by Beth Andrews
Sam dropped the remainder of her hamburger in the bag. “You’re giving me a sugar rush, Jesse.”
“Do you know that I was scheduled to go off to college when Carl asked me to marry him?”
Sam stopped crinkling paper.
Jesse looked out the window to the backyard that Sam was sure she didn’t see. “Carl and I went together all through high school, and afterward, he was going to Cal Poly, just up the road. I had a full ride scholarship to Princeton.” She patted her hair. “What can I say? Math’s my anomaly.
“Anyway, the summer after graduation, Carl’s dad was killed in a car wreck on Coast Highway. His mom was a mess. Carl had to take over the café.
“When I told him I was staying to help, he told me I was going to Princeton, if he had to carry me over his shoulder and take me there himself. So I went.” Her mouth tightened. “I hated it. The people were stuffy, the weather was dismal and I missed Carl and Widow’s Grove like a piece of me had been torn away. By November, I had enough. I packed my stuff and drove back here—hardly stopping until I parked in the lot of the café. I walked in, and at the top of my lungs told Carl that if he didn’t marry me, I was driving to Pismo and throwing myself off the pier.”
Sam smiled, imagining what that would have done to Jesse’s hair. “So? Did you get wet?”
Jesse shrugged. “Okay, so I got a little dramatic. But once he got over being mortified, he asked me to marry him. Right there, in front of a roomful of people.”
At her sweet smile, something pinched in Sam’s chest. But when she tried to imagine staying in one place for years and years, claustrophobia expanded like an octopus’s ink cloud. What was it about this town that made people hate to leave it? First Nick, now Jesse and Carl. Sam made a mental note to drink nothing but bottled water from then on.
“Jess, I’m glad for your ‘happily ever after’ story. I really am. But don’t you ever, on a bad day, look around you and think about the road you didn’t take? I mean, jeez, woman, you could have—”
“Could have what? Been some egghead math whiz at the Pentagon? Been a professor at a university? Yeah, maybe I could have.” She put her forearms on the table. “So, what? What good is a gift, if it doesn’t make you happy?
“I’m not unaware, Sam. I know I look like a cliché—the ditzy blonde waitress in the diner.” She raised her hand to her neck, checking for any stray hair that dared to fall out of her sprayed helmet. “But you know what? I don’t care. I am exactly where I want to be, doing what makes me happy, with the man who makes me happier.” She sat back with a moony smile. “Isn’t that what everyone wants? Happiness?”
Maybe happily ever afters could happen, outside of kids’ books. But they sure didn’t happen to biker chicks hauling her kind of baggage. “I’m truly happy for you, Jess. But what is right for you doesn’t work for me.” Sam stood and gathered the garbage that littered the table. “Besides, you’re wrong. I’m not alone. I’ve got you.”
“You do.” Jesse stood. “But I refuse to give up. I’ll keep nudging in my oh-so-charming way, and you can tell me to shut up anytime.”
“Jess, a bulldozer ‘nudges.’ You’re more like a force of nature.”
“Why, thank you, darlin’. I think that’s the nicest thing that’s ever been said of me. Listen, I want to help with the remodel, but I don’t want to break a nail if I can help it....” She pulled a nail file and polish from her purse. “Are you sure you don’t want to do your toes with me?”
Sam snorted. “How did I end up friends with a poodle like you? Never mind, that was a rhetorical question.” She left Jesse to her toes, and went to find Carl.
The afternoon passed quickly. They demolished ceilings in the remaining two rooms and hauled the debris to the two oversize Dumpsters that had been delivered. Carl seemed a sweet man, though a quiet one. But considering his spouse, his silence was probably self-preservation.
Watching the couple walk arm-in-arm to their car hours later, Sam felt a stab of loneliness. She’d learned today that happy endings could happen. But for some reason, knowing it didn’t make her feel better.
