W. Bruce Cameron

by The Dogs of Christmas

  Okay, the hell with it. Time to call.

  Josh dialed, steeling himself for when she answered.

  “Hello,” he greeted cautiously. “Is this Serena?”

  EIGHTEEN

  “Who is calling, please?” Serena replied, pleasant but cautious.

  “Um, I’m calling about the lost dog.”

  Josh closed his eyes at her gasp.

  “Oh my God. Did you find her? Did you find Lucy?” Serena asked urgently, her voice cracking.

  “I don’t know. I mean, your poster has been up since when, September?”

  “She’s … she has a black nose, and she’s brown, and her back is black fur,” Serena babbled. “And she was pregnant. Does your dog look like she’s nursing puppies?”

  Not anymore, Josh thought to himself. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened,” he replied steadily.

  “Sorry?”

  “Your poster says ‘lost slash stolen.’ What does that mean?”

  “What difference does it make?” Serena demanded.

  “I’m just trying to understand, okay?”

  She took a deep, careful breath. “Okay, sorry. Okay. I travel for my work. Not a lot, but some. I was out of town but my neighbor was taking care of Lucy. And then she went to feed her and the back gate was open and Lucy was just gone.” Serena was weeping again, nearly silently. “I took the next plane home. I was supposed to get her microchipped, I know that, but I was just so busy.”

  “Why do you say lost or stolen?”

  “Um, I can’t prove anything, but I used to live with this guy, Ryan. We broke up and it wasn’t, I mean, he didn’t take it very well. Like, threatening. And right around the time Lucy disappeared, someone saw him in the neighborhood. Thought they saw him. Like he was hanging around my place. And then Ryan’s like, gone. I knocked and left a note for him, three times right after Luce vanished. I went again not long ago and now there’s a lock on his front door, a padlock, and a notice from his landlord, and his cell has been disconnected this whole time.”

  Josh briefly closed his eyes, picturing Serena driving up to the cabin Ryan had been renting right next door. The properties in this area were pretty big—Josh owned sixty acres of land—but still, at some point, Serena was probably no more than a hundred yards away. How different would his life be if she’d shown up when the puppies were still nursing? Would he even still have them?

  “You didn’t leave your dog with Ryan?” Josh probed.

  “God, no. Why do you ask that?” Serena responded suspiciously.

  “It’s nothing. Just trying to get a sense of events as they transpired in this particular situation,” he answered, stalling the inevitable with verbiage.

  “When did you find your dog? Do you think it could be Lucy?”

  “My name is Josh Michaels, does that mean anything to you?”

  “No. Josh Michaels. No, sorry. Why, should it?”

  “No. God.” Josh sat down on a kitchen stool, putting his hand to his face. Across the room Lucy was watching him, her dark eyes seeming, to Josh, to radiate concern. “I’m pretty sure this is your dog.”

  “Oh my God. Really? You have no idea what this means to me!”

  “The thing is, Ryan gave her to me.”

  “What? You’re a friend of Ryan?” she cried.

  “No, I’m…”

  “You listen to me,” Serena grated, her voice choking. “He stole my dog which means you stole my dog, and I’ll call the police, you’ll be arrested—”

  “No, it wasn’t like that,” Josh snapped, his voice sharp. He listened to Serena pant at the other end of the line. “Okay? Just listen to me. He told me you gave him the dog, like to watch.”

  “I did not give him my dog,” she spat.

  “I know. I know that now, anyway. So here’s what happened.” Josh walked her through the night Ryan had shown up with Lucy. When he got to the part about her obvious pregnancy, Serena interrupted. “She had the puppies? Are they okay?”

  Haltingly, Josh explained about the stillborn delivery, and the small miracle of the puppies in the box in the back of his truck. “So a few days ago this friend from the shelter brought me your poster,” Josh finished.

  “Thank you. Thank you for rescuing Lucy and for taking care of her,” Serena sobbed. “This is the most wonderful phone call of my life. Bless you, bless you.”

  “Sure,” Josh responded faintly.

