Head Over Paws

by Debbie Burns

  The dog waited, but she didn’t come to him the way she always did when he first heard her, bringing him something delicious to chomp up and showing she was as pleased to see him as he was to see her.

  He whined and sank to the floor and waited in hope she would come to him. His eyelids had grown heavy again from all the waiting when his kennel door began to rattle. He jumped to his feet, a rush of delight at the realization that she was the one opening it. She sank low so that she was level with him and pressed her face into his neck and wrapped her arms around his body.

  The dog didn’t mind. Her affection was pleasing, just like the muffled “Morgans” she spoke into his fur.

  He whined and wagged his tail and licked her neck, hoping this would be one of the times when she took him outside to stretch his legs. When she pulled her face away, her cheeks were wet and salty, and he licked them dry, remembering the salty fish he’d savored when she’d taken him to that crowded place with so many wonderful smells.

  Something was different this time. She clipped a leash to his collar and led him into the part of the building where he’d only been a few times rather than out the door that led outside where she usually took him. People crowded him. Most were ones he was beginning to trust. They patted him and praised him and locked their arms around her just like they did him. Soon after, she knelt on the floor close beside him, a treat hidden in her hand as she asked him to sit while one of the people who brought his food loomed over them with an object in his hands, stirring up worry in the dog over what might happen. When the woman wasn’t frightened but smiled up at the man, waiting for something the dog couldn’t comprehend, he let go of his fear too.

  When it was over, she brought him out the door she’d first brought him in, all those days ago when his muscles had been weak and he’d still been hungrier than he cared to ever be again.

  Then she spoke words that conveyed a tone that made his tail wag just to hear even if he didn’t understand them.

  “Come on, Morgan,” she said, patting him again in that special way of hers, “let’s go home.”

  Chapter 27

  Gabe headed across the meticulously maintained backyard and stepped through the open door of Dr. Washington’s detached garage where Carol, his wife, had said her husband was finding new ways to keep himself busy now that he was largely on the mend from his surgery.

  Gabe had been here once before, over Christmas, for a staff party. Albert was a model-train hobbyist and had transformed his garage into something worthy of comparison, on a smaller scale, to the display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Albert’s collection of Lionel trains ran on a track at tabletop height that traversed tree-covered mountains with ski runs, elk, and bighorn sheep and passed into a model-scale village of nineteenth-century America at Christmastime replete with carolers and tree trimmers and a house that even could have smoke coming out the chimney. A second track circled from the town’s depot to a representation of the Great Plains where Albert had created a display of the Old West with buffalo, horses, grizzlies, and an old mining town.

  Today, he was seated on a stool at a tall craft table in the only area of the garage not devoted to his train collection. He was wearing the same thick-rimmed glasses he wore in surgery, reminding Gabe of all the highly skilled things he’d watched Dr. Washington do over the months he’d known him. As it turned out, today Albert was working on something that had nothing to do with his model-train collection.

  “I wondered how that was done.” Gabe watched as Albert threaded rigging lines through the sails of a still-collapsed miniature model sailing ship that, based on the image on the nearby box, was supposed to be displayed in a narrow-mouthed glass bottle. “I assumed they were assembled inside with long tweezers or something.”

  “Now that you know the secret, don’t spread it around. As it is, this is an art that’s nearly been lost to history.” Showing off his work, Albert pulled the rigging lines hinged to the mast and running under the hull, cautiously raising the sails into position so that the ship was its full height. “Once it’s inside, you tie and cut away the extra rigging lines, and no one is any the wiser as to how it was assembled.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Impressive.”

  “I have another one on order that’s a good deal more complicated. A Spanish galleon from the sixteenth century.”

  “Oh yeah? And I wondered how you were spending your days.”

  “When you’ve spent forty years honing and challenging your fine motor skills, you’ve got to find something to occupy your time.”

  “That makes sense. Don’t let this get out, but as a kid, I went through a phase where I loved to paint model soldiers.”

  “From the Revolutionary War?”

  “No, marines from Nam. An uncle of mine gave me a kit for Christmas one year.”

  As Albert finished hooking in the rigging lines, Gabe headed over to the train’s control station. “Mind if I run it?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Gabe started both tracks. A Sante Fe train ran on the line from the village to the Old West, and a Union Pacific one ran along the mountains and surrounding woods and into the village depot. As they circled the separate tracks, Gabe strolled along, appreciating the level of detail he’d not noticed on his first visit here, including an outhouse in the woods behind a cabin that had a roll of toilet paper hung inside its open door and a book on the bench seat titled The Yellow River by I. P. Freely. On the outskirts of the village, a fox was hidden in a bush, eyeing chickens who were safe inside the chicken yard behind a farmhouse, and an arrow was subtly placed in a dry creek bed outside the mining town.

  “What you did here is amazing. How long did this take you?”

  “Can’t really say because it’s still not finished. I can tell you when I started. It was back when my daughter was three, and I thought it would be fun to get a train for Christmas. She’s forty-one now.”

