And then Lucie let loose with an earsplitting bark as she strained at the leash, dragging Helen forward to a dark shape at the far side of the parking lot. A matching bark echoed her own, but deeper and more menacing.
“Nancy, is that you?”
“Sam!”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Easy, Max, easy. I took him out when I left your place but he must have known you were out here with Nine-A. He kept slamming up against the door so I brought him out again. Who’s Lucie?”
Her dog’s name on her neighbor’s lips sent another shiver up Helen’s spine. She took a deep breath. “Lucie who?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. I heard you talking to someone named Lucie. I thought you-were calling Nine-A.”
“It wasn’t me. Maybe someone else is out here walking their dog,” Helen lied smoothly.
“Listen. I have an idea. How about if I take Nine-A for the night or you take Max. They seem smitten with each other. Max just sat by the door when we got home.”
“I’ll take your dog. Listen. I have to go in. It’s late and getting later by the minute. I get up early.”
“Okay. But it’s my turn next time.”
“I don’t think so. My dog gets homesick. She doesn’t like to be away from me, and I don’t like being away from her. You can pick him up at six.”
“Since we both work and leave early and the dogs are alone, would you mind if your dog stays at my house during the day with Max? You know, for company.”
“Yes, I mind. No.”
“Prickly, aren’t we?”
“It’s late. I just met you, for heaven’s sake. Already you invited yourself to dinner, and now you want me to baby-sit your dog.”
“I’m reciprocating. Okay, okay. I thought . . .”
“I know what you thought. Another time, okay?”
“Sure, another time. Listen, would you like to go fishing on Saturday? Up to Round Valley. It’s just an hour or so away. The fishing is pretty good. We could make a campfire and cook what we catch. I always take food in case they aren’t biting. The dogs can run and romp. Good exercise. This little walk in the parking lot doesn’t quite fill the definition of exercise. You can let me know tomorrow.”
“I’ll think about it. I have some orders I have to deliver. I think Lu . . . my dog might like a good romp. Good night, Sam.”
“Okay, Max, go with this pretty lady, and I’ll see you in the morning. I have to get his blanket, though. Wait right here.”
This is crazy. I’m crazy for agreeing to this. Then she looked down at the two dogs tussling with each other. Lucie was so happy, so playful. How could she deny this little animal anything? She reached down to scratch the Lab behind the ears. He licked her hand. Helen felt hot tears prick her eyelids.
“I found him alongside the road. He could hardly stand up he was so malnourished, and whoever had him, beat him. I guess he knows you’re a good person. I haven’t seen him lick anyone’s hand but mine. He’s gotten me through some bad times. In case you’re interested,” Sam said softly.
“I’ll take good care of him,” Helen said in a choked voice.
“It’s okay. It really is an imposition. I’ll make his breakfast.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Does this mean we’re friends again?”
Helen shivered as she unlocked the door and reached for Max’s blanket. “Yes,” she said simply.
“Whew, that’s a load off my mind.” Sam grinned.
“Good night, Sam.”
“Night, Nancy. C’mere, big guy, and give me five!” Helen smiled when the Lab smacked his paw against Sam’s open palm. She watched as they tussled a moment before Sam turned to head back to his apartment.
Helen slid all three bolts home. The Lab watched her expectantly until she said, “Okay, Lucie, show Max where we sleep. Take his blanket. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Helen sat down on the kitchen stool and fired up a cigarette, something she only did when she was under incredible stress. There had been questions in Sam Tolliver’s eyes under the parking-lot lights when she called her dog Lucie. Did her lie convince Sam? She doubted it. God, how easy it was to make a slip of the tongue. She made a mental note to be more careful.
The lights off. One last check of the door, and she was ready for bed. She brushed her teeth, washed her face and hands, then pulled on her pajamas.
Helen burst out laughing when she entered her bedroom. There they were, stretched out on the bed, side by side, Lucie’s tiny head in the curl of the Lab’s neck, both of them on Max’s blanket. “I’m glad you saved me some room,” she said, crawling into bed. “Night, Lucie, night, Max.”
