An Unexpected Grace

by Kristin von Kreisler

  “Just ‘yours always’ or something like that. I had no idea who’d left it.”

  “Makov must’ve had some reason to think you’d know it was from him,” Joe argued.

  “I don’t know what he thought.” But now, thanks to this interrogation, Lila did know how an animal felt when men poked sticks at it.

  “You still have the valentine?” Rich asked.

  “I threw it away.”

  “That’s too bad.” Rich glanced at Joe.

  “I had no reason to keep it. It meant nothing to me.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Rich leaned closer, as if he were about to have a whispered, confidential chat over a beer. “Makov have any reason to, uh, think you had a . . . relationship, or something?”

  The question soured Lila’s stomach. “I hardly knew him.”

  “He must’ve thought you’d be glad to hear from him. Why else would he leave you a valentine?” Joe demanded.

  Even though Lila wanted this conversation to go smoothly, she did not have the energy to speculate. Her head felt like a small crowbar was prying off her scalp, and the questions were making her woozy. “I’d really like to help you, but there’s no more I can tell you. Honestly,” she said, then wished she’d not said “honestly,” like she was guilty of something.

  “You said you talked to Makov several times. What about the others?” Joe asked.

  Lila pulled Greg’s flannel shirt tighter over her chest and looked out the window at the redwoods, whose soothing power was gone. “There’s nothing to say about the other times. They were no big deal.”

  “When did you last talk to him?” Rich asked.

  “A few weeks ago. I don’t know exactly.”

  “Surely you can remember,” Joe pressed, as if Lila were a criminal he didn’t believe.

  “I didn’t pay attention to the exact day.”

  “You must remember what the conversation was about,” Joe insisted.

  “It couldn’t have been important,” Lila said, sounding more defensive than she intended. Being badgered when she was feeling weak, she could hardly keep her mind straight or think of what to say.

  Joe squeezed one of Cristina’s candlesticks like a turnip he wanted blood from. “You’re too young to be so forgetful.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. I probably thanked him for emptying my trash. I don’t know.” When Lila shrugged, pain shot from her wounded shoulder down her arm. “I’ve been thinking about getting well. Yuri Makov hasn’t been the center of my life.” But, then, that wasn’t exactly true, since Cristina had accused Lila of obsessing about him.

  “Can you tell us about any beef he might’ve had with anyone ?” Rich asked.

  “I didn’t know him well enough to know about a beef.” Lila pressed the nails of her good hand into piping in the club chair’s armrest.

  “Anybody beside you in the office have much contact with him?” Rich asked.

  “I didn’t have much contact. I told you I hardly knew him.” Lila paused, pressed her lips together. “What beef do you think Yuri Makov might have had with somebody?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Rich said.

  “Have you ever had a case like this before?”

  “Yeah, a couple,” Rich said.

  “What made the people kill? Did you find out?”

  “It can be complicated.” Rich tapped his pen on his knee like a small walking stick. “We had a guy shoot up a drugstore where he worked. He had an abusive dad who humiliated him all the time, kinda like another employee who kept calling him ‘fag.’ He lashed out, or so we decided.”

  “Remember Michael O’Toole?” Joe asked Rich.

  “He got wigged-out when he lost some big law case, so he killed four people in his firm. One sick puppy. Angry about everything.” Rich put his pen in his pocket and closed his notebook. “It can be hard to tell with these psychos, but we’ll figure out what made Makov tick.”

  “He didn’t come across as some violent freak,” Lila said.

  “Gotta have been provoked somehow.” Rich got up to leave. “Try to think of anything else to help us figure this out.”

  “There isn’t anything else.” With effort, Lila struggled to her feet.

  “If we need to talk to you again, how can we reach you?” Rich asked.

  Not pleased at the prospect of seeing the men a second time, Lila said, “I’ll be here.”

  Rich handed her a business card and started toward the door. Joe followed. When he stepped on the porch, sunlight glared on the bald spot crowning his head. Jingling the coins in his pocket, he turned around and muttered, “Shit happens.”

  “Tell me about it,” Lila said.