  Gabe huffed. “The level of detail here—it’s impressive. Beyond impressive.”

  “The most important parts are always in the details. If you don’t pay attention, so many moments get lost as they turn into memory.”

  Gabe glanced his way. “I’ll remember that.”

  After Gabe met with his consultant last week, Olivia had helped him and Yun assemble a spreadsheet that impressed even detail-oriented Yun. At the end of last week, he’d officially presented his proposal to purchase Dr. Washington’s clientele list and equipment but not his building, and Albert had been thinking it over.

  Since he’d texted Gabe earlier today asking if he could pop over at lunch, Gabe suspected Albert had made his decision, and the minutes had been ticking by slowly ever since.

  Considering he’d been managing the practice completely on his own the last couple months, Gabe wasn’t sure what would happen if Albert didn’t agree to the split sale. But the fact of the matter was, with his student loans added to the business and building loan for Dr. Washington’s old place, he’d barely have been able to scrape by. Even before Albert admitted he’d been turning away clients during his busiest months for the last few years, Gabe had known the biggest limitation to growing the business would be the building’s small size.

  If Albert would agree to sell him the business and equipment only, and he and Yun were to split the costs of it and the new building, they’d be able to create an entirely different financial picture. Especially considering that once the cost was spread over a thirty-year payment plan, the jewelry store wasn’t much more expensive than Albert’s property.

  “This friend of yours you want to go into business with,” Albert asked, apparently ready to get to business. “She’s the one you’ve talked about? Who took a position over at Warson Landing?”

  “Yeah. That’s her.”

  “I know it’s not my place to ask, but your relationship, it’s platonic?”

  Gabe blink
ed. Of all the questions he was prepared to address, that one hadn’t made the list. “Uh, yeah. Completely.”

  Albert nodded and switched off the long-armed lamp before slipping carefully off the stool and walking over to join Gabe in front of the ski lodge. He had been admiring the miniature hot chocolate stand and the small group of people standing huddled around a campfire.

  “I take it you think you would work well together?”

  “We studied well together, and we’re close.”

  Albert dragged a hand over the thick, gray stubble covering his chin. “I’d just hate to see everything I’ve built torn apart in a business disagreement one day. I worked with you for eight months, and I wouldn’t have offered to sell you what I spent a lifetime building if I didn’t think you had a good head on your shoulders. I hope you don’t take offense, but work partnerships can be tough. More so if they were ever to evolve into anything more complicated.”

  Gabe felt a spark of anger igniting in his gut but fought it back. It made sense that Albert would be concerned. A sole proprietorship was one thing. This was a partnership. And while Gabe had worked with him for nearly eight months before Albert’s back surgery, Yun was a practical stranger to him. It’s in the details, he’d just said.

  “It won’t,” Gabe replied. “If that was ever going to happen, it would’ve by now. Besides, I’m pretty confident that a month ago I met the person I’m supposed to be with. You haven’t had the chance to meet her yet, but I’d like you to.”

  Albert gave him a sharp look. “Did you? How’d the staff take that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that it may have killed a few quietly smoldering crushes.”

  “None that I would’ve intentionally fostered.”

  Albert nodded. “I know, or I wouldn’t be selling you my business.”

  Gabe ground his bottom teeth into his top, waiting for more. The Union Pacific was passing by, filling his nostrils with the smell of the smoke fluid.

  “Does that mean you’re still selling me your business?”

  With a touch of dramatic flair that was warranted for someone who was about to embark on one of the most dramatic changes of his life, Albert extended his hand with an uncharacteristic flourish. “The wife says she’ll divorce me if I don’t, but between me and you, I was going to anyway.”

  Gabe took his hand but stepped in to give him a careful hug, not sure of the condition of his back. “I can promise you, you won’t regret it. It’s going to be good. Better than good. It’s going to be incredible.”

  Albert chuckled and adjusted the thick glasses he’d stuck on top of his head. “I have nothing but faith in you, son. Nothing but faith.”

  * * *

  More days had passed than Olivia could remember since she’d headed back to Elsah so early in the evening, and she was half-surprised when doing so put her smack-dab in the middle of rush hour. As much as she disliked driving in traffic, sitting parked on the highway and then riding her brake lights through Alton to get to the Great River Road gave her plenty of time to think.

  What had started out as a nondescript Wednesday was turning out to be a momentous day. She’d adopted Morgan, who’d been much more content watching out her back window in traffic than she’d been driving in it, and—even though she was having a hard time believing it—she’d pretty much accepted a job she’d not even known existed a few hours before. A job that would keep her away from all the amazing things—and people—up here that she was starting to love.

  Or already did.

  Her belly flipped in a wild circle as traffic opened up and she drove along the Great River Road. Flanking her left side, the sprawling Mississippi had finally retreated to a full but nonthreatening level as the spring rains eased up.

  “You’ve been here once. Do you remember?”

  In the rearview mirror, she noticed how Morgan turned his head toward her at the sound of her voice.