* * *
THAT EVENING, SAM sank onto her back stoop and settled her napkin-wrapped sandwich on her lap. “You were right, Dad, I am a porch potato.” She missed being in the outdoors all day, traveling on the bike. Being in nature grounded her, helping her keep perspective; her problems were small put up on the backdrop of the timeless earth. After a day working indoors, she’d always gravitated to the porch.
But not all her porch memories were good. Following her dad’s funeral, she couldn’t make herself care what came next, so she’d taken bereavement leave from work. During the day, she’d float around her empty rooms, a becalmed ship. In the evening, she’d sit on the porch, where she and her father had spent so many sundowns. But when night closed in like a cold, comfortless blanket, there was only howling emptiness. Many mornings, the sun found her stiff and cold on the back step.
“Grrrrine?”
The sound snapped her from the past.
The shrub at the edge of her property rustled.
The half-eaten sandwich fell from her lap. She pulled herself up by the support post to crouch on the step, ready for flight. Or fight.
“Grrrrine?”
A pink-white muzzle poked from the shadows.
Wolves aren’t white. Neither are coyotes. Just the same, she reached for the hammer, her constant companion since Brad’s visit.
A white head emerged. Wrinkled skin hung from drooping jowls. Small crumpled ears. Pugnacious nose. She’d been so prepared for a snarling predator that it took her a minute to place the features. A bulldog?
The dog emerged from under the bush, scooting on its belly. It pulled itself upright and teetered on short legs. “Grrrrine?” It took a wavering step, then another.
Sam tightened her grip on the hammer. It didn’t have to be wild to be mean. Or rabid.
One slow waddling step at a time, the dog crossed the yard, never looking at her directly.
White and pink? What kind of dog was pink? And red. An open gash bisected the length of its short back, angry and inflamed. She winced.
As the dog neared, she understood its piebald coloring. Pink skin showed through the fur in gaping, scaly patches.
“Mange?” A thread of pity mingled with revulsion.
The dog stopped and cocked its head. “Grrrrine?” It dropped onto its belly and pulled itself the few feet to the steps, stumpy tail going like a manic metronome.
Dogs didn’t wag their tails, then bite—did they? Never having owned one, she wasn’t sure. Eyes downcast, the dog shot her tentative glances from under expressive eyebrows.
Maybe if she gave it something it would go away. Still clenching the hammer, Sam inched her other hand to where her sandwich lay scattered on the dirty porch boards. Pulling out a piece of bologna, she tossed it at the dog.
Jaws snapped so fast Sam jerked back.
The dog ducked and cringed.
Someone had abused this hideous animal. Pity beat out revulsion. “Damn.”
Taking her statement as forgiveness, the dog’s tail started up again. It looked directly at her for the first time, a look of love in its eyes.
At least, that’s what she thought it was. She tossed the rest of the sandwich the few feet between them. The dog wolfed it in one bite.
“That’s all I have. Now go away.” To be clear, she made shooing movements with her hands.
“Grrrrine.”
The whimper sounded like, “Mine.”
The dog rolled over, showing her a dirty, mangy belly. And that it was male.
“Oh, no. Uh-uh.” She stood, brushing her hands on the seat of her jeans. “I’m a short-timer, dog. Go find a local to sweet-talk.”
It lay, dirt sticking to lol
ling lips, eyes closed, panting.
Sam turned, took the last step, then crossed the porch to the door. She snuck a look over her shoulder.
The dog hadn’t moved.
Jerking the door open, she walked in the kitchen, letting the screen door slap behind her. Stepping to the sink, she grabbed a clean glass from the drain board, filled it and drank. Then looked out the window.
The dog hadn’t moved.
It was sick. Probably feverish from infection in that gash.
She crossed to the refrigerator, opened it. Leaning on the door, she peered in, looking for an alternate dinner choice. She had to remember to get more bologna at the store. And bread. And...
The way the mangy mutt was lying, that cut would be in the dirt.
“Oh, hell.” Straightening, she slammed the door. She crossed to the window and looked out.
The dog hadn’t moved.
If it died there, she’d have to bury it.
