Good Guys Love Dogs

by Inglath Cooper

  “She had a briar in her paw. I took her to see the vet. She got it out and gave her something for infection.”

  Luke plopped down on the ground and wrestled with the ecstatic dog for a couple of minutes while Ian watched them, a catch in his heart. The boy loved the dog, and he had to admit he wished Luke showed as much affection for him.

  Luke had been even less communicative than usual since they’d arrived here at the end of August, and Ian hoped patience would eventually pay off. He knew the changes weren’t easy for him. A new school. New kids. But schoolwork had always come easily to him. He was smart and, if anything, often bored by his classes. He’d been one of the top soccer players at his school in the city, but Jefferson County High didn’t have a team, and so far, he’d shown no interest in any other sports.

  Luke got up and bounded up the porch steps past Ian without saying a word.

  “How was school today?” Ian asked.

  Luke turned around at the screen door, his gaze on Smidge. “Great,” he said, his tone less than convincing.

  “It can’t be that bad. Surely, you like some of the kids.”

  “They’re all too wild for me.”

  Ian ignored his sarcasm. Despite his intelligence and athletic ability, Luke had a shy side that made it difficult for him to make new friends. “I started chipping away the old paint on the porch this morning,” Ian said. “I thought maybe you’d like to help this weekend.”

  Luke kicked at a twig on the wood floor. “You’re the one who wanted to come out here and play farmer. I didn’t want any part of this. Believe me, if I’d known you were going to bring me to this no-action town, I’d have asked that judge for jail time instead. There wouldn’t have been much difference, anyway.” He disappeared inside the house, the screen door slapping closed behind him.

  “Luke!” Ian called, starting after him, then deciding against it. He dropped down on the top step of the porch. He’d known that nothing about this would be easy. So far, he’d been right. His relationship with Luke didn’t fall apart overnight and it would certainly take longer than that to fix it.

  7

  At five minutes past five that afternoon, Colby stepped through the front door of the Dippety-Do Salon for her monthly trim. Her basic, shoulder-length cut required little more effort than a nip off the ends.

  A bell dinged, announcing her arrival. A waiting area held several chairs and a couple of couches. Magazines littered the coffee table, GQ and International Male among them. Louise Mason, the owner of the salon, theorized that her customers didn’t come here to read about the latest tuna casserole recipe or how to paint their kitchen in less than five hours. Here, women were free to gossip, ogle men’s magazines and generally let their hair down, so to speak. Judging from the fact that the place rarely had an empty chair, Louise apparently had the right idea.

  “Hey, Colby. You’re on time as usual,” Louise said, approaching the desk. At five feet ten inches tall, Louise often joked that the only thing that kept her from being a professional model was her looks.

  “Hi, Louise. You keeping busy?”

  The woman threw a glance at the shop behind her, where hair dryers buzzed and the smell of permanent solution hung in the air. “If it weren’t for vanity, I’d be in the poorhouse.”

  Colby smiled and followed the heavyset woman to the back. Louise shampooed her hair and applied an apple-scented conditioner. When she finished, she wrapped a towel around Colby’s head and led her to her station up front.

  “So what are we gonna do today, honey?” Louise asked after Colby settled in the chair.

  Colby met her hopeful gaze in the mirror. “Just the usual.”

  “How’d I know you were gonna say that?”

  Louise had been trying to talk her into going the way of big hair for years. “Men like a lotta hair,” she’d said more times than Colby could count. “You walk into a nightclub, and you gotta compete with all those Dolly Parton types. You can’t just let yourself blend into the woodwork.”

  Like Phoebe, Louise ranked Colby’s lack of interest in the dating scene right up there with self-administered haircuts and chipped nail polish. It simply didn’t do.

  Smiling, Colby said, “I have to give you credit for trying, Louise.”

  “Now, Colby, you know I think you’re one of the prettiest gals around. I’d just like to pizzazz you up a bit, that’s all.”