  “You may not realize this yet, but you’re my dog now, and—hopefully—I’m your person. I know you had another one before all this, but I’m crossing my fingers you have no regrets. I know I won’t.”

  As he turned his attention back to the window, her thoughts went back to wondering what Gabe would say about all this. And the strain it might cause on their relationship. She’d called on the way to the shelter to get Morgan, but it had still been his workday, and he hadn’t picked up. He’d called back a half hour later, but she’d been in the middle of filling out adoption papers.

  What kind of girlfriend was she? Gabe had told her he loved her, and her response was going to be taking a job that would keep her away from him for nine full months. Sure, there were weekends. She’d drive up here most of them, after she traded in the Cruze for a newer car.

  It wasn’t going to be a picnic, moving back in with her grandparents, especially with her parents still living in the prefab house on the other end of the property. Ava was going to read her the riot act for this. But a three percent raise on the salary she’d gotten for teaching in rural Missouri wasn’t enough to pay a car payment, apartment, and her student loans.

  You could always call Principal Rutherford back and turn it down. Work as a sub up here to get you through. Maybe pick up a second job too.

  Olivia rolled her neck in a slow circle and dropped her hands away from ten and two after realizing she was still in full-traffic driving mode.

  The longer she waited, the more telling Gabe all this was going to sound like an afterthought. He didn’t even know she’d headed home to Elsah and he wouldn’t see her tonight.

  With another ten minutes to her aunt’s, Olivia picked up her phone to make the much-needed call, only to have her phone ring in her hand.

  Gabe.

  “Hey there. I was literally picking up the phone to call you.”

  “Yeah? Guess that means we’re connected. Hey, so, I don’t know how you’re going to like this, but my mom invited us over for dinner.”

  “Did she? When?”

  “Tonight. If you’re good with that. She’s making spaghetti. I think I told you she’s not the best cook, but she makes a killer spaghetti sauce.”

  “Oh…” You’re going to tell him you’ll be leaving him in a few months, and he’s inviting you to his parents’. “I, uh, should’ve called you earlier. The thing is, I’m headed back to Elsah. I’m almost there.”

  He was quiet a second. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s just…so much, actually. It started with getting a call from Megan. A family came by today who was giving serious thought to adopting Morgan, only Megan didn’t seem that excited about the match, and—I don’t know—it just made me realize how close I could be to losing him.”

  “Wait, does this mean—?”

  A grin curled her lips. “Yeah, it does. I went right after school.”

  “That’s awesome. I’m proud of you, Olivia.”

  “Thanks. He’s in the back seat and seems pretty chill. Aunt Becky’s headed to the store to buy a couple stair gates to close off different parts of the house and to pick up a few supplies for me.”

  “He’ll figure out Coco’s a pet, not a potential chew toy, I’m sure. He’s got the same temperament as other dogs I’ve known who’ve gotten used to things like that. I’ve got a client whose farm-raised bloodhound’s new best friend is a lop-eared bunny.”

  “Cute. And reassuring. I have to say as reality sinks in, the whole thing is a touch intimidating. I’ve never actually had a dog of my own. I’m glad to have you to give me pointers. And I can’t wait for him and Samson to officially meet.”

  “Me, neither. I’m surprised you didn’t swing by first.”

  “I should’ve. I was going to. It’s just… Ugh.” She let out a huff that blew the hair on her forehead. “There’s something else, something a little more complicated, and I guess I just need
ed the drive to process it all. I wanted to tell you in person, but waiting doesn’t feel right either.”

  He was quiet, leaving her an opening to continue with no interruption.

  “I got a call this afternoon from the principal of the school where I taught last semester. He’s offering me a guaranteed position for next year. No chance of it falling through in the middle of the year this time.”

  “The one in your hometown?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  A handful of seconds passed. “Did you take it?”

  “He’s asking me to drive down Friday so we can get everything signed this week. I think that way he won’t have to list it. Technically, I guess I’m still on their list of contracted teachers this year.”

  “Wow. So, it sounds like you’re taking it.”

  She pursed her lips. Yeah, it does, and it sucks. “I think I need to,” she said aloud. “It’s looking less and less likely that I’ll get offered anything else this late in the game. But we still have the whole summer ahead of us. And there are always weekends.”

  “Yeah, there are weekends.” He was trying to sound optimistic, but she was still able to pick up on an underlying layer of disappointment.

  “Gabe, I—I know this sucks. I know we’re just starting out, and I don’t want to be away from you five days out of seven. But if I don’t find work this year, I can’t help but think it’s going to be that much harder next year.”

  He cleared his throat, and Olivia could picture a perfect furrow between his brows. “I can see that being a legitimate worry. Look, I’m not going to lie and tell you I won’t miss you. But you’re right. You’ve got to do this.” Her ear tingled from the sound of his exhale against the receiver. “We’ll make it work.”

  Tears stung her eyes instantly. “Thank you.” I love you. More than I thought I could love anyone. It means so much that you’re taking this so well. Why couldn’t she say it? Why was she so afraid of losing herself? “I’m sorry, really sorry” was all that came out.