Helen woke slowly the following morning, aware that something was different in her life. The something different was the 110-pound Lab lying next to her, one heavy paw across her chest. She smiled when Lucie reared up to lick her face. Max waited, his gaze curious, until Lucie was finished, at which point he gave Helen’s cheek a tentative lick before he bounded off the bed. Both dogs waited expectantly to see what her next move would be.
Helen smiled. “Here’s the drill, guys. You wait while I use the bathroom. In five minutes, if your master is on time, you go for your walk. If he’s late, I do it, and then you get your breakfast.”
The moment Helen finished brushing her teeth, the doorbell rang. Max bounded toward the door, Lucie in pursuit, Helen bringing up the rear.
Helen blinked. Dressed in a lightweight camel-colored suit, pristine white shirt, and casual loafers, Sam looked every bit the college professor. She amended the thought to handsome college professor. She liked his steady brown gaze and the dimple in his chin. On top of all that, he smelled delicious. She said so and then flushed a bright pink.
“I clean up nicely,” he quipped.
“I see that. And it’s still early. You can leave Max here today.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to take advantage.”
“Sure you do. It’s okay, though. Better walk him.”
Lucie whimpered at her feet, her bright red leash between her teeth. “In a minute, baby. I have to get dressed.”
“I’ll be glad to walk your dog with Max. It looks like that’s what they both want.”
Helen panicked. “Well . . . no, that’s okay . . . I’ll . . . I’ll do it. C’mon, baby, let’s go.” Before Sam could blink, she had Lucie’s leash on and was running down the steps, her slippers making slapping sounds on the rubber tread. Lucie howled her displeasure at these strange goings-on. Max jerked free of Sam’s hold and sailed down the steps, his paws barely touching the concrete.
“C’mon, Lucie, pee before someone sees me in my robe.” The Yorkie obliged and a moment later, Helen was racing breathlessly up the steps.
“Hell, I guess you didn’t need me after all,” Sam grumbled.
“I have a handle on it. C’mon, guys, let’s go.” Helen shrugged at Sam’s blank gaze as Max tore down the hall to Helen’s door.
“I’ll pick him up tonight.”
“Okay.” Helen closed and bolted the door.
Normally a neat, tidy person, Helen slammed her way through breakfast. “You’re getting dry food, Max,” she said, pouring some into a big bowl. She carried her coffee into the bathroom with her. She exited twenty minutes later, dressed for work. A quick glance at her watch told her she was going to be ten minutes late if she took the time to send Boots an e-mail. In the scheme of things, ten minutes didn’t seem all that important.
The e-mail was short and terse. “Boots, a new development. Can we go on-line at nine tonight? Thank you. TTLS.”
Helen filled the dogs’ water bowls, set out more dry food in another bowl, and issued the same warning she did every day. “Don’t get into any trouble, and be good until I get home.”
In the parking lot Helen realized she would be fifteen minutes late instead of ten minutes the way she’d originally thought. She started to shake and tremble when the car’s engine refused to turn over. Maybe the battery was
dead. Did she dare go back to the apartment and call a garage or should she simply cross the busy highway and walk to work? Run would be more like it. She opted for the latter and got out of the car. At the least, she would be thirty minutes late. In the past she’d been slammed against the wall and kicked for being two minutes late. Perspiration beaded on her forehead as she set out on foot for the mall.
Thirty-seven minutes later, Helen walked into the lingerie shop. As always, she stared at the shop owner to gauge her demeanor, much the way she’d stared at Daniel for years and years. Her insides quivered. “I’m sorry I’m late. My car wouldn’t start, so I had to walk.”
“I’m not interested in your problems, Nancy. I have enough of my own. On time means on time. I was going to keep you till the end of the week, but I changed my mind. I don’t find you an asset to Fine Things. You aren’t upbeat enough. You don’t smile, and you’re always looking at your watch like you have somewhere to go. Customers pick up on things like that. Don’t think I haven’t heard about your little side business either. Here’s your pay. Don’t try to collect unemployment either. I’ll fight it if you do try.”
