“They are such good dogs,” said Ellie, as a means of initiating conversation.
“Some of the time,” said Kelly, who had walked to the gate.
“Well, they’re certainly on their best behavior here.”
“They like it here,” said Kelly, pushing through the gate into the open space. Ellie followed and then fell into step beside her. Kelly continued to look straight ahead.
“I’m sorry,” said Ellie, “about James.”
“Yes,” said Kelly. “Everybody’s sorry.”
Ellie looked at the ground, as if she might find what to say next hidden in the trampled blades of grass. “He was a talented boy.”
Kelly, who had moved a few steps ahead of Ellie, didn’t turn around to face Ellie when she said, “Yes. He simply picked the wrong girl to fall in love with.”
Ellie stopped walking. She had no adequate response to Kelly’s comment because it was taking its time sinking into her mind. Is that what it was? Did he simply pick the wrong girl? If he had picked someone who loved him back, would he be alive and with her right now? And would Emmanuel be alive, walking the halls of William Chester High School, his arm casually draped around Nanette’s tiny shoulders as they moved together from class to class? Teenage love, with its ardent feelings of complete and eternal devotion, had flirted with James Shulz and then cast him aside. Was there anything, at seventeen, more devastating than unrequited passion? Romantic rejection made people of all ages crazy. It made people with access to guns dangerous and deadly. Ellie watched Kelly walk toward the circle of dogs. She called for Abbott and Costello and led them away from the group. A minute later she and her dogs had disappeared into the woods.
Ellie slowly walked toward the group that Kelly had just left. She said a quick hello to the women with familiar faces and then called to Buffy. “We’re heading off for a quick loop,” she said, by way of explanation, as a reason for not staying longer. “Too much to do today.”
One woman in the group, someone Ellie had seen only once or twice before, spoke. “I saw you talking with James Shulz’s mom,” she said. “God, she must feel awful.”
“We all do,” said Ellie, turning away and walking toward the same path Kelly had chosen. If Ellie had gone in the other direction, the odds of meeting up with Kelly and her dogs would have increased. Ellie took her phone from her pocket and texted Joan and Alice:
Just ran into Kelly Shulz at dog park. Made a fool of myself.
Alice, who had her phone with her all day and on her bedside table at night, replied: I doubt it. I’m sure u were nice. These things take time.
Ellie heard from Joan almost an hour later, when Buffy was at home sleeping on her bed and Ellie, freshly showered and dressed for calling on clients, was walking out the door.
Kelly is not easy to talk to, even in the best of times. Remember how quiet she was when we were all working together? Don’t be too hard on yourself. Lunch next Wednesday, right?
Right, Ellie texted. Thanks—I’m already looking forward to it. Ellie put her phone in her cup holder and backed out of the garage. She pulled out onto the street, drove through Dunkin’ Donuts for a second cup of coffee, and to the other side of town to Diana’s Pet Supply. Even if Diana didn’t need a bookkeeper, Ellie needed more dog food for Buffy.
Diana’s Pet Supply was a freestanding wood building. It had been a fruit and vegetable market and then a craft store before Diana had opened the business at the end of summer. And while Ellie and her husband, Chris, had read about the pet store in the newspaper and agreed that they should patronize the local store rather than travel ten miles down the highway to the nearest PetSmart, they hadn’t yet been there. Ellie had been thinking about approaching Diana as a potential client ever since the first week she opened, but Ellie had, as she did with many things, put it off.
A pleasant-sounding electronic bell chimed when Ellie pushed through the glass door and walked into the shop. It smelled like a pet owner’s home, like earth, grass, and slightly damp warmth. A woman who looked to be in her mid-to-late forties—although Ellie, who had just turned forty-eight, thought it was getting harder and harder to tell the vintage of others as she herself aged—smiled at her from behind a long counter. She was shorter than Ellie—maybe Joan’s height—and had long brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail and light blue eyes that looked directly into Ellie’s, making an instant, intense connection. “Hey,” she said. “How can I help you this morning?”