  8

  Lila wiped Cristina’s kitchen counter around tote bags and boxes overflowing with cookies, paper towels, dog toys, games, and CDs. As she squeezed out the sponge at the sink, a box slammed on the garage’s concrete floor. Cristina was out there packing the van and muttering to herself. Tomorrow she and Rosie would drive to Sacramento to pick up a cousin and travel with her to Washington.

  At dinner Cristina had stabbed her fork into a green bean. “I’m a pathetic camp follower. If my boss hadn’t agreed to let me telecommute, my career would be ruined because Greg wants to make tideland policy.”

  “He’d never have taken the job if you and Rosie couldn’t join him. You’re giving him a gift,” Lila said.

  “I don’t want to go to D.C. It’s not fair to disrupt my life. Rosie’s, too.” Cristina got up, scraped wilted lettuce leaves off her plate into the garbage disposal, and disappeared into the garage.

  Lila believed Cristina was not so opposed to leaving as she seemed. The stress of packing made her cross. And her grumpiness was a good sign, really, because it meant she believed Lila was healing. Since Lila had been shot, Cristina had held back anything that might cause distress. Seeing her be herself again, cranky or not, was a relief.

  At the table, Rosie, in robin’s-egg-blue coveralls, was humming “Three Blind Mice” and shoving her meatloaf around her green beans.

  “Gerald would want you to finish dinner,” Lila coaxed. She’d set a place for Rosie’s lion at the table and served him klipspringer flank with marinated crocodile scales and giraffe-tail pudding.

  Rosie screwed up her face. A strand of dark hair, free from her ponytail, fell into her eyes. “Can’t I feed my meatloaf to Gerald? He’s still hungry.”

  “He told me he’s allergic to meatloaf. It makes him break out in a rash.”

  Rosie looked so disappointed that Lila would have crossed the kitchen and kissed the top of her head if Grace weren’t hunched under the table like a bird of prey, waiting for treats to fall to the floor. Though persnickety about her own food, her quest for Rosie’s was relentless. At breakfast Grace hung around for Cheerios that Rosie dropped, and at lunch Grace waited for bits of sandwich, which she grabbed with a snap of teeth. Aware of the dog’s location, Lila used the kitchen island as a barricade. Thank goodness someone would pick up that dog tonight and Lila would never have to worry about her again.

  When Rosie rested her cheek on the table, Lila gave in. “Okay, you can go.”

  Rosie clapped her hands and jumped down from the chair just as someone knocked at the front door. Involuntarily, Lila flinched—Dr. Lovell had been right that she was edgy. When she went to the entry hall, she expected to meet the unfortunate soul who would be Grace’s new owner. But smiling and waving from behind the front door’s panes was Adam Spencer, who seemed to have forgotten that Lila had said she didn’t like dogs.

  As she opened the door, he said, “Hi.” Obviously at home in Cristina’s house, he stepped, uninvited, across the threshold.

  “Hi,” Lila said. She noted his charcoal Dockers, light blue sweater, and damp hair, which he must have just washed. Wavy and thick, it was parted on the side and combed back from his face. He’d probably gotten cleaned up to sit with his Irish wolfhounds at an outdoor café, Lila thought. He was holding a cellophane bag of what looked lik
e gingersnaps, tied with a raffia bow. Maybe he’d stopped to give them to Rosie for the long drive ahead.

  She must have heard his voice because she ran to him and threw her skinny arms around his waist.

  “How’s my favorite kid?” He hoisted her up over his head, and she extended her arms and legs like a helicopter propeller. As he spun her around, she shrieked with delight and her ponytail danced. He let go and caught her mid-drop, and she shrieked even harder.

  Grace appeared, whimpering at Adam as happily as she had the week before. He set Rosie down, and they fussed over Grace, who panted, her eyes half closed in ecstasy. Lila backed toward the kitchen so as not to be too close to her. When Christina called Rosie to winnow down her stuffed animals for the trip, she ran to the garage. Grace padded across the entry toward Lila.

  As she was about to step farther away, Adam said, “I want to talk with you.”

  “Me?” Lila said.

  “I need to make sure you know how to take care of Grace.”

  A gulp lodged in Lila’s throat. “I assumed somebody was going to pick her up tonight.”

