A blast of sour-sick dog odor hit him in the face, and his eyes watered.
Grace sat cross-legged on the floor, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and unlaced Converses. Same outfit she was wearing last night when he’d taken her out for Chinese. Grace’s dark hair fell around her shoulders; Bella’s face lay in her lap. The old dog opened her eyes. Her brown gaze trained on Rob, as if she’d chosen him from all other humans, same as the day he’d taken her home curled on his lap.
Rob knelt on one knee, offered Bella his hand. “Hey, girl, how you doing?”
“She seems real sad.” His daughter’s shadowed eyes told him she was speaking about herself as much as their dog.
Worst feeling in the world.
Rob nodded and stroked Bella’s head. He thought of the day he’d handed the warm bundle to Grace, the joy in her six-year-old eyes.
Best feeling in the world.
Rob breathed through his mouth. “Call the vet?” he asked Maria.
Maria leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. She chewed her bottom lip, a nervous habit that had worn away the center pigment. Any other day, lipstick would’ve covered the blank spot. “He’s waiting for you.”
Grace’s mouth fell open. She shook her head, a subtle side-to-side motion, hinting at the horror of understanding. “No.” She clutched Bella, and the dog’s forelegs splayed beneath her. A yip scratched from Bella’s throat.
Rob tilted his head, peered beneath Grace’s hair. “Shh, it’s okay. Don’t scare her.” Grace pumped her lips between her teeth. Rob lowered his voice to a whisper. “If we’re calm, Bella’s calm. Isn’t that right?” Bella rewarded him by licking his hand. “There you go.”
Grace’s eyes turned glassy with unshed tears, and she nodded.
A picture of Rob’s mother flashed before him, Dad taking her by the hand for her last trip to the hospital. “No worries,” Rob had promised his mother. “Maria and I will watch out for Dad while you’re gone,” he’d said, even though everyone—Mom included—had known she wouldn’t be returning. Not sure whether the lie had made leaving easier for his mother or those left behind.
Rob eased his hands under Bella’s belly, scooped her up. The dog’s ribs pressed against his chest, her heartbeat lub-dubbed through him, and she let him take her down the stairway.
At the open door, Rob turned, intending to ask Maria and Grace whether they were coming with him. Instead, Grace lifted her house keys from the hook, and Maria scrambled up the stairway, leaving him to deal with the mess. He didn’t mind. But he suspected their daughter secretly wanted both parents along for this heartbreak. Grace couldn’t hold a grudge forever.
Eight minutes later, Rob and Grace were sitting side by side in the vet’s waiting room with Bella at their feet. The dog sat to Rob’s left, the way he’d trained her. The reason she’d graduated first in her class, same as Grace.A bitter knot tickled the back of Rob’s throat, and he coughed to dislodge it.
Grace stiffened and sucked in a breath, removing all the air in the room. Rob’s heart hammered, trying to escape through his ears.
Last chance, last chance, last chance.
They were doing the right thing. They were putting an end to the suffering.
Same melodramatic reason Maria had given him for wanting a divorce.
Grace swiped at a tear, and her hand jazzed across her cheek. She rested her hand on Bella’s head. Rob placed his hand on Grace’s, and their hands rode the waves of Bella’s breath, their dog comforting them.
Rob remembered the first time Grace had strode into the vet’s office with Bella in her gangly six-year-old arms and deposited the pup on the metal examining table, proud as a new parent. “Dr. Anderson, look at my puppy!”
Thing was, when Rob looked at Bella, he still expected to see an eight-pound bundle. When he gazed at his daughter, he expected a little girl.
Rob had brought Bella home, ostensibly as a present for Grace. At the time, he’d thought Maria needed the puppy more. She’d wanted to have another baby, about four years after he’d given up trying to convince her. For a while the puppy had worked, and Maria had seemed content. She hadn’t complained. He hadn’t looked for trouble.
Grace’s face paled under the fluorescent lights.
“You okay?” Rob asked.
Grace nodded, but she didn’t answer.