Ellie approached the counter and thrust her hand into the space between them. “I’m Ellie Fagen,” she said.
“And I’m Diana McGuire,” said Diana, taking Ellie’s hand in hers. “Nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you, as well,” said Ellie. “I’ve been meaning to get in here since you opened in August.”
“So, today is the day,” said Diana, her lips pulling into a slight smile.
Ellie smiled in return, feeling a warm flush in her face, a flutter in her stomach. “It is, indeed,” she said. “I’m actually here for two reasons. One is to buy dog food, and the other is to see if you need any help keeping your books.”
“I can definitely help you with the dog food,” said Diana, walking out from behind the counter. “What kind of dog do you have, and what does he/she eat currently?”
“Buffy is a golden retriever,” said Ellie, following Diana down a short aisle. “And she eats whatever my husband picks up on sale at PetSmart.”
“Ah,” said Diana. “We can certainly make some improvements to that game plan.”
Together, they looked at the variety of dog food stacked on the pet store shelves. Diana talked about manufacturer reliability and guarantees, the balance between protein and fat, the essential vitamins and minerals, and the difference in price. And then she asked Ellie what kind of services she provided as a bookkeeper and how much she charged by the hour. Their conversation, which was interrupted three times by other customers, lasted almost thirty minutes. At the end of it, Ellie had bought a twenty-pound bag of premium, all-natural dog food, and Diana had expressed an interest in Ellie’s managing the financial records and accounts for the store. Ellie whistled as she carried her purchase to the car. The sun was shining. The November air was warmer than it should have been. And at that very moment, Ellie felt content, alive, and confident. Had she been alone, she would have spun around in place. She hadn’t felt this sure about herself in a long time.
It was not that Ellie was insecure; she simply did not possess the Kilcullen family confidence. She was not extroverted like her brothers, lawyers, all of them, and father, a retired lawyer turned state senator. When they all walked into church on Sunday mornings—they all lived either in or within a half hour of Southwood and attended the same Roman Catholic church they had been raised in—every head in every pew turned to watch the procession. It was a sight on many accounts: First, on any given Sunday, the Kilcullen clan numbered at least twenty; second, Ellie’s older brothers were some of the most handsome men she knew. At church, they all dressed in blue blazers and subdued neckties; their wives, every bit as attractive as their spouses, dressed in skirts and heels, mostly, Ellie guessed, because that’s what Ellie’s mother wore. And the children were outfitted like their parents, especially noticeable in an age when jeans were acceptable everywhere. While Ellie was not usually impressed by the peacocks in the world, she loved the pageantry associated with the arrival of the Kilcullens at church, and she loved her family. As the youngest and the only female, Ellie was coddled by her older brothers, always had been, as well as her father, who, still, occasionally, bade her to sit on his lap for a minute at family gatherings. Ellie’s mother, Brigid, would admit to only her husband that she loved her daughter just a little bit more than her boys—she had, after all, wanted a girl badly enough to have seven children. But she did not, like the others, spoil Ellie. Brigid was wise, politically active, and deeply religious, and she expected her daughter to be the same.
This was not an eas
y task for Ellie, who, in spite of her Roman Catholic upbringing, did not subscribe to the church’s social agenda. Pope Francis was certainly shaking things up a bit, but the church had a long history of abuse and intolerance. Ellie had gone through a rebellious stage in college, when she refused to go to church. Drinking beer became her new religion, which was how she met her boyfriend turned husband. A rugby player on an unbeaten college team, Chris was always too busy celebrating on Saturday nights and hungover on Sunday mornings to attend church, even though he, too, had been raised in a Roman Catholic family. They went to church now—Ellie, Chris, and their two sons when they were home—but not with the same zeal as the rest of Ellie’s family. Ellie did it for her mother, more than anyone or anything else, because she admired Brigid’s unwavering tenacity, even if Ellie didn’t always agree with her beliefs.