  Adam’s eyes narrowed as if he were confused. “Cristina didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I thought you agreed to keep Grace.”

  Lila gritted her teeth. She knew how General Custer felt, having a perfectly acceptable day and suddenly out of nowhere getting trapped.

  As her face clouded, Adam said, “We tried to find someone to take Grace. We called all our dog rescue friends, but nobody had any room.”

  “Why can’t you take her?” Lila’s tone sounded like she was accusing him of mugging someone in a wheelchair.

  “I’m still living next door to the man I stole her from.”

  Do you rob banks in your spare time? “You stole her?”

  “Well, rescued. She was living with a sadist. He chained her to a tree.”

  As cruel as that sounded, it was no excuse to railroad Lila. She shook her head in disbelief that her dearest friend would manipulate her into keeping that dog. She, who Cristina knew was afraid of Grace, who had just one good hand to defend herself, who was trying to put her life back together and had no energy to waste. No wonder Cristina had stayed in the garage, out of the way when Adam sprang the news.

  On the other hand, though rushed to pack her own belongings, Cristina had persuaded Lila’s landlord to let her break her lease and had moved her apartment’s contents here. The hours of work had been one more example of Cristina’s eighteen years of kindness to Lila. For Cristina, she should have been willing to take on not only a potentially vicious golden retriever, but even a radioactive goat. Just as Lila had concluded when she’d agreed to house-sit, she owed Cristina.

  As Grace nosed Adam’s hand to ask for more petting, Lila shook her head and told herself not to be resentful. She needed to be as gracious and helpful as Cristina had been the last couple of weeks. Lila said, “You’ve taken me by surprise. Cristina never asked me if keeping that dog would be okay.”

  “She must have forgotten. She’s bound to be distracted. She has a lot to do before she leaves tomorrow.” Adam looked maddeningly sincere. “I’m really sorry. I wish we had another solution. We’d never ask you to keep Grace if we had a choice, but we couldn’t help how things worked out.”

  “Well . . . So . . . ,” Lila said, apropos of nothing. She knew defeat when she was surrounded and there was no escape.

  “Goldens are quick to get adopted. Grace’ll only be here a few days.”

  “That’s what Cristina said when I came here last week.”

  “You can’t tell how people will respond to posters. Calls come in waves. Someone will be glad to have her.”

  Adam fixed Lila with his eyes, which she noted were intensely blue. He was the kind of man you had to rally strength to argue with, and she hadn’t gotten hers back.

  “I’ve looked after Cristina’s dogs here at least a dozen times. It’s easy,” he said.

  “I guess,” Lila said. But her enthusiasm would not have filled a gnat’s shirt pocket. Her few days of dog-sitting stretched before her like a road through a jungle with pythons and leeches.

  In the kitchen Grace settled, drooling full blast, at Adam’s feet. He, apparently, thought nothing of dog drool. Lila shuddered to think what his Irish wolfhounds did to his floor. “Slimy” would be too charitable a word for it.

  “How can anyone not love this wonderful girl,” Adam said.

  “Easy. Look at her teeth,” Lila said.

  “They scare you?”

  “Well, yes, if you really want to know.”

  Even if he didn’t want to know, she felt compelled to justify her attitude. She told him about the dog who’d lunged at her when she was nine. “The fur on his back bristled like a stripe of nails,” she said.

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Adam said.

  “It was when he bit me.”

  “Was it a serious bite?”

  “Five stitches. In the emergency room.”

  “Could have been a lot worse.”

  “It was horrible. Blood everywhere. I was just a girl.”

  When no hint of sympathy appeared on Adam’s face, he made clear whose side he was on. But, then, she already knew he cared more about dogs than people.

  “It wasn’t the dog’s fault. He was telling you to leave him alone. You woke him up and startled him. If someone did that to you, you’d get just as upset,” Adam said. He set his cellophane bag on the counter as if his verdict about the loathsome mutt was final and the subject was closed.

  Lila refused to relent. “The dog was out of control. It was terrifying.” He’d been as violent and unpredictable as Yuri Makov, but she didn’t feel like explaining that to Adam.

  “It’s not fair to damn a whole species because of a single incident,” Adam said.

  “Why not? Dogs can be dangerous.”

