I see it, and I let out the kind of noise I've never let out in my life, the kind girls in school would make over new shoes or a hot guy, and I'd roll my eyes and think, Seriously?
I make that noise.
Behind me, Petra's laughing, and I'm dimly aware that I'm totally ruining my rep, but I don't care. I'm on the floor with this giant mop of black fur in vaguely puppy shape. It's on my lap, wriggling and whining as if it doesn't care that it's never seen me before in its life--I am its new best friend.
It's a black puppy with a streak of white on one ear, and as it licks my face, I spot a black tongue. I stop, my arms still around it, and I turn to Dalton, and I can barely get the words out. "It's a--You got me a--"
That's all I can manage, and I swear I'm going to cry. I never cry. Certainly not happy tears. I've never even been sure those are a real thing, but that's what wells up now.
When I was young, my parents once had to attend a conference just after they'd fired our latest nanny for letting me go inside the corner store alone. My sister went with them to the conference--she was ten and knew how to comport herself in public, a skill I would never master. I stayed with my aunt, whom I barely knew.
My father had been estranged from his family ever since he decided to marry "that Vietnamese girl"--my mother was half Chinese, half Filipino. There'd apparently been some reconciliation after my sister was born. Then I came along and, well, the difference between me and April is that she can pass for white and I cannot, and I guess something was said, and the upshot is that I don't remember ever meeting my paternal grandparents.
But my father's younger sister wanted a place in our lives. So, with a laundry list of rules, my parents let me stay with her while they attended the conference. My aunt promptly threw out their list--at the top of which was "no dogs"--and introduced me to her boyfriend ... and his Newfoundland.
My six-year-old self fell in love with that dog the way it had never fallen in love with a person. And she loved me back with the kind of unconditional love only an animal can truly give. When my parents came to get me, I was reading in the backyard, using the dog as a pillow. They saw me lying on a dog bigger than me, and ...
I never saw my aunt again. Instead, I got a solid week of dog-attack photos. I didn't care. In years to come, I might forget weekends with men who passed through my life, but I never forgot the one I spent with that dog. I told Dalton about it when the subject of pets arose in conversation, and now I see this puppy's black tongue, and ...
"You bought me a Newfoundland puppy."
Petra murmurs something about needing to run an errand. Then she's gone, and Dalton's just standing there, this look on his face that I can't quite read. I adjust to sit, with the puppy on my lap, and I say, "I know it's a working dog. I just ... It's a surprise."
"A good surprise?"
He asks that in all honesty, and I have to laugh, shaking my head. I grin at him, and he stops moving, and there's that look again, the one I can't decipher.
"Eric?" I say.
He snaps out of it. "No. Right. Yeah. Good surprise. Okay." He hunkers beside me, and the puppy launches itself at him, going crazy now. It jumps on him and licks and whines like it'd been abandoned for weeks and the only familiar face it's ever known has finally returned. Then it piddles. Right on his boots. And he sighs. Just gives a deep sigh.
I smile up at him. "Not the first time it's done that, I'm guessing."
"Nope." He rises, and the puppy goes even crazier, as if about to be abandoned again. Another sigh, and he scoops it up under one arm and takes it to the kitchen, returning with a rag.
"It's a she," he says. "I did some research. With this breed, females are a better choice. They're mastiffs, which means they're stubborn, and a male would get bigger than you someday. I figured that a war of wills wouldn't go well--for you or the dog."
He cleans the mess as the puppy returns to me, satisfied Dalton isn't leaving.
He continues, "The ideal breed would have been a hound for tracking. But hounds aren't northern dogs. She is. They're supposed to have a good nose, and they are used for search and rescue. She'll be big, too, which is good for protection. So a Newfoundland isn't a perfect fit, but hell, no dog's going to be perfect for what we want, and you like them.... You do like them, right?"
I grin my answer. Then I tug him down to the floor, and we play with the puppy until it's time to return to real life.
THIRTEEN
When Dalton got me a puppy, he obviously didn't expect us to be launching a major case. There's no way I can have a puppy at my heels as I investigate Nicole's kidnapping. Petra promptly volunteers for dog-sitting duty, day or night. She only works part-time at the general store. Otherwise, she's parlayed her skills as a comic book artist into one of those local "cottage industries." I don't know how much time she'll get for drawing with a puppy around, but she insists.
By the time we leave the dog with Petra, I need to interview Nicole. We walk over, and Dalton stands guard out front. Nicole is upstairs, so I wait in the living room and try not to see Beth in her former home. She's still here. She's in the faint smell of the hospital-strength antiseptic. In a lopsided dream catcher on the front window. In the laugh I hear as she tells me about making the dream catcher, her one and only attempt to be artsy.
She's there too in a still-open novel on the coffee table, where she must have been reading on the futon that used to be Abbygail's bed. Reading and maybe thinking of Abbygail.
I look at this room, and I think of our first lunch here, after Anders set us up on a "date," convincing the shy local doctor to ask the new girl to lunch. I think of the friendship that came of that lunch, quiet and warm and easy, so welcome after the roller coaster with Diana. I think of where it began ... and how it ended.
When Dalton dropped me at the door, he asked if I was okay coming in here. I shrugged it off. And I was honest in that--standing outside, I felt nothing, my mind consumed with the task of interviewing Nicole.
Then I came into this room, and the very smell of it brought those memories crashing back, the reminder that we haven't been able to clear her house, haven't quite dealt with what she did. Like I haven't dealt with what she did to me. Pick that up, put it in the closet, shut the door, and face the situation at hand.
*