All the Kilcullen children were expected to be at their parents’ large house on the river for dinner on the second Sunday of each month. Brigid had wanted them to come every Sunday, but her husband, Patrick, who had been sought out by his sons to intervene, had declared that one Sunday—in addition to all major holidays—was enough. Dinner was a midday event, with Bloody Marys at noon and the meal at one. The dress code, again at Patrick’s insistence, was casual. Everyone wore jeans and sweaters in the winter, when Brigid made a large roast of some sort, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, and pies for dessert, and shorts and T-shirts in the summer, when dinner around two large dining tables turned into a picnic on the Kilcullens’ expansive back lawn. True to her convictions and childhood traditions, Brigid, no matter what the weather, on Sundays wore a dress, conservative black heels, and her mother’s string of pearls, an outfit she remained in until after the festivities were over and the dishes were cleaned and back in their storage cupboards.
When Ellie got home from Diana’s Pet Supply, still feeling effervescent, she called Joan and then Alice and told them about securing a new account. As she expected, they told her how proud they were of her and how they could hardly wait to hear all about it at lunch. Ellie then made herself a cheese omelet, a brunch of sorts since she had not had much breakfast, which she ate while she read the newspaper. After eating, she took a large glass of ice water to her desk in the family room and worked for a few hours on setting up Diana’s account. By three o’clock, she needed a break and a cup of tea. While she waited for the water in the kettle to boil, she called her husband, who did paperwork in his gym office at William Chester when his student interaction time was over. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hi, honey,” he said. “What’s happening?”
“Not too much,” said Ellie. “Except I got a new account today.”
“No kidding,” said Chris. “The pet store?”
“Good memory. Yes.”
“Well, good for you,” he said. “It’s been an absolute madhouse around here today.”
“Yeah?” Ellie took a teabag from the drawer next to the stove and filled her favorite pottery mug with hot water. She dunked the teabag several times before setting it down in the kitchen sink.
“. . . One month anniversary of the shooting.”
“What?” Ellie said, reconnecting with the conversation that the school’s poor cell service had partially erased.
“It’s the month anniversary of the Sanchez shooting,” said Chris.
“Oh God, I’d forgotten,” said Ellie. “How could I have forgotten?”
“Well, two girls in one of my classes didn’t forget. They came in crying, which might or might not have been a ploy to avoid participation in class. A few of the boys were upset, too. Unfortunately, the way some boys avoid exhibiting sadness is by acting like jerks. One of them hit the aggressive switch and whaled on everyone in dodgeball today. I finally had to tell him to take five in my office.”
Chris had taught gym, or, as he called it, physical education, at the high school for nearly fifteen years. Some people, like Ellie’s brothers, thought his job was a joke. But Chris took it very seriously, which made the Kilcullen family show him a modicum of respect. In truth, the Kilcullen boys might have been tough on Chris no matter what his chosen occupation, since Ellie’s siblings thought no one was good enough for their sister. They had softened over the years, with their impressions of a gorilla in Chris’s presence occurring now only once or twice a year. Chris didn’t let it bother him. In some ways, they were dead on. Chris was a big guy with long, strong arms. He drank his fair share of beer, and he watched a staggering amount of sports on television, from Irish rugby matches to the men’s downhill races in the winter Olympics. When Chris was home, ESPN dominated the large-screen television in their family room, which was connected to their kitchen. Ellie had grown accustomed to the noise over the years. She was able to tune out a lot of things.
“Dinner tonight?”
Ellie turned her attention to her grocery list on the kitchen counter. “I’ve got to run out to the store. Um . . . how about fish?”
Ellie could hear the disgruntled look on her husband’s face in his voice when he said, “Didn’t we just have fish?”
“We had crab cakes last week. I’m not sure that counts, Chris.”
“Fine,” he said. “But can you do something like put cheese on it?”
