Fly by Night

by Andrea Thalasinos

  So instead they’d left them in the crate in the office, tuning in the Pandora music channel on the computer in hopes it would soothe them between feedings, but so far it wasn’t working.

  As they grew bigger, her lap was smaller. Running back and forth was interfering with Amelia and Bryce’s ability to care for the marine animals since it was impossible to police the office and be underwater at the same time. She realized that Alex was right. This was not sustainable.

  Later one day as Amelia and a few staffers were headed to the freshwater tank to follow up on a report of a lethargic sturgeon, she heard the pups beginning to cry. Bryce was diving in the marine tank with a water-quality specialist.

  “Be right back.” She sprinted to her office as they looked on.

  After the last feeding before leaving for the day, Amelia closed her office door and turned, startled by Meagan standing there, arms crossed.

  “Does management know what you’re doing?” Meagan refolded her arms and gave Amelia a sideways glance.

  Amelia swallowed before answering: admit, deny, or assign some horrendous task that Meagan hated? But it wasn’t fair to the intern, wasn’t fair to the marine animals under her care, or to the staff. She was in the wrong and she knew it, yet was only trying to buy some time, for what she wasn’t sure. Had Meagan been doing something that interfered with her ability to perform her duties, Amelia would have called her out on it in a second. The whole thing felt bad.

  “Perfect timing, Meagan—just the person I was looking for,” Amelia said in a lighthearted way, praying the pups were dead asleep as she cleansed all thoughts of them to clear her face of tension. Her stomach was like a stone, sick with deception.

  “Have you checked in with the prep kitchen yet?” Amelia asked. “They’re short two staffers; both out with the flu—don’t know if you got the e-mail I forwarded earlier. Let me know if they’re short for the evening feedings. Okay? See ya, Meagan.” She waved over her head.

  She was trembling inside as she walked away, masking it as best she could. Her defensiveness was eating away at her confidence. She was the boss yet wasn’t being one. It would have been easy to be angry at Meagan; the young woman had her, yet Amelia “had herself” by having fooled herself into thinking it might work.

  And as she headed down to the off-exhibit area, she recognized that sinking feeling one gets when a situation is falling apart. She’d felt it months before the NSF decision.

  So much for the online conflict resolution course that Grace in HR had made a requirement of her continued employment. Amelia was woefully behind on completing the self-tests and had lost the resolve to care. It wasn’t working. Nothing was.

  In less than an hour Amelia returned to the office and lifted the two pups, their muzzles wet as she watched them chewing on each other’s faces. Both looked at her. Their fur was wet and spiky. She smiled and sat down on the floor, burying her face into the fur on their heads, breathing in their nutty smell, their puppy breath, feeling sorry that she’d ever felt the slightest bit of resentment and buyer’s remorse. “You’re such goofs.” They climbed up her body like it was a steep hill, laying on her as she balanced both in her arms. And she held them tight, suddenly afraid of everything.

  * * *

  The next day the pups discovered howling.

  “Ooh—listen, Mommy, wolves!” a young girl had said in the Ocean Tunnel.

  Amelia was observing the sturgeon they’d placed back on exhibition through the Plexiglas wall. She stopped dead to listen. Tuning out the endless audio loop of crashing waves and seagulls, dripping water in gentle waterfalls, songs of the humpback whale, and bird calls in the rainforests of the world, she didn’t recall a howl.

  “Oh, God, no.” Amelia was mortified.

  “Isn’t it beautiful, sweetie,” the girl’s mother had said. “How seamless nature is.”

  Amelia hurried off, clipboard in hand and pen in mouth, bolting back to the office. Once out of the exhibition area, a few staffers stood at the office door, listening. She and Bryce almost collided in the hall as they scrambled to unlock the door.

  * * *

  The next day she was called up to HR. In anticipation she’d typed up a letter of resignation and kept it folded in her pocket. The letter felt like a dive weight. She’d never been so aware of a piece of paper before.