Rob’s legs stiffened, as if he’d been kneeling, setting pavers and plantings from sunup to sundown. He stroked the dog’s back, avoiding her sensitive patches. By the time he’d noticed a swelling in Bella’s neck, the cancer had already migrated to her bones.
Silent, insidious killer.
Grace gave Bella a kiss on her head.
Hammering in Rob’s ears, hammering through his chest. His whole body ached with warning.
Last chance, last chance, last chance.
Rob’s fierce-on-the-field girl struggled to maintain her composure. Her teeth chattered. Grace rubbed the dog’s ear, and Bella sighed.
Rob stroked the length of Bella’s back, warm beneath his sweaty-cold hands. He took hold of Grace’s right hand, and his daughter squeezed. Freakishly strong, just like her father.
Crazy, but Rob silently asked Mom to look out for his dog, as if Bella were headed for an eternity catching Frisbees and chasing seagulls along a dog-friendly beach. Power of suggestion, the hammering in his ears softened. He inhaled through his nose, deep and measured.
Through Grace’s long hair, the tips of her ears glowed red. She rubbed Bella’s ear, squeezed Rob’s hand.
Good-bye, old girl.
“Do you think she knows I love her?” Grace said.
“Oh, yeah. She knows. She definitely knows.”
Grace’s right foot shook. The reverberations trembled against Rob’s chair, up through his body, tingled the chords of his neck.
“Do you think she’s scared?”
“No, sweetheart, she’s not scared.”
“Do you think—?” Dr. Anderson’s vet tech angled in the door between the waiting room and the hallway to the examining rooms.
Rob and Grace startled, exchanged a look.
The vet tech tucked her short blond hair behind one ear. Rob caught her eye, and her expression morphed: open and curious, glad to see you, sorry to hear the news.
Story of his life.
Rob stood and turned to Grace. “You coming?”
Grace shook her head. She examined the vinyl flooring. Her right leg trembled, but her left foot pointed toward the door to the examining rooms.
“Sure?” he said. “I think you’ll regret it if you don’t. I think you’ll wish you had,” he said, borrowing the theme from his daughter’s valedictorian address.
Less than a week ago, he and Maria had sat next to each other in a row of sticky plastic folding chairs strung across the Morse High School football field and listened to their amazing daughter urge her classmates to dream big, no regrets. According to Grace, a boy who graduated last year from Hidden Harbor High, one town away from Bath, had inspired her speech. Kid had lived his whole life in Hidden Harbor and then died tragically over the winter in western Massachusetts, a freshman in college.
Among the clamor of applause, ladies dug in their purses for tissues and men cleared their throats. Even Rob, a transplant from New Hampshire, had taken a moment to glance to the sky and thank God for his good fortune.
He couldn’t think of anything worse than losing a child.
Bella may not be human—he sometimes wondered—but she was a member of their family.
At least he and his daughter could be with Bella at the moment of her passing. At least they had the choice.
Grace raised her gaze to Rob and stood. “Okay.” She nodded, chewed at her lip, same spot Maria had worried to white. “I’ll come in, for Bella.”
“All right, then.” A turn of his left hand, and Bella stood. Head held high, she strode through the doors. The vet tech gave Rob a pulled-across-the-face smile, and he passed before her brown scrubs, cartoon drawin
gs of cheerful cats leaping over flowers with fat petals.
He was not a fan of cats.
The vet tech handed Rob her clipboard. “Some papers for you to sign,” she said.
Without reading a word, he scrawled his signature, agreeing to the euthanasia of his dog. A few months ago, he’d signed a similar paper to dissolve his marriage. Same as before, he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening, but couldn’t get a handhold.
The vet tech took the clipboard and led them down the hall.
Rob placed his open hand against Grace’s back—sticky and throbbing with heat—and they followed.
He wished he could make this hurt all better. Wished he could take away the pain of losing Bella. He was really going to miss their sweetheart of a dog.
And in the fall, his sweetheart girl was headed to Plymouth State. He was really going to miss her, too.
Rob’s mind trundled to an argument with Maria, one of their many disagreements.
She’d claimed his work was the only thing he cared about.
Wasn’t true then, wasn’t true now.