  “Not if you treat them right.”

  So they were back to him as judge and Lila as wayward underling. She was wasting her breath defending herself.

  From his back pocket Adam got a piece of yellow legal-size paper, unfolded it and moved close to Lila so she could read it with him. As the clean smell of his shampoo drifted toward her, she saw “Dog-Sitting Duties” printed with a felt pen across the top. Below, he’d outlined with numbers and letters what the duties were.

  No doubt he was an engineer, born with a calculator in his hand and an obsession about efficiency and organization. He would keep his Irish wolfhounds on a strict bathroom schedule and name them alphabetically—Alice, Bruno, Cooper, Daisy. He’d go to work with a row of mechanical pencils clipped to his shirt pocket.

  Adam opened Cristina’s walk-in pantry door and pointed out Grace’s plastic kibble bin and cans of Nature’s Best chicken in gravy. He explained that Lila should feed her two cups of kibble and three heaping spoonsful of chicken in the morning and evening. He partly filled a measuring cup with water and held it out to Lila. “Pour exactly three-fourths of a cup over her food and break up the chicken in the kibble. Too much water and she won’t like it. It’ll be too much like soup.”

  In a drawer by the sink, Adam found a rectangular brush with steel bristles, which he swept along Grace’s chest, leaving tiny trails in her fur. She leaned against his legs with her eyes half-closed again, as if she’d reached the Mount Everest of pleasure. “You don’t want somebody coming over here to meet her and finding her unkempt,” Adam said, and then he moved on to Grace’s exercise program to strengthen her hurt leg. “A walk three or four times a week ought to do it.”

  “You said you’d find her a home in a few days,” Lila said.

  “I’ll do it as fast as I can.”

  She exhaled the weary breath of someone who’d been mopping floors since dawn. “I can’t handle that dog on walks. I’ve got an injured arm.” She held up her cast as if it were a courtroom exhibit.

  Adam shrugged, like the cast wouldn’t hinder her from Olympic backstroke co
mpetition. “Grace won’t give you any trouble.”

  “How can you presume it would be so easy for me?”

  “All I’m presuming is she’s a sweet dog. She’ll do anything to please.”

  Maybe for you, not me.

  Adam glanced at his list. “The most important thing is to keep Grace away from Marshall. He’s the sicko she lived with over the hill about three miles from here. Grace belonged to his son. Marshall’s wife left him and took the boy to Santa Barbara.”

  “So why would Marshall care if you stole Grace?”

  “Power. He’s mad I got the best of him.” Adam untied the raffia bow of his cellophane bag and handed Lila a small cat-shaped cookie. “Want to give Grace a biscuit? See how gentle she is?”

  The last thing Lila wanted was to get her hand near that dog’s fangs, but she was too proud to refuse and stand there like a quivering violet. Pinching the cat’s paws between her thumb and index finger’s tips, she held out the biscuit toward Grace, who must have sensed that Lila was recoiling. Obviously offended, Grace gave her a disapproving look, as if she were foaming at the mouth with rabies Grace didn’t want to catch. She turned her head away.

  “You have to act like you’re enthusiastic.” Adam took the biscuit and beamed at Grace. “Look what I’ve got!”

  She whined and her face lit up. She chomped down on the cat, crunched it to rubble, and swallowed. Anyone could tell she was thrilled.

  Adam stroked her floppy ears. For a man his size, his touch seemed gentle. “See. Nothing to fear.”

  “You’re never going to change me into a dog person. I want you to know that,” Lila said.

  “Can’t help but try. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Yes, I do.” Bites. Bloody hands. Stitches.

  9

  On Cristina’s street early in the morning, Lila fumbled with the buttons of Greg’s flannel shirt to fasten them up to her chin. For two days she’d practiced with buttons, zippers, and snaps so she could dress herself when Cristina was gone.

  The cold, damp air smelled of bay trees. Fog inching over Mount Tamalpais looked like gray fingers reaching out to clutch the Sleeping Lady’s shoulders. On any other day, the pink banners festooning the sky would have lifted Lila’s mood, but she felt sad as Cristina backed out of the garage. In minutes she and Rosie would be gone, and Lila’s only company would be that dog.