  “What the hell are we doing, Bryce?” she’d asked the night before the meeting with HR. “I’m exhausted; I feel like a fifteen-year-old sneaking in a boyfriend at night at my parents’ house through the bedroom window.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Bryce asked.

  She didn’t know, yet she did.

  “If you want to quit, Am, stay home with them, do it,” Bryce had said.

  She’d considered it until thoughts of the Revolution House seeped through to corrode her will.

  The same three managers sat staring across the conference table, the same crew who’d been at her initial interview back in October when offering her the job. The same three were at her subsequent reprimand. They regarded her as the problem child, as if not believing their eyes, that here she was again, sitting in front of them for something so clearly an infraction of the policy of both Sea Life and the MOA. She almost couldn’t believe it either and fought the urge to laugh. No one spoke for a few moments as if they didn’t even know where to start.

  She fingered the fold in the pocketed letter before sitting down at the conference table, sharply divided about resigning and hoping they’d just fire her. She would have fired herself if she could. Why hadn’t she and Bryce generated better options?

  She sat and placed her hands on the desk, as if on a Ouija board. Under her fingernails there was grime from not having had time to wash after she’d been changing lab equipment. She felt them waiting for a confession.

  “Yes. I’ve kept two orphaned wolf-hybrids in my office this past week.”

  Her stomach burned with anger and fear. “I will make other arrangements.”

  Resigning was the right thing to do but the Revolution House weighed on her like a boat anchor, dragging her down into the depths rather than being the source of joy it once was. Nothing about this job had been right from the beginning. What was she waiting for?

  A late phone call on Christmas night from her neighbors back in Providence made her keep the letter in her pocket.

  “Sorry to call like this, Amelia,” they’d explained. After two snowfalls the renters hadn’t shoveled the sidewalk and an official from the city had knocked on the neighbor’s door to check whether the Revolution House had been abandoned. Reluctantly, the neighbors had handed over the key and upon entering, discovered that the renters had moved out without giving notice and left the house so cold that a pipe had burst under the sink, saturating the kitchen’s wood floor down into the basement.

  “Maybe I need to fly back there,” she’d said to Bryce. She was heartsick thinking of the Revolution House, the floor, the damage, how she would finance repairs.

  Bryce had pitched in. “I’ll talk to my brother; it’s one of his hobbies after law—renovating historic homes. He’ll roll it into our expenses. We have several income properties, Amelia; we won’t even feel it.”

  “It’s my house, Bryce.” She looked at him. It seemed everything was slipping away.

  “Yes, but you’re here,” he’d said in the same exaggerated voice he used in the Ocean Tunnel to explain to ten-year-olds about the unlimited supply of zooplankton in the world’s oceans. “You don’t have that kind of cash to dump into it; we do, it’s a business expense. Our family coat of arms—It’s better than it was. So what’s the big deal?” he said, dismissively. But it was.

  “That’s not the point,” she’d said.

  Bryce sighed. “You don’t have to be the queen of everything, Amelia. Let others help, be part of your life.”

  She’d felt chastened. On top of everything, it burned even worse than HR, worse than she could do to herself. And it hurt most of all becaus
e Bryce was right but she didn’t know how to do it.

  “Okay,” she’d conceded. “I’ll pay what I can,” she’d said, having no idea what the cost of such a repair might be. Sometimes she felt irritated that Bryce had no idea how most people lived, teetering on the edge of fear.

  She still had enough banked from the Sea Life job to cover two more months of house payments, but if she resigned she’d be penniless in no time with the Revolution House slated for foreclosure.

  “Promise you’ll tell him to bill me?” she demanded.

  Bryce had begun nodding before she’d finished the sentence, leaving her the impression he wasn’t listening.

  * * *

  After the meeting with HR, Bryce and Jen came up with a plan to leave the pups at home and stagger their shifts even further so that someone would always be with Lacey and Junior until they could find another apartment. But even still there’d be gaps of an hour or so in coverage considering travel time.