Yet, after Maria had served him with the divorce papers, he’d tossed a mattress into the bed of his truck and headed to his office, a second-floor walk-up in town. A couple of rooms above a bakery suited him just fine. Every morning, he woke to the smell of coffee and muffins wafting through the floorboards. And in the moment before he opened his eyes, he imagined he was home. Maria and Grace making breakfast in the kitchen. Bella darting around their legs. He imagined the footfalls in the shop below were the sounds of Maria headed up the staircase to bring him coffee in bed. Because after twenty years of marriage, they were still like two kids, crazy in love.
The last part always jolted him to reality.
Then he’d open his eyes, take in the bare walls, his mattress squeezed beside a bank of filing cabinets. He’d peer out to the main office. Monitor and keyboard sitting on a yard-sale-find desk he’d refinished, drafting table he’d had since college. He’d remind himself he should talk to Maria about putting their dream house on the market. And he’d wonder what the hell had happened. What came next? Because everything he’d worked for, everything he cared about, was either slipping away from him or already gone.
The vet tech headed past the open examining room door.
Inside, Dr. Anderson was waiting for them.
Last chance, last chance, last chance.
The door clicked shut.
CHAPTER 3
Abby resented Celeste’s blueberry muffins.
Third try in a row, Abby set her index finger at the beginning of her newly acquired desk toy, a two-sided sand labyrinth she’d casually admired at Lily Beth’s shop, Heart Stone, and then purchased on a whim. She pushed her finger through the grit of sand along a winding path that thus far had fallen short of the promise to quiet her mind.
She needed something bigger to move her whole stressed-out body through.
Who was Celeste to say she should distance herself from Charlie? Abby couldn’t tell him to stop calling her every night and take away his touchstone of comfort. Charlie would always be Luke’s father; she would always be Luke’s mother. She shouldn’t have to explain herself to Celeste. Caring for Charlie had kept her semi-sane for the last four months.
Abby’s index finger jostled from the labyrinth path, spilling sand onto her desk. She sighed and swept the spilled sand back onto the toy. Peace was highly overrated. Unfortunately, Celeste’s prize-winning muffins deserved every ounce of praise that had earned their starred spot on Abby’s breakfast menu. Also unfortunate, the fact Abby had let Hannah, the chambermaid she usually sent for the muffins, leave early.
Abby slid her feet back into her sandals and took her straw tote down from its hook. Within the last hour, she’d checked her favorite couple, the Sanchezes, into Room 3, made dinner reservations for the sisters in 5, dismissed Hannah, and completed most of the preparations for tomorrow’s continental breakfast.
That left one more task before she could walk into town.
Outside, Abby breathed in the remains of the day. The heady warmth of the lowering sun baked the recently mowed grass. Sharp green notes accented the subtle scents of the sea. And the newly blossomed lupine—purple and blue cones—waved from the perennial bed.
Luke had thought the lupine smelled like grape soda.
She sat on her heels, smoothed her skirt, skipped her fingers across the first two handprint stepping-stones. If any of her guests glanced out a window, they’d see only the back of her head. If anyone strolled outside, it would seem she was gazing past the yard and across the bay, lost in prayer. Close enough to the truth.
Abby lowered her hands to the third stepping-stone and settled her fingers into Luke’s sun-warmed handprints, the end of his life’s short path. The dry skin of the stone roughed her fingertips. Before her, the waves tapped the shore. Farther off, a bell buoy clanked.The high call of children’s voices drifted from across the neighboring peninsula. She marveled how much bigger her son’s hands were than hers, how much stronger they’d been. When she closed her eyes and tilted her chin to the sun, she imagined Luke’s warmth bathed her face.
“You’re back home now,” she said. “Back home for the summer. Probably, you’re staying out too late and making me worry.” She laughed. “I know you’re making me worry.”
