The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge

by Stewart, Mariah

  Ellie sat still as a stone, wondering if she and the fox were about to have another face-to-face, but when she shifted her eyes to the right, she saw not the fox, but a small gray dog standing at the edge of the dune. It watched Ellie as she watched it before taking small, very tentative steps in her direction. Its little nose sniffed the air, and she realized it had been drawn by the scent of her sandwich.

  “Hey, pup.”

  At the sound of her voice, the dog cocked its head to one side. It paused for a moment, then took another few steps in Ellie’s direction. It was close enough for Ellie to see it had no collar.

  “Are you a runaway? Got out the back door when the kids left for school? Chased the mailman? What’s your story?”

  The dog came closer, and without thinking, Ellie broke off a piece of her sandwich and extended her hand in the dog’s direction.

  “Are you hungry, pup?”

  Its eyes downcast, the dog crept nearer until it was almost to the food. Then it raised its head and looked at her as if waiting for assurance that the morsel was truly meant for it.

  “It’s okay. Take it. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.” She leaned forward, her arm outstretched, and the dog took the food so gingerly that Ellie wasn’t sure it was actually gone. The dog sat at her feet, chewed and swallowed, then looked up at her hopefully.

  “Another piece?” She broke off another bit of sandwich. The dog wagged its stub of a tale and waited patiently for her to offer it. “You have lovely manners, you know that? Someone has trained you very well.”

  The dog’s tale wagged more, and Ellie couldn’t resist giving it another bite, and then another, until the sandwich was all gone.

  “It’s okay,” she told the dog. “I can make myself another one.” She reached out her hand to touch the dog, and the dog met her halfway, nudging its head under her palm. What could she do but pet it? “You’re a cutie, but I’ll bet someone is out looking for you right at this very moment, so you should probably be on your way now.”

  Ellie looked skyward as a breeze blew across the beach, almost flattening the grasses.

  “It’s going to rain soon and it’s getting cooler. You should scoot along home now. You don’t want to get caught in the storm.”

  Ellie rose and took her last sip of coffee. “Where’s your collar?” she asked. “If you had a collar with some tags on it, I could call your owner and let them know where you are.”

  She walked over the dune and onto the road, the little dog at her heels.

  “No, you can’t come with me. Go on home, now. And stay off the dunes, hear? You don’t want to run into that fox. He might think you look a little too much like lunch.”

  Ellie kept walking, the dog trailing her at a distance. When she reached her driveway, she turned and told the dog, “Seriously. You need to go home. Someone is worried about you. I know I would be, if you were my little dog.”

  She leaned down and patted the dog on the head one last time, then walked to her front door and went through it, leaving the dog at the foot of the driveway.

  “It’ll go home now,” she told herself. “It was just waiting to see if there would be more food to mooch.”

  Ellie was torn between starting on the kitchen or the dining room walls. They would all have to be scraped, she trusted Cameron on that, but which would be the best place to start?

  Probably the kitchen, she decided. Getting the walls stripped down as well as the floor would be time-consuming and messy, maybe the messiest task.

  Start with the floor, she reasoned. Cameron said there was nice wood under the old linoleum, so maybe we rip up a piece of the crappy floor and see what we can find.

  Sounded like a plan.

  She began in the butler’s pantry, working on the area where Cam had lifted the linoleum to reveal the pine floor. It took her all of the morning and part of the afternoon, but as it turned out, the old floor wasn’t so hard to remove after all. Surprisingly, the tiny black iron nails that held down the flooring popped mostly without resistance. By noon, the pantry floor was back to its original pine, in need of a good cleaning, but she could see the beauty of the wood. When she talked to Cameron again, she’d ask him the best way to clean that floor and she’d tell him that there’d been no glue used when the floor in the pantry had been put down. She hoped that proved true in the kitchen as well.

  A clap of thunder caused her to jump nearly out of her skin, and she realized she’d been working in total silence. She found her iPod at the bottom of her bag and scrolled through her playlist until she found some tunes she could work to. She bundled the ripped-up flooring and put it out on the back porch. She’d call the town hall to find out how best to dispose of it, but for now, it could stay where she left it.

  The rain was falling harder and slanted toward one side of the house. She was happy to close the door behind her and shivered as she returned to the warmth of the kitchen. She put on a pot of coffee, determined to take a little break, and went upstairs to grab a sweatshirt to pull over her turtleneck. On the way back downstairs, she paused and looked out through the front windows and was relieved to find the little dog gone from the lawn. She hoped it had made it home before the storm hit. It really had been a very cute little thing.

  The mail truck came down the street and she walked to the door to see if it would pause at her mailbox. She stood watching for a moment, listening to the sounds of the storm outside, the howling of the wind and the pine branches scratching at the glass. She started to turn from the window when she looked down, and saw a gray mass huddled near the door.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she said aloud.

  She reached for the doorknob, then hesitated for a second before she ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, and returned in a moment with a pile of towels. She opened the door and scooped up the shivering animal and brought it inside wrapped in a towel.

