Her mom was already in her early thirties and had stopped coming to the lake house in her forties. Time moved so rapidly inside the portal. A whole decade could slip away in a week. And what will happen when we reach the end of Mom’s memories? Whose memories will the time portal move on to—the house’s next inhabitants, the Holloways, perhaps? Or will it start replaying Mom’s memories over again in a loop? Or will it simply... end... and go back to being a regular closet? Kelsey had no idea. But it felt urgent to get in one more correspondence with her mom before their last summer at the lake happened, even though she knew she wasn’t going to be able to say half of what she truly wanted to say.
Josh was working, but he and Kelsey had been orbiting each other at a shy, polite distance since their date. He hadn’t felt the click, either, Kelsey suspected sadly. She wondered how long it would take their work relationship to go back to its normal mix of teasing banter and intimate confidences. Because in a week or so, the lake house would have an accepted offer on it, and Melanie and Ben would return to Ohio, then Kelsey would have only her work friends. Thank God for her sweet schnauzer and the cooking channel, but the thought of returning to her “normal life” made her unbearably sad. For a little while there, it had felt like her world was rapidly expanding in so many new directions, and now it felt like it was shrinking down and closing in on her again.
She had a date that night with Everett, and she was trying to get excited about it, but everything else was conspiring to get her down. Not knowing the area, he had suggested Sheehan’s, the heavily advertised and overpriced Irish pub that all the locals knew to avoid because of its notoriously rude waitstaff. He’d also suggested going to the nearby botanical gardens, which they would probably have to take a literal rain check for. Lastly, with the effects of the rain and humidity on her hair, she was going to look like a fricking bichon frise on their date.
Beth walked by with a dreary expression and a purple cat carrier. “Did we remember to order more shampoo and ear rinse?” she asked.
No, Kelsey thought, we didn’t. Methodical Beth had always been the one in charge of ordering supplies and keeping things well stocked. “Nope. But I can put in an order right away,” she said. “Or if we’re all out, I can run to the store if you prefer.”
“Hmmm... yes, thanks,” Beth said distractedly. “That would be helpful, Kelsey.” The cat inside the carrier started wailing, and Beth hurried away before Kelsey could ask her what she had meant. Order online or dash to the store? And which shampoo? They used several kinds. Kelsey would have to do a thorough inventory of the supply closet to see what they were in need of.
If Beth’s daughter had been standing there right then, Kelsey would have been tempted to smack her. The girl’s antics were turning her normally upbeat, super-efficient boss into a scatterbrained, depressed zombie. And though Beth had been personally confiding in Kelsey less lately, she was professionally relying on Kelsey more than ever. Once, that would have made Kelsey feel valued, but now it just made her feel trapped. If a better opportunity came along, she wasn’t sure how she could ever leave in good conscience.
On her way to the supply closet, she passed Josh in Pooch Place. He was in one of the kennels, playing on his hands and knees with a Pomeranian. “Why, thank you for the kisses, Miss Cinnamon,” he said. “Okay, that’s enough, sweetie. No kisses on the mouth, please. Yes, yes, who’s a good girl? Now be a lady and keep your tongue to yourself.” Kelsey smiled in spite of herself.
EVERETT WAS TEN MINUTES late picking her up, but Kelsey didn’t mind because she was also running ten minutes behind, and he had shown her the courtesy of texting her to let her know. He came to her front door with an umbrella high overhead, walked her to his car with his hand positioned gently on her lower back, and even opened and closed the door for her. He was wearing a pale-green Henley, so his hazel eyes looked even more hazel, and a shark-tooth necklace dangled between his collarbones. Generally, Kelsey found those necklaces kind of lame, but on Everett, it was downright sexy. He probably could’ve made a kid’s macaroni-strung necklace look sexy, though.
Because of the pouring rain, Sheehan’s was quieter than usual, and their waitress was bubbly and attentive—due to Everett’s charm and heart-stopping dimples, Kelsey suspected, and she couldn’t really blame the girl. If he had come in to Weber’s Steakhouse when she was waiting tables, she would have brought him refills and ketchup all night long.