“I don’t have time for this.” She snatched her cereal bowl from the drain board and filled it with water from the tap. Careful not to spill any, she carried the bowl outside and down the porch steps to set it down next to the oversize head.
Smelling the water, the dog struggled to stand. Balancing on shaking legs, it lowered its head to slurp the water, splashing more out than it drank.
When the bowl was empty, it looked up at her, panting, water and drool dripping from distended, liver-spotty lips. It lifted a broad paw, reached out and tapped her tennis shoe.
She stepped back.
“Grrrrine?”
It took a rigged sling and a lot of grunting and moaning, but a half hour later, the dog lay tucked in a blanket on the passenger-side floorboard of the Jeep as she drove into town. “I can’t stand to see anything suffer. I’ll take you to the vet, but then you’re on your own.”
A call to Jesse had yielded the name of a vet. He’d been closing when she called, but agreed to stay until she could get there. Just outside of town, she pulled into the parking lot of a small building. It looked like a doctor’s office from the ’60s. Large aluminum-framed windows gave a view of a lit, deserted reception area.
She shut down the engine and got out. Gravel crunched underfoot as she walked to the passenger side and opened the door. “Come on, mutt, let’s go.”
The dog lifted its head, but made no move to stand. Skin rippled as a shiver traveled the length of its body; then again. It laid its head on thick, gnarly-knuckled paws.
“How the heck I get myself into things like this...” She bent, wrapped the sling around the shaking, muscular body and lifted.
If felt like someone had hit her collarbone with a hammer. “Damn, you’re heavy.” She backed up and slammed the car door with her butt. “Mange just better not be catching, that’s all I’m saying.”
A tall, thin man with red hair opened the clinic door, and seeing her grimace, took the dog from her.
The lobby was just as she’d expected—cinder-block walls, green linoleum, orange plastic chairs lined up against the window and a Formica reception desk. Pine-scented disinfectant couldn’t mask the odor of years of four-legged patients.
She followed the veterinarian to an exam room. He looked the dog over thoroughly and determined that, in addition to mange, the dog had a raging infection and a bad case of dehydration. But even lying on the cold stainless exam table, the dog’s stump tail ticked at redline RPMs. An IV line snaked from a bag of saline to his front leg.
“Why didn’t you bring him in earlier?” The vet fiddled with the IV line.
Sam glanced up. “Not my dog. He crawled out of my bushes an hour ago.” She took a step to the door. “I really need to go—”
“Well, I’ll drive him to the pound when the infection clears, but...” As he straightened, the surgeon’s lamp glinted off hair the color of copper wire.
“But what?” She tucked her hands in the front pockets of her jeans.
“Well, if I take him down there with mange, purebred or no, he’s not likely to be adopted.”
The dog lifted his head and stared right at her. Drool stretched from distended lips to the exam table. His brow shifted with every eye movement, giving the liquid eyes an almost human expression of loving devotion. He laid his head back on the steel with a sigh.
She retreated a step toward the door. “Look, I’m committed here for ten months, max, then I’m in the wind. I’ve never owned an animal. Never wanted one. I—”
“Well, then, that shouldn’t be a problem. I can give you medicine for the mange. His coat will grow back in a few months, once the scabies are gone. You can take him to the pound when he’s all pretty again.” He dusted his hands, as if it were already decided. “You know what happens to unwanted animals at the pound, right?”
The dog lay still. Except for the tail.
She knew manipulation when she heard it. She didn’t have time for this. But the damn animal looked so pathetic. And she knew what it felt like, being a stray. “Oh, hell.” She took a step toward the table.
“You’re a good sport.” The vet ruffled the dog’s ears. “Thank you.”
“I’m a sucker.” She pulled her wallet from her back pocket. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. I volunteer time at the shelter, so I’d have seen him there for free, anyway.”
She leaned down to look the dog in the eye. “This is temporary, mutt. I just want you to know that up front, so there are no hard feelings later. Got it?”
The dog’s tongue shot out, aiming for her chin. She jerked back just in time. Maybe Jesse wants a pet. She straightened. “I don’t know the first thing about what to do with a dog.”