  Pizzazz, as Louise defined it, meant frosting and a perm. “Thank you, Louise, but—”

  “I know. I know. You like it how it is. I just thought with that new man in town, you might have changed your mind. Let’s see, what’s his name? McKlellan, Mc—” Louise snapped her fingers, searching for the name.

  “McKinley,” Ellen Ann Edwards offered up from the next station. “Ian McKinley.”

  That name again.

  “I shoulda known you’d have it down pat,” Louise said to the other woman with a chuckle.

  “Well, why not? It’s not as if someone like that moves to Keeling Creek every day of the week,” Ellen Ann declared.

  “You’re right about that,” Louise agreed. “I saw him at the DMV when I was gettin’ my county sticker, and he was in front of me. Didn’t even mind spendin’ my lunch hour standing in line. That is one fine-looking man.”

  Ellen Ann’s nod of agreement carried with it a look of wistfulness. She added another permanent rod to her customer’s hair. “I saw him out jogging on the way to work yesterday. All I could do to keep my eyes on the road.”

  “Oh, that’s good, Ellen Ann. All we need is for you to run over him.”

  Ellen Ann rolled her eyes at Louise. “Somebody said he’s from New York.”

  “City?” Louise asked.

  Ellen Ann nodded again.

  “So what’s he doin’ here, you think?”

  “Beats me, but I’m not complaining.”

  “Me, neither. If I didn’t already have me a fella, I’d go knock on his door and introduce myself. He’s got a boy at the high school, but nobody’s seen hide nor hair of a wife.”

  “Now what would you do with an uptowner like him, Louise?” the customer in Ellen Ann’s chair asked with a giggle.

  “I could think of one or two things,” Louise replied with a wink and a nod.

  The remark brought on a fit of giggles from the women around them, all of whom had been listening to the conversation.

  The woman in Ellen Ann’s chair waved a copy of the National Tattler. “He might find himself a wife here. I just read a story about a prince from some small country on the other side of the world. He came over here on a visit and met some little gal from Kentucky. Married her and took her back to his kingdom.”

  “Sounds like paradise,” Colby said, deciding that the women of Keeling Creek had been seriously deprived for too long. All this fuss over one man moving to town. Okay, so he was good-looking. He’d seemed nice enough earlier, but from all appearances, he’d fit in here like the proverbial square peg in a round hole.

  “What I want to know,” Louise went on, “is what Colby here thinks of him. After all, she’s the one who’s free and single.”

  “And not likely to forget it,” Colby chimed in.

  “I can see why you’re choosy, hon,” Louise sympathized. “The bachelor pickin’s are pretty slim around here. You better get in on this one. Cindy Stoneway came in this morning trying to figure out a way to meet him. Last I heard, she’d decided on a flat tire in front of his house.”

  “Tell her good luck for me next time she’s in,” Colby said.

  Louise brushed the loose hair off Colby’s plastic cape. “Just don’t hold your breath waitin’ for another one like this to land in Keeling Creek. Might as well be holdin’ out for aliens.”

  “I won’t, Louise.” Colby shook her head and smiled. “I won’t.”

  8

  By the time Friday arrived, Colby felt shopworn. The last thing she wanted to do was go to Phoebe’s and Frank’s for dinner. But Phoebe called that after
noon for a confirmation. The clinic had been swamped and Colby, having no time to argue, gave her a hasty, “I guess so.” She would have looked forward to dinner alone with the two of them. It would have given her a chance to talk to them about Lena. But she knew Phoebe, and she’d bet her last dollar there would be another man sitting across the dinner table from her. A new lawyer from Frank’s firm, or someone Frank met playing golf, or the brother of someone Phoebe did aerobics with. Going to Phoebe’s house had become a lot like facing a firing squad. The only bright spot in the evening was that once she’d given the man the thumbs-down, she’d have a couple of months’ reprieve before Phoebe got brave enough to try it again.

  With two children and a farm she practically ran herself, Phoebe should have better things to do, anyway.