“So there I was, wading through three feet of water, when all of a sudden, I run into something huge and solid.” Everett slapped his palm on the tabletop for emphasis. “It was a pool table! Totally submerged! Can you believe it? I have no idea how much damage that frozen pipe cost these people. I mean, I’m sure their insurance covered most of it, but it was just insane. Probably the worst basement flood I’ve ever seen.”
Kelsey tried to look interested, but an uncomfortable pressure was growing in her bladder from all the refills she’d drunk. She glanced over Everett’s shoulder to see if she could spot a restroom sign, when a familiar coppery mane caught her eye. But it wasn’t Lavinia Fletcher, of course, whose trademark red hair had become a tarnished silver, at least according to Melanie. Still, the thought of Vinnie felt like a splash of cold water in her face. Her mom had clearly cared deeply for her. Vinnie was “the one that got away,” or probably more accurately, the one she had pushed away.
Kelsey wished she knew if that was because her mom had fallen in love with her dad or if her mom was simply worried about making waves in her conservative family by coming out as gay or bisexual. Certainly, being in a same-sex relationship in the seventies and eighties in small-town Wisconsin would have been faced with more discrimination than it was today. But it made Kelsey doubly sad to think of her mom choosing Vinnie over her dad in her heart but not being brave enough to act on it.
“I’ll be right back,” she said to Everett, who was in the middle of another basement flood story.
After relieving herself and washing her hands, she texted Melanie from the ladies’ room. Everett talks about his work a lot.
He-he-he! Melanie replied immediately. That was an Ernie laugh in case you couldn’t tell. I’m sorry. That sounds boring.
Not as boring as my work stories are, I’m sure.
Your stories are full of wit and verve, Melanie texted back.
And lots of dog poop.
True.
You haven’t gone back in the portal without me, have you? Kelsey asked.
Of course not.
So you don’t know what year it is?
No, but I’m sure we still have time, Melanie replied, anticipating Kelsey’s worries. Why don’t you come over Sunday after the open house for dinner?
When Kelsey returned to the table, the waitress was hanging around, talking to Everett, and Kelsey had the perfect view of the girl’s spectacularly toned butt in her black leggings.
“Did you want a box?” Everett asked as she sat down, flashing her his dimples, and Kelsey’s jealousy dissipated. It wasn’t Everett’s fault the waitress was being a flirt.
“No, thanks,” she said.
The waitress sashayed off, and they decided to go to Kelsey’s apartment for dessert and a nightcap: dark chocolate soufflé cupcakes she had hurriedly baked before he picked her up and a bottle of Shiraz. The rain was coming down in sheets, and the first rumbles of thunder were starting, so Kelsey was all too happy to return home to Sprocket. Everett opened the passenger door for her again and walked her to her front stoop with the umbrella, holding her a little closer than last time. Anticipation coursed through her—being nice and dry and tucked away inside, savoring the chocolate and wine, kissing Everett again.
They stepped inside together, giggling as they removed their soaked shoes, gripping each other’s shoulders and trying not to slip as the umbrella dripped water all over her tile entryway.
“I like your TV,” Everett said, pointing at the sixty-inch flat screen her dad and Laila had had shipped for her birthday
the previous year and which Kelsey frankly found to be a little too big and ostentatious for the size of her living room.
“Thanks,” she said. “It was a gift. I don’t really watch much TV. Mostly cooking shows.” Where is Sprocket? It was unlike him not to run out and greet her. She wondered if he was cowering under her bed because of the thunderstorm. “Sprocket!”
“It would be awesome to play Call of Duty on that thing. You don’t have a PS4, do you?”
“A what?” She peeked between the couch and the end table, another favorite place of Sprocket’s to hide when he was stressed out.
“A PlayStation,” Everett clarified.
“No, sorry. Why don’t you make yourself at home? I’m going to go check on my dog. It’s really weird that he’s not coming out to greet us.”