“You’re firing me?”
“Do you have a problem with your hearing, too?”
“No, ma’am, my hearing is fine. What isn’t so fine is what you said about me. It is rather hard to be upbeat when people come in here to buy your tawdry merchandise. All they want to do is get it in a bag and to leave. They don’t want chitchat and happy, sappy smiles. I learned that the first day I was here. Yes, I do look at my watch. I count the minutes and seconds until it’s time to leave. I don’t like your shop, and I despise this sleazy merchandise you call fine things. I also don’t like your return policy, which is no returns at all. Is this check going to bounce?”
“Of all the nerve!” the woman sputtered.
Helen sighed. “Where’s your happy smile, Mrs. Peters?” she called over her shoulder as she exited the store for the last time. Way to go, Helen. I stood up for myself. I told it like it is. So I got fired. So what?
In the mall, she walked aimlessly, finally taking the escalator to the second floor, where she sat down at an outdoor table and ordered coffee. She longed for a cigarette.
The waitress, a young girl she’d talked with often, set the coffee in front of her. “You look like you lost your last friend.”
“I just got fired. Do you know of anyone looking for help here in the mall?”
“Yeah, me. We pay the same as all the other shops. Tips are all yours. I don’t think you’re the waitress type, but a job like this will tide you over till you can find what you’re looking for. We all get along swell. Six-hour shifts. It’s all fast food, no heavy trays or anything like that. You gotta wash your hair every night, though. If you’re interested, I’ll talk to my boss. He doesn’t come in till noon. I open.”
“Do you think I could work ten till four?”
“Sure. That’s what I work.”
“I don’t even know your name,” Helen said, suddenly shy.
“Susan Little.”
“Nancy Baker,” Helen said, extending her hand.
“Pleased to meetcha.” Susan giggled.
“Likewise.” Helen laughed. “When do you think I can start?”
“How about tomorrow. I know Mr. Donner will welcome you with open arms. The kids he hires aren’t dependable. He keeps looking for mature adults. You’re a mature adult, like me. Right?”
Helen wasn’t sure about the mature part, but Susan definitely was an adult. “Right.”
Another decision, another hurdle and she’d weathered both of them. Thank you, God.
8
Isabel Tyger threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed, but not before she looked at the bedside clock. It was five minutes later than the last time she’d looked. Long years of poor sleeping habits told her there would be no more sleep for her that night. She might as well get up and make some coffee. Or tea. On the other hand, a double slug of bourbon might be just what she needed.
The toy poodle sleeping on the pillow next to her yawned and stretched as though to say, aren’t we sleeping again?
Isabel slipped into a worn, comfortable, ageless flannel robe. Her feet slid into equally worn and comfortable slippers. She picked up the little dog and nestled her inside her robe against her ample breast. It was amazing, she thought, how comforting the little dog was. Her very own security blanket. Artie and Gerry laughed at her, but she knew they understood.
“I hate this house. I really do. I don’t know why I ever stayed here. I should move into a condominium where other people do everything for you. Why do I need this mausoleum? It holds nothing but bad memories for me.” It was a litany she went through each time she woke and couldn’t go back to sleep.
At the beginning of the long, dark corridor, Isabel pressed a keypad and the entire house sprang to light, shining down on the austere-looking portraits of her father’s side of the family that hung on both sides of the long hallway. Mean-looking men, her father included, and blank-faced women with pursed lips and high-necked plain dresses. “Someday I am going to burn every last one of these damn pictures and hang circus pictures all the way down to the end of this hallway,” she muttered. It would never happen, and she knew it. Her shoulders slumped.