“Well, the first thing he needs is a name.” He ran his hand gently over the patchy coat. “You can’t call him ‘Not My Dog.’”
Sam considered. “How about Bugly? Because he is one butt-ugly animal.”
The dog raised its head, glanced at her, then away.
“Aww, I think you’ve hurt his feelings.” He scratched under the dog’s scaly pink chin.
Sam winced. Yuck. “Well, I’d hate to damage his delicate self-esteem. How about just Bugs, then?”
The dog panted in what looked like a smile.
“I think he approves.” The vet patted the dog’s side. “I’ve given him antibiotics in the IV, but you’ll need to give him pills for ten days. I have dust for the mites and ointment for when they’re gone. Then—”
“Hang on, I don’t even know what to feed it!” She grabbed a pad and pen from the counter. “You better start at the beginning.”
Once they arrived home, it took two days for Sam and the dog to negotiate the logistics of his sleeping arrangements. She began by closing him in the carriage house with vet-supplied dog food, water and a nest of packing blankets. When his panicked barking told her that was not acceptable, she tied a long rope to his vet-supplied collar, and left him tied to the back porch. With the same results. Grumbling, she brought him inside and made a bed for him in the closet under the stairs. He seemed to settle better there.
Until an hour later, when she bolted awake to a cold nose and dog breath in her face. Stumbling, stupid with sleep, she retrieved his blankets and made a pallet for him on the floor next to her bed.
He plopped there with what she hoped was a contented sigh, and was finally quiet.
Until the snoring began.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SAM AND THE DOG worked their way into a routine over the next few days. Sam erected a sturdy clothesline in the backyard, sinking the metal end-posts in concrete. She bought a braided wire running line at the pet store and clipped one end to the clothesline, the other to Bugs’s collar, well within the radius of the huge shade tree and a bowl of water. He slept most of the day away, presumably healing.
Monday dawned too pretty to spend amid the debris indoors. A perfect day to introduce herself to her neighbor in the Victorian cottage at the bottom of the hill.
Sam left Bugs napping and walked the gravel drive to the road, stopping to do a few stretches and practice deep breathing. Her collarbone didn’t hurt, as long as she didn’t pound nails with that hand, or pick up a dog. Her ribs had improved, as well.
She’d found that traveling quieted the tension that braided in the nerves of her spine. When her finances forced a sabbatical from the road, the wire vibrated, traveling through her body in a low-frequency thrumming that left her shoulders hunched near her ears and put a fine tremor in her hands. A white-noise background to her days, the tension owned the night. She’d toss and tear at the sheets, trying to relax. But her mind and body craved movement. The blessed exhaustion of walking was the only thing she’d found to lull the wire.
She thought about the afternoon with her mechanic, Nick. She’d had a great time, right up to when he started hitting on her. Why did guys feel like they had to do that? They sooner or later started with the compliments and the hungry eyes. Why wasn’t enjoying each other’s company enough for an afternoon?
He was good-looking, though, with his olive complexion and expressive eyes. With a last name like Pinelli, he must be Italian and looked every bit of that from his thick dark hair to his lithe body. They’d enjoyed the afternoon to that point. She admitted to herself that she’d like to see him again.
You don’t even know this guy.
But Jesse’s known him since he was a kid, and she’s a fan.
He’s dangerous in other ways. You know it.
Sparrows cheeped in the wild oats growing on either side of the road, and a fresh breeze ran fingers through her hair. As she walked another road song dropped onto the turntable in her brain: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” Her tennis shoes scuffed the pavement and her mind gentled.
Feeling more relaxed, she threw her head back and squinted into the sun.
After cresting the hill and walking down the other side, Sam approached her neighbor’s house. The small cottage was a real gem, with scalloped fish-scale siding, and fanciful Mary Hart fretwork in the eaves, all painted a blinding white. Intricately turned columns supported the roof of the deep porch. Rosebushes used them to climb to the sun.