As she approached the bedroom, a repulsive stench met her—dog feces or vomit, maybe both. Oh, Sprocket. Did the thunderstorm really scare you that badly? Several piles stained the beige carpet, and she gagged so severely, she thought she might throw up. “Sprocket?” She stepped carefully across the room and lifted her bed skirt to peer underneath. Sure enough, her little dog was huddled against the far leg of the headboard and the wall, as far back as he could possibly get.
“Come here, sweetie,” she said, crouching down, but he didn’t twitch to his feet and crawl toward her. In fact, he didn’t even raise his head. “Sprocket?” She whistled, a sound he absolutely couldn’t resist, but he continued to lie there motionless, and her heart plummeted. She squeezed the top half of her body as best she could under the bed to reach him. When her fingers touched his shaggy fur, it felt warm, thank God. He opened his eyes and tried to lick her, and a grateful little sob escaped her lips. “Sprocket, are you okay? What’s wrong, sweetie?” She gripped his lower back and his front legs and gently pulled him out from under the bed with absolutely no resistance on his part. He felt like a rag doll in her arms.
“My dog’s really sick,” she told Everett, who had indeed made himself comfortable in her absence. He was sitting on her parents’ sectional with one leg propped up across his knee and one arm draped along the back of the sofa. “He had an accident—actually several accidents—in my bedroom.”
“Oh no!” Everett stood up. “He didn’t get into the chocolate cupcakes, did he? One time Bailey ate a Twix, and he had diarrhea for twenty-four hours straight. It was horrible.”
With Sprocket still as docile as a newborn lamb in her arms, Kelsey turned to survey the dark chocolate soufflé cupcakes, which she had left to cool on the counter. No telltale crumbs or chewed-up wrappers littered the floor, but she had accidently left a kitchen chair nearby, which Sprocket might have used to jump up. She counted the cupcakes to see if any were missing—twenty-one were there—although she didn’t think the recipe had made the full two dozen to begin with, so it was hard to say. But chocolate was incredibly toxic to dogs, and if he had eaten one... or two... or three... he was such a small dog, not a big, hearty retriever like Everett’s dogs.
“Do you think I should take him to the vet?” she asked.
“Nowhere will be open at this time of night, and those after-hours emergency places charge an arm and a leg. Just take him in tomorrow morning if he gets worse. With any luck, it will be out of his system by then. You have a garage, right? You should probably just spread out some towels for him in there so he doesn’t make too much of a mess.”
Locking my helpless, miserable dog in the garage? On the night of a thunderstorm, to boot? She lightly squeezed Sprocket against her chest, and he let out a tiny half whimper.
“These cupcakes look amazing,” Everett said, and Kelsey decided then that she would pack up a half dozen cupcakes in disposable Tupperware and say good night to him.
Once he was gone, she pulled out her grubbiest bath towels from the linen closet and made a little nest for Sprocket on the living room floor. He collapsed into it, and she hurried to bring his water bowl over, but he didn’t seem interested in drinking. She sat down on the floor beside him, petting him with one hand and using her phone with the other. First, she googled “chocolate toxicity in dogs” and got even more freaked out. Then she called her veterinary clinic and was greeted by their out-of-office recording, which encouraged her to visit the twenty-four hour animal hospital if she was having a pet emergency. Next, she googled the animal hospital and found that they were a forty-five-minute drive away.
She didn’t know what to do. She wondered if she was overreacting, as Everett had seemed to think. But even when Sprocket had eaten her phone charger that time, he hadn’t been so sick. She had never seen him so lethargic, so unlike himself. She considered calling Melanie for her advice or even Beth, but somehow they both seemed all wrong. She scrolled through her contact list until she found the number she wanted.
“Josh,” she said into the phone, “Sprocket’s sick.” Then she gave in to the tears she had been holding back since she had found her beloved dog’s unmoving body under the bed.