  “I thought I told you to go home. I know that your people are worried about you. What were you thinking, taking off like that from wherever it was you came from?”

  She rubbed the dog dry with the first towel, but the shivering didn’t stop.

  “You’re cold right through, aren’t you.” She carried the dog into the kitchen and sat it on the floor next to the sink while she ran warm water. She lifted the little dog into the sink and ran warm water over its back. The water ran brown with dirt.

  “No doggie shampoo here, so we’re going to have to go with the stuff I use for the dishes. Sorry, pal, but that’s all I’ve got.” She lathered up the dog’s fur, then rinsed off the suds. Dark specks that did not look like dirt floated in the water. Ellie peered closer. Some of the specks appeared to be swimming.

  “Fleas? Seriously? I bring you in from the cold and you bring me fleas?” Ellie grimaced. “Okay, we’re going to have to run through this routine again. Maybe there are more.…”

  There were. She washed and rinsed several times more until no new culprits appeared in the water and all had been sent down the drain.

  “Your owner is going to thank me for ridding her—or him—of those pesky little bloodsuckers. And you’re going to thank me, too, because you won’t be scratching.”

  She picked up the dog, set it on a towel she’d placed on the floor, and dried it off with a second towel.

  “Ah, you’re a little girl, I see. And your coat’s not so dark now that it’s clean. You’re really quite a lovely silvery color.” Ellie continued to dry the dog’s fur. “You’re a good little dog and very cute, but you have a home somewhere and we’re going to have to find it.” She bit her lip. “Not sure the best way to go about doing that.”

  The dog leaned up and licked Ellie’s chin.

  “Oh, you’re welcome. I’m glad you feel better. We’ll keep you warm and dry this afternoon, but then we’ll have to find your home.”

  The dog licked her chin again.

  Ellie piled the dry towels on the floor and placed the dog on top. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the table.r />
  “You can curl up right there while I drink my coffee and call the police department and see if anyone reported a missing dog.”

  She pulled up the town’s website on her iPhone, then punched in the numbers for the town hall. She was transferred twice before talking to someone who took her name and number and promised to call if anyone reported a missing dog, but so far, no one had.

  “Maybe you sneaked out when your owner left for work and no one realized you’d gone.” Ellie turned to the dog, who sat up on the pile of towels. “In the meantime, I have a job to do, so you can just sit right there while I work on this floor.”

  The dog whined.

  “Sorry, I don’t have any more cooked sausage and I’m not giving it to you raw.” She watched the dog that was watching her and seemed to be waiting for something. “Are you thirsty? Would you like some water?”

  The dog wagged its tale as if it understood.

  “Water it is.” Ellie took a small bowl from the cupboard and filled it with cool water, then placed it on the floor. The dog drank until the bowl was empty.

  “Wow. You were thirsty.”

  The dog wagged its tail and returned to its nest atop the towels.

  “How long were you out there, anyway?” Ellie knelt down next to the dog and smoothed the fur on the top of its head. “More than just today, I’m thinking.”

  The dog curled up, closed its eyes, and went to sleep. Ellie finished her coffee, and encouraged by her success that morning, went to work peeling up pieces of the kitchen floor.

  By four in the afternoon, the rain had stopped, the wind died down, the sun came out, and the dog woke up.

  “Good timing on your part,” Ellie told the dog. “You probably need to go out right about now.”

  The dog followed Ellie to the back door and went down the steps into the grass.

  “I wish I knew what to call you, friend,” Ellie murmured, and watched the dog run around the yard for several minutes. Her phone began to ring and she answered without looking at the ID. Maybe, she thought, someone called the police department about the dog.

  “What’s cooking?” Carly asked when she heard Ellie’s voice. “How’s everything going?”

  “Pretty good. Just spent the past two weeks working my little fingers to the bone trying to clean and organize this house. Lucky for me I’m not allergic to dust.” Ellie put her hand over the phone and whistled. The dog stopped sniffing the tall grass at the rear of the property, turned, looked toward the house, then ran full tilt to the porch. “What are you up to?”

  “Just got back from a quick trip to London to look over some paintings the gallery was interested in. They were lovely, but upon close inspection, my expert eye recognized them to be fakes.”

  “Good girl! What a good girl you are!” Ellie praised the little dog after she ran up the steps and sat at Ellie’s feet, wagging her tail happily.

  “Why, yes. Yes, I am.” There was a pause on the line. “You know, you have an odd way of phrasing things sometimes.”

  Ellie laughed. “Sorry, Carly. I was talking to the dog.”

  “Dog? What dog?”

  “The dog I found on the beach this morning that followed me home and waited on my front porch until I capitulated and took her in.”

  “What kind of dog? What’s her name?”

  “She’s … I don’t know, some sort of terrier maybe. Small and light gray, a little white on her chest. Little stubby tail and floppy ears. Cutest thing. No collar, no tags, so I have no idea what her name is.”

  “Well, what are you calling her?”

  “ ‘Girl’ is the closest I’ve come to calling her anything.”

  “Well, that won’t do. She needs a name.”