  “I have a sister in Parker. She could come up and get Lucy. I’m not in town until the day before Christmas Eve, I could … I really can’t get back before then.”

  “Look, I don’t mind taking care of her until then.”

  “I want my dog back!”

  “Yes, okay, but I’m just saying, why not wait until you’re back in town?” Josh explained about the Dogs of Christmas, how all the puppies would be leaving the twenty-third, the same day Serena would be back. “I just think it would be easier if Lucy doesn’t leave until the puppies are gone. I mean, I’m picturing them watching their mom drive off and I’m thinking, why put them through that? What do you think, would that be okay?”

  And in his mind, Josh was standing by the big ponderosa pine tree, watching his own mother drive away, Janice waving from the passenger window. Josh did not wave back.

  “You’ve got such a warm heart,” Serena praised, her voice nearly giddy. “Yes, of course. For her puppies? That’s wonderful.”

  Josh gave her his address. She connected the dots. “God, I was so close. I thought about knocking on some neighbors’ doors. If only I had.”

  “Well, but the puppies weren’t ready to be weaned then,” Josh objected.

  There was a pause while they both decided the matter wasn’t worth fighting over now.

  After the phone call, Josh went over to where Lucy lay on her pillow and buried his face in her fur. She sighed, laying her head back down.

  The next morning, Madelyn from the shelter called. “Hi, Josh,” she sang merrily, as if they were old friends.

  He batted aside her cheerful salutations with grunts, waiting for her to state her business. “So, I was hoping to swing up to your place today,” she finally advised.

  “What for?”

  “Thought it’d be a good time. We’re really busy tomorrow getting ready for the adoption event on Friday.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I said, I thought I should pick the puppies up today because we’re going to be jammed up tomorrow. The Dogs of Christmas.”

  “Come out here and pick up the puppies.” He felt dismissed, discounted, this woman he didn’t even know breezily informing him she wanted to come take away his dog family a day early out of convenience.

  “Yes, would this afternoon be okay?”

  “No.”

  She heard a stone wall backing up that single word, and responded cautiously. “Oh. Right. Uh, so when could I come out to pick them up?”

  “You can’t,” Josh said shortly.

  “I see,” Madelyn replied, plainly not seeing.

  “Thanks for calling,” Josh told her. He hung up with cold satisfaction, not even bothering to walk away. It took only a few minutes before the phone rang again. He picked it up.

  “What’s going on?” Kerri demanded.

  “It’s good to hear your voice, too,” Josh greeted.

  “Cut it out. We’ve got families who have been promised those puppies, Josh. You can’t back out now.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I didn’t say I was backing out. But why can’t they come out here? Why does it have to happen in a shelter? Don’t you think the dogs would be happier if they were in their own home while this was going on? I think it would be easier for them to see their brothers and sisters drive off if they’re home. Lucy can comfort them if they’re upset.”

  “I don’t think that matters.”

  “Well, I do.”

  Kerri sighed, surrendering. “I guess Madelyn could bring out the pa
perwork.”

  “No, I guess she couldn’t.”

  “Josh.”

  “I’m doing it, Kerri, but I’m doing it my way and the dogs don’t know Madelyn, they know you. Okay? You do the paperwork. Come on out for the big Christmas sale, we’re open all day Friday.”

  “We’ll have to call everybody, make sure they can get there,” Kerri objected.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Josh stated agreeably.

  Kerri was silent a moment. “Fine. I’ll see you Friday morning,” she said coldly.

  The warm weather quickly stripped Denver of its snow layer, though at Josh’s elevation the white stuff sublimated much more slowly and never left the shadowed areas, where it went from fluffy powder to gritty, granular piles of ice. Josh let the puppies play in it and threw heavy snowballs at the trees, which Lucy found exciting but was an action over the puppies’ heads, both figuratively and literally. The chatter on the news was whether the weak storm front that was slated to arrive on Friday night would have enough moisture to make it a white Christmas.