Chapter Twenty-One
“He’s going to be okay,” Josh said for probably the hundredth time. They were sitting in the waiting room of the Pet Health Center across from a saltwater fish tank. It was another, closer emergency vet clinic that Josh had recommended once he had deciphered what Kelsey was trying to convey through her tears. In less than half an hour, he had driven to her house, loaded them up, then chauffeured them to the clinic so she could sit in the back seat with Sprocket wrapped up in a towel in her arms. The poor dog had started throwing up by then: a watery, foul-smelling substance that Kelsey tried to catch with the towel.
The vet tech had taken one look at Sprocket and rushed them to an exam room, which made Kelsey feel validated in her decision to bring him but even more deathly afraid. Both the tech and the veterinarian seemed to take it very seriously that Sprocket might have ingested chocolate. They wanted to hook him up to an IV, give him fluids and medicines that would help get the toxin out of his system quickly, and keep a close eye on him.
“I would never forgive myself if...” Kelsey couldn’t finish her sentence. She put her head in her hands. “I just can’t believe how careless I was, leaving that chair out. I had to stand on it to reach the baker’s chocolate, then I was in such a rush, I guess, I must have forgotten it was there.” She didn’t tell Josh why she was in such a rush. She hadn’t mentioned Everett at all to him, choosing instead to say she had gone out to dinner with a “friend.” She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“You are being way too hard on yourself,” Josh said, leaning over to squeeze her shoulder. “Chair or no chair, dogs can be quite resourceful when they want something badly enough. Only a couple of hours have passed, tops, and Sprocket is in good hands. He’s going to be back to his old self in no time.”
The vet came into the waiting room a few minutes later with a frown on his face, and Kelsey leapt up. “We think there might be something more to this than chocolate toxicity,” he said. “Maybe some other foreign ingestion? Has he gotten into anything around the house lately?”
Kelsey didn’t know whether to be hopeful or more worried by that turn of events. She racked her brain but couldn’t think of anything—no ripped pillows or chewed-up toilet paper rolls for the last couple of weeks, and at the lake house, he’d been a perfect angel. “Not that I know of, but my sister has been feeding him a lot of table scraps.”
“Hmm. Well, I’d like to do an ultrasound to take a look at his intestines and belly. I’m worried there might be an obstruction. If so, it just might be early enough that we could remove it with an endoscopy instead of surgery.”
Kelsey numbly signed forms as the vet did his best to explain the procedures and the inherent risks. Endoscopy? Surgery? She gripped Josh’s hand as she sat back down. She knew she should call Melanie, who had taken to calling Sprocket “my little jellybean,” but Kelsey didn’t want to worry her. It was almost eleven o’clock, and her sister would probably insist on driving the seventy-five minutes to be with her.
Kelsey decided she would call Melanie in the morning instead, as soon as she had some news to share—good news to share. She was trying not to picture Sprocket limp and sedated on a metal table with an IV in his paw and a tube down his throat.
“You didn’t get Sprocket as a puppy, right?” Josh asked. “He was a shelter dog? I think I remember the week that you adopted him and showed us all pictures.”
“Yeah, the shelter thought he was at least two or three, judging by his teeth. Some kind soul had found him wandering around on the hottest day of the summer, dehydrated and emaciated, with matted fur and scrapes all over his body, and brought him in. By the time I met him, though, he was doing much better and almost back to a normal weight but so shy, and rightfully so.”
“I didn’t know that,” Josh said, shaking his head. “That’s horrible.”
“I don’t tell many people because it makes me so angry to think about it, and someone always says something like, ‘Wow, Kelsey, you saved him.’ But I didn’t. The stranger who brought him in did. The vet at the shelter did. I only adopted him and brought him home. And I know it’s cliché, but when I adopted him, he was the one who saved me.” From my loneliness, she thought but didn’t add, and my lack of purpose in life. Sprocket was her constant companion, her shadow, her cuddle buddy, and her reason to take a leisurely walk at dusk every evening.
“It may be cliché, but it’s true.” Josh stretched out his long legs. “I feel the same way about Tumnus. He was from a litter of farm kittens someone had dropped off at the shelter. But when I saw him, I thought, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Like somehow this little orange ball of fur was the one thing my life was missing at the time.”
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