Ellie laughed. They both loved cheese, all kinds. “I might be able to manage that,” she said. Alice had e-mailed her a recipe for fish, with mayonnaise, sliced onions, sliced tomatoes, and cheese. It was the one fish dish, Alice had told Ellie and Joan, that her entire family enjoyed. Ellie wrote the ingredients along with several other items on her list. She grabbed her cloth grocery bags from the kitchen closet and her keys from the set of hooks hanging over the dog’s food and water dishes, all the while replaying in her mind her encounter with Diana earlier that day.
CHAPTER 12
Joan, who had researched restaurants at the casino and texted Alice and Ellie to meet her at Asian Fusion for sushi or a ton of other choices, was the first to arrive. She was shown to a black enamel table close to the host station and to three other tables, one of which was already occupied. Joan had to squeeze between two of the tables to reach the black padded bench against the grass cloth-covered wall. She shook her coat off her shoulders and laid it on the bench next to her and then picked up the menu she had studied online, not as a means to decide what she wanted to eat—she had already done that—but to block out the woman talking on her cell phone no more than five feet away. Joan focused on the print. The sushi was touted as the freshest in the state, and Joan, who hadn’t been to a decent Japanese restaurant since her twentieth wedding anniversary dinner with Stephen in New York City, was excited by the prospect of cosmopolitan cuisine.
“. . . Is such a creep,” the woman said into her phone. “He actually groped me at the table. No, we were sitting on the same side. Yes, and before I knew what was happening, he had reached over, squeezed my breast, and stuck his tongue in my mouth.” Joan looked up from her menu and stared at the woman next to her. How, Joan wondered, could someone not know that was happening? The woman was in her early thirties, Joan guessed, with prematurely wrinkled skin, an inexpensive hair dye job, and heavily applied makeup. “I told him to fuck off. What did you think I did?” Joan scooted along the long bench she shared with the woman, reached over, and touched the woman on the shoulder. The woman wheeled around, looking both surprised and annoyed. “Can I help you?” she asked in an unhelpful tone. “I’m on the phone here.”
“Yes, that’s why I’ve approached you,” said Joan. “I’m terribly sorry about the unexpected turn of events on your date, but I am not interested in hearing any additional details. And I would appreciate it if you would end your conversation now or take it outside the restaurant.”
The woman widened her eyes at Joan. “I don’t have to take orders from you, lady. You’re not my mother.”
“Thank God for that,” said Joan, sliding out from behind the table and standing. She walked to the host stand, explained the problem, an
d returned to the table, followed by the hostess. “But you do have to take orders from her.” Joan used her index finger to point to the hostess.
“I’m sorry, miss,” the hostess said. “But there is no talking on cell phones in the restaurant. I let it slide a moment ago, but you now must end your call.”
“Says who?” The hostess pointed to the sign next to her stand. “Bitches, both of you,” said the woman, as she stood. “Carrie, I’m going to have to call you back. I’ve been shut down by the cell phone police. Yeah, I know. Some people really don’t have anything to do except screw with other people.” She gave Joan and the hostess a protracted stare and then grabbed her purse and coat from the bench. Using her free hand, she gave them both the finger before walking out the door.
“I’m so sorry,” said the hostess. “We get all kinds here.”
“Thank you for taking care of that,” said Joan, turning her back on the hostess to return to her table. From her limited exposure to the casino, Joan knew the hostess was right; it did seem to attract all kinds of people. She thought back to the cancer fundraiser, when she and everyone else on the guest list had been dressed in formal attire and occupied a sequestered area. This was not the norm, Joan discovered today. For on her way from the parking lot to the restaurant, Joan had noticed that the great majority of people were dressed as if detouring to the casino halfway through their Saturday morning errands. They wore old jeans that had lost their shape, sweat pants and sweat shirts, tracksuits, tank tops, and T-shirts with slogans like “I’m with Stupid,” or “Ain’t Nobody Happy When I’m Not Happy.” Apparently, casinos would take anyone’s money.
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