  Colby filled the bathtub, then sank into the bubbles with a sigh, rationalizing that if her first love had been a man like Frank, she wouldn’t be such a cynic on the subject. But Doug was nothing like Frank.

  They met on her second day at the University of Virginia. He’d been the complete opposite of the boys she’d dated in high school and competed with at local 4-H fairs. He’d grown up in Philadelphia, where his family name was written in blue ink on the social register.

  He nearly ran over her in his red Porsche at a crosswalk in front of her dorm. He’d been speeding and barely able to avoid plowing right into her. Angered by his carelessness, she’d been prepared to give him an earful. But he’d gotten out of the car, apologizing profusely. His dark good looks and polished manners caught her off guard, and she had reluctantly forgiven him.

  The obvious differences between the two of them made her both wary of him and attracted to him at the same time. He’d asked her out to dinner to prove that he was really sorry, but she turned him down, telling herself she’d be better off staying away from him. He was persistent, though, and one night when he nearly knocked a hole in her dorm window trying to get her attention, she pushed aside her doubts and went downstairs to meet him.

  From then on, they spent all their time together. He treated her well, took her to dinner at fancy places and met her at the library every afternoon. When they ended up making love in his room one night after a party where they both had a little too much to drink, it seemed a natural, if unplanned, extension of where they were headed.

  She attributed her first missed period to stress. She took her studies seriously, and she’d been agonizing over a couple of classes in which she aimed to make A’s in spite of the teachers’ tough reputations. Doug had been moody with her lately, accusing her of caring more about school than she did him. He didn’t look at college the same way she did, but then, regardless of what kind of grades he made, he would still have a whopper of a trust fund waiting for him when he turned twenty-five. Flattered to have one of the most sought-after guys on campus wanting to spend all his time with her, she still determined to make the grades she needed to keep her scholarship and get her into the vet school at Virginia Tech.

  When the second month went by with still no sign of her period, Colby panicked. Feeling sick inside, she made a doctor’s appointment without telling Doug. Maybe she’d known deep down what his reaction would be.

  The test result was positive. She spent three days agonizing over what to do, still keeping the secret to herself. She finally told Doug one night in her room. He’d gotten up from the bed and gone to the window, staring out at the campus for several long minutes before turning to her and saying, “There’s only one thing to do. It’s not too late.”

  She’d already thought about that, but it wasn’t a solution she would even consider. “I can’t do that.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” he said, his voice rising. “My parents would cut me off flat if they found out.”

  She’d asked him to leave then, needing to be by herself. He hadn’t said the things she had hoped he would say. The decision tore at her for days. In the end, she decided that Doug was right. She would be only nineteen when the baby was born. How would she possibly finish school? What would her parents say? She could only imagine their disappointment.

  She got as far as the examining-room table before the reality of what she was about to do hit her. Although she hadn’t yet felt the baby’s physical presence, something changed within her the moment she’d learned of its existence. How could she do away with something so precious and fragile? Her reasons suddenly felt selfish and shallow.

  Doug sat outside in the waiting room when she ran from the office. He sprinted after her, calling out for her to wait. She stopped at the corner of the street, her breath coming fast and uneven.

  “What happened?” he asked, taking her by the shoulders.

  “I won’t do it.”

  “You can’t back out now,” he said, looking incredulous.

  “I was only thinking about myself. About my life. Not about the baby. Lots of people have children and still get through school.”

  Doug stepped back, his expression closed. “We agreed.”

  “No. I won’t do it, Doug. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  They drove to the dorm in silence. He dropped her off without saying goodbye. She didn’t hear from him for the rest of the week. When she went to her room on Friday after class, a note from him hung on the door.