She let the sentence vibrate in the air before her until she could taste the bittersweet memories from last summer. Luke had one foot in Hidden Harbor, the other jutting into the future. He’d spent his free days with his buddies, playing volleyball on Head Beach, hiking over the sharp edges of Breakwater Point, and jumping into the high-tide thrill of the Bath Tub. Nights, he’d stayed out hours past curfew and returned home smelling of beer and bonfires, his pockets lined with girls’ phone numbers Abby would later discover in the wash. “But then you apologize. You kiss me on the cheek. You work extra hard weeding and mowing, anything I ask. And even though I want to get angry—”
Her fingers trembled, lifted from the print. Her hands fisted atop the stone. The side of her forefinger rubbed the flesh of her thumb. “I can’t stay mad at you,” she whispered.
Abby opened her eyes and blinked against the light. She brushed off her skirt and turned to find her guests out on their balcony. Greg Sanchez stood behind his wife, Jenny, his hands wrapped around her waist; his face rested in the crook of her neck.
Abby’s heart startled at the sight. The beautiful, perfect sight. She raised a hand in greeting, slow, tentative, not wanting to interrupt the couple’s perpetual honeymoon. Ongoing for five years straight.
Jenny waved back. “Thank you for the beautiful flowers!” she called across the yard.
“My pleasure!” In addition to the lupine, the small perennial garden included day lilies, irises, violets, and lavender for drying. The snow-white beach roses transplanted from her childhood home had given the Briar Rose B&B its name. Pretty to look at, but not enough for a cutting garden.
As a thank-you for all of her referrals, Blossoms by the Beach gifted Abby with a few free arrangements a year. Abby loved sharing with the couple who’d first come to her bed-and-breakfast as newlyweds and returned the same weekend every year, as predictable as her lupine. She’d taken extra care with the suite, arranged a dozen white peonies in a cut-glass vase, washed the windows with vinegar and newspaper, spritzed her softest sheets with homemade lavender mist.
“No one gets out of this life without a little wear and tear,” Lily Beth often said.
Abby hoped that wasn’t true. Others’ misfortune didn’t ease her sorrow. The fringe benefit of working in hospitality was that she got to both augment and share other people’s happiness. And her guests had no clue about her life.
How perfect was that?
Abby race-walked through the yard and down the driveway. Her sandals bit into the pea-stone drive with ferocity she didn’t understand. Gravel flew in her wake. She turned down Ocean Boulevard, arms pumping, scooting to av
oid the poison ivy edging the sidewalk.
Less than ten minutes later, she stood in the shade beneath the awning at Sugarcoated, her reflection screaming at her like a madwoman. Wrinkles filigreed her filmy white skirt. Most of her hair had escaped from a once-tidy ponytail. And a blond halo frizzed around her face. She wrangled her hair, steeled herself for Celeste’s green-eyed disapproval, and pushed into the near-empty bakery.
Above her head, the door-top bell jingled. The smell of fresh-every-half-an-hour coffee and hot-from-the-oven pastries, and the toffee-colored walls wrapped Abby like a warm hug, direct from Celeste. Softened her, despite not wanting to be softened.
A dark-haired man sat at a table with his back to Abby, looking too tall for the bistro table and chair. He leaned against the wrought-iron chair back. Long, denim-clad legs stretched to the side of the table, crossed at the ankles. A laptop stood open and angled sideways, away from Abby’s line of vision. The man gestured. His hand, held palm up, sliced the air, as though someone were sitting in the empty seat across from him. A laugh, deep and un-self-conscious, had Abby thinking of thick woods and privacy, the amber tones of maple syrup, the intimacy of familiars.
A slight turn of the man’s head revealed a curve to the side of his mouth, his face creased in a grin. A flash of blue eye directed affection toward the empty chair. “How much stuff are you planning on taking with you?” he asked. “Far as I can remember, they do have stores in New Hampshire.”
Abby’s sandals tapped across the wooden floorboards. The man turned his head fully in her direction, as though responding to the sound. He caught Abby’s gaze, and his chin lifted. Half a nod, as if in greeting, although she didn’t think she’d met him before.
Good-looking man a few years older than her with energy that reached across the room. No, she would’ve remembered meeting him. Even in her Luke-obsessed world—a state strangely similar to new motherhood—she would’ve remembered.
The man touched a finger to his ear, a half cringe of explanation, and Abby smiled. Earbuds and a wire. Skype. She should’ve guessed.
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