  Josh spent the last day with the dogs as if he were one of them. He rolled with them on the floor, he played with their toys, he sprawled out on the rug to lie with them when they napped. Lucy kept sniffing him as if trying to pick up the scent of whatever mental disorder had Josh behaving so oddly, but for Josh it was a perfect time, a day to capture in his mind and remember forever.

  When he put the dogs to bed in their box that night, he sang them to sleep with “Silent Night,” and he would have sworn that as they closed their eyes, they all gave him a drowsy look of thanks.

  “Good night, puppies. Tonight’s the last night. You okay, Rufus?” Josh petted the little dog with the spot over his eye, who was curled up against little Lola but not really sleeping. “I know you miss Cody,” Josh told him, “but you’ll be with a new family tomorrow and you’re supposed to cherish the time we had together and not mourn its passing.” The words sounded hollow and, well, stupid to Josh. This had been a perfect day with his dogs and tomorrow would not be. That was the lesson here.

  He woke up early the next morning, showered and shaved, and then cleaned the house.

  He didn’t spend all morning standing in the window, but Kerri would not know that because that’s what he was doing when she pulled in the driveway. She got out of her car, a clipboard in her hand, and stared at him standing there without waving to him.

  “Here we go.” Josh sighed.

  NINETEEN

  “I have the people scheduled at staggered times,” Kerri advised when he opened the door. “But they don’t always come when they are supposed to, which means several could show up at once. If that happens, could you maybe help with the paperwork? It’s just signing the forms—everyone has already been through the approval process.”

  “Good to see you, too, Kerri,” Josh muttered under his breath. It was good to see her; she had on the white sweater from Thanksgiving and black pants and looked striking.

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing.” He walked over to her and she held her clipboard across her chest like a shield. The message was clear, and Josh kept several feet between them, though a chance flicker of breeze granted him the favor of a fleeting waft of her perfume.

  Sure lost interest in me in a hurry, he thought to himself.

  “First one is Sophie,” Kerri said, her tone perfunctory and all business. She reached into her purse and pulled out a green collar with a little red ball on it. “This is the Christmas collar, isn’t it cute?”

  “Do I let the people in my house, or bring the puppies out here, or what?”

  “Maybe when they come, just go in and get their dog,” Kerri suggested. “You can put the collar on them right before you bring them out. Experience tells us that the puppies will chew them right off each other if we put them on too soon.”

  “Okay.” Josh shoved his hands in his pockets. “Think it will be a white Christmas?”

  She gave him a level gaze and he looked away from it, hating the sick way his stomach dropped in the face of the coldness in her eyes.

  Mercifully, a car pulled up just then. A middle-aged couple in the front seat peered at the house with the uncertain expressions of people who weren’t sure they were in the right place.

  “Are you the Sherwoods?” Kerri asked.

  “Yeah, is this the place for the dogs?” the man replied.

  “I’m Jody and he’s Andy,” the woman elaborated with a glance at her husband. They all shook hands, Josh looking them up and down. They were attractive people, but how did he know they would be good parents to Sophie?

  “Our youngest just left for college,” Andy explained as if answering Josh’s mentally expressed question. “So we’ve got sort of an empty nest.”

  “You think she’d rather have a toy mouse or a ball?” Jody asked, peering into a bag.

  “Probably either.” Josh smiled, remembering how many dog toys he’d brought home for Lucy after his first trip to the store.

  “It’s Sophie,” Kerri informed Josh, her bossy tone of voice a perfect match to the officious-looking clipboard in her hands.

  “I’ll get her,” Josh said, his voice matching Kerri’s.

  Inside, the dogs had decided the time had come for a determined assault on the bookshelf and had dragged a T. Jefferson Parker novel out to destroy. “Hey, you guys,” Josh chided gently. He found a Thomas Perry and a Michael Connelly in fairly chewed condition, too. They had good taste in crime fiction. “Okay, Sophie,” he whispered gently. He picked up the squirming little dog. “Say good-bye to your brothers and sister.” He snapped the collar in place and Sophie began twisting her head, trying to get at this new toy.

