quinn muttered. He grabbed the pool net and chased the cat along the pool’s edge. “Your damn cat’s over here,�
�� he yelled. “It fell in the pool.”

  Finally he managed to get the pool net underneath the cat, but when he lifted it out of the water, the long handle bowed under the cat’s weight. The damn thing had to weigh forty pounds, at least. Moaning, the cat splayed its big feet out to the far sides of the net and tried to stand. The net wobbled and tilted. The cat screamed and clawed, spinning the net upside down, where the stupid pisser hung by its claws. “Be still, stupid cat!”

  Quinn maneuvered the quivering net with its shivering, yowling, hanging-upside-down cargo out of the pool.

  Abby ran around the corner of the house when the net’s pole bent completely in half, bouncing the cat’s noggin on the concrete while it clung to the pool net. Panting, Abby skidded to a stop, her barn boots scattering clods of who-knew-what on the patio. “Oh, no… Oh my God… What happened? Is he okay?”

  “I’d guess not,” Quinn said with some sarcasm. “Damn thing has a death wish, looks like.”

  With his claws tangled in the damaged pool net, the bedraggled cat whirled and moaned until the netting tore, setting him free. Like a rock from a slingshot, he ran to the chain-link fence and tried to push through the unyielding metal mesh to the other side.

  “Come here, baby.” Abby followed in a crouching run, unsuccessfully grabbing for the panicked cat who bounced off the chain-link fence time after time in an effort to push through. Cutoff shorts showed off Abby’s long shapely legs, but Quinn tried not to notice. “Griff, stop,” Abby whined. “You’ll hurt yourself. Here, kitty, kitty…”

  “You stop.” Quinn followed along behind Abby and grabbed her arm, hauling her back. “Chasing him isn’t helping. The damn cat’ll be fine once he calms down.”

  Sure enough, as Quinn held Abby still with her back against his chest, her backside against his front side, the cat climbed up through the hedge and leaped over the fence to safety. Although tempted to hold her against him long enough to get her attention, Quinn knew better. He didn’t have room or time in his life to start something real, and he didn’t want anything less. He ran a hand down Abby’s arm, then released her. “See?”