  Amelia’s stomach was a knot the entire first day of the new arrangement. She waited for her shift to end before dashing to her Jeep in the ramp, thinking that driving was faster than the bus. But then it took ten minutes to find a spot on the street. As she hurried around the corner she heard howling and broke into a sprint, bolting through three inches of fresh powder up the stairs only to find a notice already taped to the door—either get rid of the dogs or they had forty-eight hours to vacate.

  The pups had howled the entire time after Jen had left. Neighbors complained. Someone even called the fire department.

  Later that evening after their shifts had ended, Jen and Bryce sat reading the notice from the apartment manager.

  “Oh shit,” Jen had said.

  Amelia sighed. She rested her face in her hands. Both pups walked over, trying to jump up into her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” Amelia said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  She pulled out her phone and dialed.

  Jen and Bryce looked at each other.

  “Hi, Charlotte, Amelia here.”

  “Hey, Amelia, how’s life with pups?”

  “Uh, not so good right now.” Amelia’s chin began to quiver. “It’s not working out.”

  “Oh?”

  33

  Amelia pulled up to Gloria’s house and sat. This time she’d driven up to the door, as Charlotte had arranged to have the place plowed where ordinarily it would be spring before the road was clear.

  The Jeep idled as she sat chewing her bottom lip. It still felt like someone was peeking through the blinds. Doubt squeezed her insides like tightening fascia. What had seemed like a good idea was now unsettling.

  She’d walked into the HR office and given her resignation.

  “Thank you for this opportunity,” Amelia had said. “It just wasn’t a good fit.”

  Out of goodwill she’d offered to stay on, though prayed they didn’t ask. And while they were gracious about it Amelia guessed she wouldn’t be asking for a reference anytime soon. Amelia had talked up Jen as acting director and she was promoted into the job. She and Doby would keep the apartment until they moved to Duluth in late spring. The aquarium would also stay with Jen until they figured out what came next.

  Bryce had also resigned but had agreed to finish out the week and then drive up to Bayfield and Amelia.

  A few handshakes later, she’d handed over the security card, signed the necessary papers, and was a former employee.

  It was three in the afternoon by the time she’d made it to Bayfield, hauling enough groceries to feed at least ten people for a week. The snowy hills glowed pink with the colors of the late afternoon sun.

  Lacey and Junior were quiet for the whole ride. Amelia turned to check. Both were transfixed, surveying the landscape out the back window through the wire crate.

  “Good doggies,” she said. Junior glanced at her and then back to whatever had caught his attention.

  She called Charlotte to let her know they’d arrived and to thank her for making arrangements to have the road plowed and utilities turned on.

  “You’re welcome,” the woman said. “Taj Mahal it ain’t.” Charlotte chuckled. “But at least you’ll have utilities. Fridge and stove work, I checked ’em, miracle of miracles after all this time.”

  “Thanks for everything.”

  “Inside’s still musty,” the woman warned. “Lower your expectations and you’ll be fine,” she made Amelia laugh. “Needs a good airing so you might wanna open the windows this afternoon. Storm front’s not moving in ’til later tonight.”

  Amelia thought back to some of the older wooden ships on which she’d slept belowdecks for weeks, breaking into perpetual bouts of sneezing from eighty years’ worth of moldy allergen buildup consisting of rotten wood, bilge water, and diesel.

  “Can I at least reimburse you for getting the place plowed?”

  “On the house,” Charlotte chuckled in a way that spoke of a motive. “And once you get that woodstove going those little guys’ll be panting.”

  “At least let me pay for the wood.”

  “Old man Whitedeer won’t take a cent, was a close friend of Gloria’s.”

  “Old man Whitedeer,” Amelia repeated. “How can I at least thank him?”

  Charlotte was quiet for a few moments. “He likes those blueberry coffee cakes they make on Saturdays at the bakery in Bayfield. Bring him one of those. Bet ya he’ll eat the whole thing right in front of you, doesn’t eat anything else.”

  Amelia liked him already. “Deal—so where do I find him?”