  The puppies were busy wrestling over a torn book jacket and took no interest in their sister’s departure. Their mother was lying on her pillow and Josh held Sophie out to Lucy for a nose-to-nose farewell. Sophie licked and nipped at her mother, who looked away in disgust. She got to her feet, though, when Josh opened the front door, bounding out to greet Kerri and to sniff at the Sherwood family.

  “We’re all set here,” Kerri called, waving the clipboard at Josh.

  “There you are, there’s our baby,” Jody crooned. She pulled Sophie out of Josh’s hands and the puppy kissed her face. “I love the white tip at the end of her tail, her little white tip.” She laughed. “Look at the collar, isn’t it the cutest?”

  “Very cute,” Andy affirmed drolly.

  Josh swallowed and nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Jody gave Sophie a toy kangaroo. It seemed pretty silly to have a kangaroo in Colorado, but Sophie didn’t seem to mind.

  As the car pulled away, little Sophie sat in Jody’s lap, staring at Josh and Lucy in what he felt certain was complete befuddlement, and that’s what broke him. He turned away from Kerri so she wouldn’t see his tears. Lucy came to his side, nosing his hand in concern.

  “Josh…” Kerri said softly.

  “Why do we do this?” he grated hoarsely. “Did you see Sophie’s face? Why do we think we have the right to break up families?”

  “We’re not breaking families, we’re making families,” Kerri said.

  Josh forced himself under control, taking his breaths in deep gulps.

  Kerri was watching him steadily with her clear blue eyes. “I know that right now it seems sad that the puppies are leaving each other, but I promise you that Sophie’s going to be so, so happy. They all are.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because being with us is a dog’s purpose, Josh. We bred the species to be that way—the ones that didn’t want to live with people weren’t allowed to reproduce. So after thousands of years, it’s literally in their blood. If you could see some of the feral dogs we pick up, you’d understand. Living away from humans, even in a dog pack, is unnatural for them. They aren’t happy.”

  “Is this another one of your speeches you give?”

  She blinked as if he’d tried to slap her. “No,” she replied in a smal
l voice.

  A familiar SUV pulled in the driveway. It was Matt, Josh’s neighbor, with his little girl, Juliet. Kerri handed him another Christmas collar. “I’ll get Lola,” Josh told them. Lucy wagged at the new arrivals, sitting and letting Juliet pet her.

  When he came back out of the house, something told him to put Lola down on the lawn, and when he did Juliet knelt and the puppy bounded across the yellow grass and straight into the little girl’s arms. Part of Josh’s resentment melted away as he watched their joyous coming together. Whatever else happened that day, this part felt right.

  “That was like watching a dog food commercial,” Josh remarked, joining the adult people. Matt was signing Kerri’s paper.

  “It’s all she asked for this Christmas,” Matt replied. He handed the clipboard to Kerri and held his hand out to Josh. “Much obliged.”

  “Sure,” Josh said.

  As they left, Josh crossed his arms. It felt colder.

  “I have a feeling that Lola’s going to be hugged for forty-eight straight hours,” Kerri observed happily.

  Josh didn’t reply.

  “Did that help? Seeing the little girl, how happy the two of them were together?”

  Josh couldn’t think of an answer to her question that wouldn’t carry a sharp edge to it. He resented being talked down to. He wasn’t a mental case.

  “We get dogs all year round,” Kerri told him. “You can have one or two or three, anytime.”

  “I don’t want future dogs, I want my dogs,” Josh responded dully. Nobody understood.

  “Next one is Rufus,” Kerri said after a long silence, the hostility firmly reestablished between them.

  As it turned out, Rufus was not next. Instead, after a long wait, Oliver’s new owner came, an older man whose craggy face broke into a wide smile when Josh brought the little dog out. He looked like a lot of the men of Evergreen, wearing layered mountain garb and heavy boots. His SUV had a multifunction rack on top with clamps for skis and for a kayak, and there was a large, heavy-looking backpack visible through the rear window.