  From that moment on, she’d been on her own. Looking back, she supposed she’d thought he would come around, own up to his share of the responsibility. But he hadn’t. She’d eventually realized that it would have been a mistake for the two of them to try to make a go of it for the baby’s sake. After the initial shock, her parents had been anxious to help. She got an apartment off campus, determined to be independent. She ran into Doug a few times during her pregnancy. Their meetings were awkward, and he clearly couldn’t wait to get away. Colby wondered what she’d ever seen in him. She hoped he would be very happy with his Porsche and his trust fund.

  The following year, he transferred to another college, closer to Philadelphia, without once trying to see Lena. For the first few years of her daughter’s life, Colby agonized over what to tell her about her father when she asked, as she inevitably would. And she had. Colby never intended to lie to her, but when Lena took her initial answers of “Your daddy went away” to mean he had gone to heaven, she never corrected that impression. Somehow, it seemed a lot more palatable than the truth.

  She hoped Lena would never have to know.

  Glancing at the watch she’d left on the side of the tub, Colby got out and dried off. She’d lingered in the bath too long, and now she would have to rush to be on time. But then, that was what she got for dwelling on things better left in the past.

  9

  After fixing Lena a hurried dinner and leaving it on the kitchen table, Colby went to the bottom of the stairs and called her name.

  No answer. The bass from her stereo beat a tattoo on the floor beneath Colby’s feet. She ran up the steps and stopped in her daughter’s doorway. “Lena, honey, I’m late. Are you sure you have a ride to the game?”

  Lena leaned over and turned down the volume. “Yeah. Millie Mitchell’s mom is taking us,” she said in the same sullen tone that had been there for the past month.

  “You’ll be home by eleven-thirty?”

  Lena nodded without raising her gaze from the magazine in front of her.

  Lena spent more time at her friend’s house than she did at home. Trying to ignore her own bruised feelings, Colby said, “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

  A few minutes later, she backed out of the driveway and headed toward Phoebe’s place, some five miles outside of town. How long would this go on? She’d asked Lena over and over what was wrong, only to be given a hostile-sounding, “Nothing, Mom.”

  Colby missed the child she loved. She felt as though someone had stolen her best friend. And she didn’t know how to get her back.

  At the Walkers’ turnoff, she put on her blinker and swung onto the road that led to their farm. She loved it out here. Most of Jefferson County
lay in a bowl of land beneath a ring of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Now, just before sunset, they really did look blue. Colby eventually planned to buy a place outside of town with plenty of land. She’d been interested in Oak Hill, the farm that bordered the Walkers’ place, for years. When she’d learned that it had been sold a few weeks ago, she’d been more than a little disappointed.

  Pulling up in front of the house, Colby got out and knocked at the door. A few seconds later, Phoebe opened it and greeted her with a hug.

  “You’re here,” she said. “And on time, too. No last-minute calls to make?”

  “I even left my calf-birthing clothes in the trunk.”

  “So you do own a dress.” Phoebe gave her a long look and a whistle. “Is that new?”

  “No.”

  “That shade of blue has always been your color. You look great.”

  “So do you,” Colby said, nodding at Phoebe’s coral-colored blouse and chunky gold jewelry. Layered around the bottom, her dark hair always seemed to be moving, and her dark brown eyes rarely hid her thoughts.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Come on into the kitchen and help me check on things.”

  “Where’s Frank?”

  “He’s getting ready. He’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  “And where’s Mr. Right?”

  Phoebe shot her a look of innocent surprise. “What makes you think there is one?”

  “I’m fairly certain there isn’t. But when was the last time you invited me to dinner without trying to convince me otherwise?”

  “You’re entirely too cynical for your age, Colby Williams.”

  “Hey, I earned my stripes in the trenches.”

  “So you’ve been out with a few duds. Big deal.”

  “A few?” Colby folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes. “Let’s run through some of your more memorable setups. Harvey Matthison, who brought his mother on our first date. And then Tip LaPrade, who slipped a prenuptial agreement under my dessert plate while I went to the ladies’ room. Oh yes, there was Dr. Payne, who washed his hands nineteen times between the time he picked me up and dropped me off—”