  “Why don’t you get settled in and we’ll talk tomorrow,” Charlotte said. “But I’m warning you, the old man’ll talk your ear off.”

  “Is it okay with TJ that I’m here?” Amelia asked. She wished Bryce had come with her but knew it was only right for him to transition duties to some of the other staffers.

  Charlotte snorted an irritated laugh that Amelia guessed was aimed at her husband.

  “It’s your house too, Amelia,” Charlotte said in a stern but encouraging way. “Besides, who do you think plowed the place out?” She said with mischief. “The two of you need to talk, he needs to. Maybe go for a walk in the woods sometime. TJ’s talks better when he’s outside—inside he sort of clams up.”

  Amelia doubted TJ’d go anywhere with her except at gunpoint.

  “Charlotte, I don’t mean to be nosy,” she began as she sat looking at the house, the lake. “But why didn’t Gloria rewrite her will? Why leave this to me too?”

  Why would a woman allow half of her house to go to the child of the man who’d betrayed her?

  “Don’t know.”

  And while she’d paid the property taxes weeks ago, it felt like there was some sort of lingering debt out there waiting to catch up with her.

  “Still got your key, right?” Charlotte asked.

  Amelia looked at the house key dangling from her key chain. “Uhh, yeah.”

  “Call if you need something, have questions,” Charlotte said. “Left you some clean sheets, towels, and blankets.”

  “You’re a doll.”

  “Why don’t you come on by tomorrow for dinner?”

  “Thanks. I’d love that.”

  “And bring those two little rascals.”

  “Of course.”

  Everything had been hastily crammed into the backseat of her Jeep. Later that weekend Bryce was moving the rest of her things up in his truck.

  All of the uncertainty about living in Gloria’s house paled in light of what she was going to do for money. On a long shot she’d thought to ask TJ about a few positions for fish biologists for GLIFWC and had also seen two openings in University of Minnesota Duluth’s biology department for the following fall semester that was an hour’s drive away. It would be closer to Jen when she moved that spring to be with Doby. They also had five grants pending with notification dates of May and another three she was writing for the following fall.

  “Well, here goes.” Amelia climbed out of the Jeep and s
tretched.

  The place looked smaller and dumpier than she’d recalled, more like a hunting shack than a residence. A mound of freshly cut wood had been left alongside the front steps, looking as if someone had pulled up, opened the back gate of a truck, and shoved it all out with a foot before driving away.

  Sounds of puppy cries made her turn. They watched in unison as soon as she looked, as if she’d forgotten about them.

  “Okay, okay.” She opened the Jeep’s gate and the door of the crate and grabbed the two leashes. Lifting them out, she set them down. Lacey rolled in the snow. Junior managed to get the leash wrapped around his head.

  The second move in six months. There seemed no end to the paring down of personal possessions that had precipitated a shift in the meaning of things. Now included were places and real estate.

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs she noticed animal tracks leading down around the house as well as up to the door. Although not shoveled, snow on the steps was scant since it was on the protected side of the house.

  Lacey and Junior sniffed the first animal track and then both sat down. Along the sides of the house snowdrifts reached the windows. Amelia then lifted them both, carrying them as she followed the tracks downhill toward the lakeside and the opening in the lattice.

  She set the pups down at the opening. Each lay down to rest, licking snow off each other’s faces. Stepping closer, Amelia bent over. The tracks were that of a large dog.

  She looked out to the woods.

  “Jethro.” She scanned the area.

  Amelia knelt and looked in. Everything looked the same.

  Lacey and Junior glanced inside and then back at each other. Their faces were pensive as they sniffed. Information passed between them. Amelia didn’t know the language.

  The hair on Amelia’s body prickled. Hard to believe it had been only a little over a week—a discovery that had set off a series of cascading changes that didn’t feel over yet.

  Looking out to the edge of the woods she imagined what it would be like once Bryce arrived. Thinking back to that same night when he’d put it all on the line with a kiss. She smiled thinking of it. How tremblingly brave of him.