  “She’s got one, and somewhere, someone knows it. I’m not keeping her. She’s just staying here until I can find her owner.”

  “Still, she needs to be called something. Where did you find her? On the beach?”

  “She kinda appeared on the dune.”

  “Dune, then. Call her Dune.”

  “I think she knows ‘Girl.’ She wags her tail when I called her that.”

  “She needs something better than that. Call her Dune.”

  “Sure. Okay.” Ellie shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. As if the dog would be there long enough to recognize Dune as her name. “Dune it is.”

  “I can’t wait to see her. She sounds adorable.”

  “Well, unless you expect to be here within the next twenty-four hours, you’re probably going to miss out. I called the police and left my number so that the owner can contact me. I’m sure whoever owns her is frantic to find her.”

  “How long ago did you find her?”

  “Around eight this morning.”

  “And no one’s gotten frantic yet?”

  “I’m thinking maybe she got out when her owner left for work this morning and hasn’t been missed yet.”

  “I suppose that’s a possibility. But …”

  “But …?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t belong to anyone. Maybe she’s a stray.”

  “No chance. This dog has been well trained. She has excellent manners. No, she belongs to someone who cared enough about her to teach her how to behave. Someone is missing her. This is a small town. Sooner or later, her owner will be looking for her.”

  “In that case, don’t get too attached,” Carly warned. “You never had a dog before, so you don’t know how quickly they become part of your life, or how much you can love them.”

  “I don’t expect to have her long enough to become attached.” Ellie paused and heard Carly yawn. “You sound really tired.”

  “Beat to a pulp,” Carly admitted. “Too much travel, not enough days in between trips.”

  “Maybe you should plan on taking some time off.”

  “I’m taking off tomorrow, as a matter of fact.”

  “Any special plans?”

  “I’m visiting my BFF in her new home. That is, if she doesn’t have any plans of her own …”

  “Really? You’re coming here? To St. Dennis?”

  “I am. You know how my curiosity always gets the best of me. I can’t stand not seeing your new house or that idyllic little bayside town you’re calling home these days.”

  “Yay! When will you get here? How long can you stay?”

  “I think it’ll probably be sometime tomorrow afternoon by the time I get my act together and get on the road.”

  “Oh, cool. You’ll be here for Sunday.”

  “What’s happening on Sunday?”

  “St. Dennis’s First Families Day. Sort of like founders’ day, from what I understand. I don’t know exactly what they do, but everyone I’ve met down here keeps telling me I have to go.”

  “Cool. We’ll do it.”

  “Want me to give you directions?”

  “GPS, El.”

  “Right. So how long do you think you can stay?”

  “Maybe till Monday. I have something tentatively scheduled for Tuesday in Philadelphia, but we’ll see. I’m hoping we can move that up so I can take a few extra days. Assuming it’s all right with you.”

  “Of course. Stay as long as you can. I can’t wait to see you.”

  “I can’t wait, either. I’m dying to see that fabulous little town—and of course, Miss Dune. You, too.”

  “I doubt the dog will still be here. I totally expect someone to call tonight when they get home and find her missing and call the police department.”

  “Well, I’m hoping they’re out of town for the weekend so I can meet her. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed having a dog since Bowser crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.”

  “Is that a euphemism for …?”

  “See, if you’d had a dog even once, you’d know. You’d know and you’d understand.”

  “My father wouldn’t let us have a dog. He didn’t think animals belonged in the house.”

  “Just goes to show what he knows.” Carly yawned. “Sorry.”
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br />   “Hang up and go right to bed, get lots of sleep so you can make the drive tomorrow without falling asleep at the wheel.”

  “Good point. I’ll give you a call if I think I’ll be later than three tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Great. Have a safe trip, Car.”

  “Will do.”

  Ellie disconnected the call and left the phone on the coffee table.

  “What should I do first?” she wondered aloud, then realized that she was talking to the dog.

  “I’m talking to a dog.”

  The newly christened Dune tilted her head to one side.

  “I’ll bet that’s nothing new to you. I’ll bet your people talk to you all the time because you’re such a good listener.”

  Ellie got up from the sofa and looked around the room. “Things look pretty good in here and in the dining room. The kitchen can wait until the morning. Of course, the floor in there is partially ripped up, but that can’t be helped. So I’m thinking that now is a good time to get a room ready for Carly.” She started toward the stairs and the dog followed her. “Which room do you think? The one next to mine, or the one across the hall?”

  Dune’s nails tapped on the hardwood as she kept up with Ellie.

  “Right. The one across the hall. That’s what I was thinking, too. So she’ll have her own bathroom. Good choice.”

  Ellie stripped the bed of its sheets and the faded green chenille bedspread and took the whole pile to the first floor, where she stuffed it all into a laundry basket that had spent the past who-knew-how-many years in a closet on the second floor, and left it near the front door. First thing in the morning, she’d make a run to the Laundromat. Maybe she’d even make a stop at the supermarket to pick up a small bouquet of flowers. She’d put them in one of the art pottery vases she found in the pantry and place them on the table next to the bed in the room she—and Dune—had selected for Carly.