Tyger house had always been a house of men. First there was her great-grandfather, and then her grandfather, and then her father and brother. The women who’d had the audacity to marry the Tyger men had all died within the first few years of their marriages for some strange reason. Secretly, she always thought they’d died to get away from the Tyger men. She was the only female Tyger to survive. Gerry and Artie said it was because she had grit. Whatever it was, here she was, approaching her seventieth birthday, alone in a house she hated with no family and no one to leave the Tyger toy fortune to.
She wished now, the way she always wished on her sleepless nights, that she had someone to talk to, someone to tell her she mattered, that she counted for something. Artie and Gerry told her all the time that she was special, but it wasn’t the same. Now, even her brother was gone, buried in some godforsaken part of the world. A brother she’d barely known even though he was only four years older, a brother who’d given up his share of Tyger Toys to her because he wanted to be a free spirit and travel the world. She’d inherited nothing from her father, just the promise that she could live out her life here in this ugly old house. She hoped her father was spinning in hell for the way he’d treated her.
Isabel walked into the fluorescent-lighted kitchen and blinked. State-of-the-art. Every appliance known to man was there, and all she ever did was make coffee and tea. She really had no clue as to how the kitchen operated. The cook, a cranky curmudgeon like herself, was the only one who knew how the appliances worked. She firmly believed if the cook went on strike, she would starve to death. She firmly believed a lot of things that Artie and Gerry said were nonsense.
Isabel shook her head to clear her thoughts as she poured generously from the bourbon bottle she kept in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. She moved on to her second vice and lit a cigarette from the mangled pack in her robe pocket. Bourbon, cigarettes, and her father’s money had gotten her to this point in time. She wasn’t about to spoil a good thing. The toy poodle slept peacefully inside her robe.
“I really hate this time of day,” she mumbled. The night was still alive, and the new day hadn’t been born yet. This was the time of day, according to articles she’d read, when God made His choices. Her father had died shortly before dawn. And if the reports the embassy had passed on to her were accurate, so had her brother.
The day her brother had turned over his inheritance to her, she’d gone to the cemetery and danced a wild jig on her father’s grave. Even then the plan to provide sanctuary for battered and abused women must have been in her mind. She poured more bourbon and fired up a second cigarette from the stub of the old one. She wasn’t supposed to smoke and she sure as hell wa
sn’t supposed to drink. She gave an unladylike snort to show what she thought of her doctor’s orders.
Maybe she needed to go on-line. She could surprise Helen Ward with a long e-mail she would get in the morning when she turned on her computer. She jammed the bourbon bottle into the pocket of her robe and trotted down the hall to her father’s old office, a room she’d hated all her life. A room she hadn’t dared to change just like the rest of the house. Why, she didn’t know.
Well, by God, tomorrow, today really, that is going to change. As soon as it gets light, I’m going to call in a contractor and redo the whole damn house from top to bottom. “Whatever time I have left is going to be filled with sunshine and wildflowers,” she said aloud as she took her place at the desk and turned on the computer. While she waited for the computer to boot up, she looked around at the shelves with all the toys that had been manufactured over the years. There wasn’t even one that remotely appealed to her. There wasn’t a single toy suitable for a little girl.
Tyger Toys was a stodgy, old-fashioned toy company known for its durable products, toys that were guaranteed never to wear out and guaranteed to survive every torture test a child could come up with. Toys passed down from one child to the next. Toys that were strong and sturdy like her father, hateful old man that he was. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t interested in the toy business, preferring to leave it in the capable hands of all the buttoned up MBAs she paid outrageous salaries to.
The computer screen said it was okay to type her letter. What did she want to say to the young woman who had touched her heart? Be brave, be careful. Be extra careful with this new man who has entered your life. Talk about her little business, explain that it wasn’t the end of the world that she’d gotten fired. Build up her self-esteem. Ask about the dog and the dog next door. Get minute details. Tell her she can always count on you and the shelter.
In the end she typed nothing. Instead, she turned off the computer and poured herself a third drink, this one stiffer than the one before. She gulped at the smoky-tasting bourbon. “Sixty-two goddamn years later and it still haunts me,” she said, slurring her words.
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