Sunset Bay Sanctuary

by Roxanne Snopek

  “They’re fine. See?” Jamie said, as the time-honored ritual of butt-sniffing and posturing ensued. Hannibal might be bigger, but Jewel was older, smarter, and skilled in the ways of ill-mannered, ignorant young males.

  Despite being freshly neutered, Hannibal made the usual, clumsy attempt at mounting Jewel the second her back was turned and quickly received his first of many lessons in manners.

  Jewel was the real trainer.

  “Whoa,” Gideon said, lifting his eyebrows.

  “Snap.” Jamie punched the air. “Go, Ju-Jube. Teach that bad boy who’s the boss.”

  The big dog was only mildly chastened so, to prevent Jewel from having to repeat the message, Haylee intervened, shaking a heavy braided rope in Hannibal’s direction. “Hey, pal, look here.” He grabbed it, nearly taking Haylee’s arm from the socket.

  “Out,” she commanded.

  He ignored her. Then she tossed a squeaky toy in the air, and threw it as far as she could. Hannibal dropped the rope and raced after it.

  “Good boy,” she murmured.

  The massive muscles in his hindquarters bunched and gathered as he ran, like a quarter horse working a stubborn steer. Hannibal brought the squeaky toy to Jewel and dropped it at her feet, sloppy adoration writ large on his dark-masked face.

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a love triangle,” said Haylee, as Cleo attempted to get in on the action.

  “Come on, James.” Gideon unfolded his lanky frame from against the fence. “Let’s get the horses moved before Daphne needs you for supper prep.”

  They left and Haylee got to work. She put Jewel into a down-stay in a shady spot on the grass, and ran Hannibal around the yard to use up some of his energy.

  He had a strong play drive, as she’d suspected. Training was all about figuring out what drove an animal, what he wanted, then showing him how to earn it. Treats were well and good, but a dog that loved to play was a pure joy to teach.

  Whether she could find him a home was another question. Hannibal was likely too large and powerful for a child or an elderly person. He’d take an experienced handler, someone able to maintain the alpha position, while still providing the affection the dog craved.

  Plus, the animal probably ate like a horse.

  “You’re going to be a big love bug, aren’t you?” She bent down and scrubbed her hands behind his ears. He nudged her with his huge head, nearly knocking her off her feet.

  Jewel heaved herself to her feet to join them, and both dogs set up their moaning, groaning, growling show of love for their master.

  “Enough,” she said, thumping them both on their ribs. “It’s going to go to my head, all this worship. I deserve it, of course.”

  If he turned out to be half the dog she thought he could be, it was going to hurt letting him go.

  Then she wondered how her life had become such a long string of attachments made only to be broken, as if she’d chosen a life of heartbreak.

  “There you are.” Olivia came around the side of the building. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Startled, Hannibal let out a bone-jarring bark.

  “Hannibal, look,” Haylee commanded, using his behavior as an opportunity to gather her own composure. She wasn’t ready for this conversation.

  The dog shot her a quick glance and at the same moment, Haylee clicked the metal training device she used. The sound surprised him; the piece of chicken jerky she tossed him refocused his attention on her, rewarding him at the same time.

  “Good boy. Come on in.” She nodded for Olivia to enter the training yard. “He’s ready to meet you.”

  Haylee didn’t know what kind of role Hannibal would eventually play in someone’s life, but no matter whether he stayed with her—unlikely—or went to become a cherished companion to someone else, he needed to have impeccable manners with a wide variety of people.

  As Hannibal bounced up to Olivia and leaped up onto his back legs, it was tough to imagine him ever allowed out in public.

  But before he could place his elephant-sized paws on her chest, Olivia lifted her knee. His momentum brought his chest into direct contact, knocking the wind out of him and bringing him to all fours, blinking.

  “He’s a freaking freight train,” said Olivia, not looking at the dog.

  “Yup. Blame Jamie.”

  “Right. Because you would have left him there.”

  “I’ve got a heart of stone.”

  Olivia blew a raspberry. “I hope he works out.”

  “Someone out there is looking for a dog exactly like him.” Haylee worked with a number of organizations that provided therapy dogs. When someone requested a dog with specific skills or qualities, their vast network went to work matchmaking.

  But Olivia wasn’t here to talk about dog training.

  “Are you going to keep me in suspense or what?”

  Olivia fingered the end of one short braid. “Don’t freak out.”

  Haylee bristled. “I never freak out.”

  “If you say so.”

  She thought about how she’d reacted to Aiden’s touch at the vending machines.

  “Also, saying ‘don’t freak out’ is the single best way to get a person to freak out, even if, like my own calm self, a person is not the least bit inclined to such behavior.”

  “Put the dogs away, Haylee.”

  “It’s about that girl, isn’t it?” She led Hannibal and Cleo into their pens and secured the latches. “Sage.”

  Olivia bit her lip. “Let’s go to my cabin, where we can talk. I’ve got scones.”

  This was bad.

  * * *

  Olivia Hansen was no coward. But Haylee’s question made her quail inside. They’d both worked so hard to get to where they were; would this destroy Haylee?

  Or, heal her?

  “Sit down, hon,” she said.

  “Oh, God.” Haylee dropped her hand to Jewel’s big head, for comfort. “Just tell me.”

  Where could she begin, when she herself was still reeling from the day’s events?

  On September eleventh, when most of New York City lost someone, fifteen-year-old already-motherless Haylee Hansen lost everyone. Her firefighter father, the rock of her life. Owen, her new-recruit brother, whose dimpled cheeks matched Haylee’s own. Her family, dashing into danger, proudly doing their duty one minute and then . . . gone.

  That fateful day had left a gaping wound inside Haylee that her aunt and last remaining relative had been struggling to fix ever since.

  A volunteer Search-and-Rescue team member with her FEMA-certified German Shepherd Expo, Olivia had begged for deployment to Ground Zero grateful to the point of tears to get a flight out to the niece she barely knew, to learn for herself the fate of her estranged firefighter brother and nephew.

  The first forty-eight hours were sheer, undiluted chaos, hell on earth made worse by the fact that she couldn’t reach Haylee anywhere. She wasn’t at home, at work, at school. Cell phones weren’t standard fare for kids yet at that time, and Olivia had begun to fear that she was one of the lost, when Expo stumbled over her, literally, covered in dust, unhurt but passed out under a debris-laden awning somewhere on Church Street. Later Olivia learned from a classmate of Haylee’s that her niece had actually been in Tower 1 that morning, having an early coffee with her much older boyfriend, a college intern. She guessed, and Haylee later confirmed, that Vince had disapproved of the relationship.

  Others filled in the blanks. Haylee had seen Ladder 35 arrive, had begged Vince and Owen to find Josh, had watched them go in, and had been dragged away, screaming, when the first collapse began.

  Even after all these years, the memory of that day still made Olivia shudder.

  Olivia had remained in the city long after her team had returned to California, to help sort through the million details involved in wrapping up her brother’s and nephew’s lives, complicated, like so many, by the fact that there were no bodies to bury.

  Owen’s life was fairly simple and Vince�
��s personal affairs were military-tidy of course, but there was still the nightmare of memorials, insurance, selling the house and contents, not to mention getting Haylee’s transcripts ready, all while the girl herself was practically catatonic, barely adjusted to the loss of her mother, let alone orphaned entirely.

  Olivia’s own grief was barely a footnote.

  Finally, she packed Haylee up and brought her out west. Moving across the country had been her own salvation once; she only hoped it might be the same for Haylee.

  But San Francisco wasn’t the answer; that became quickly apparent. Haylee never even tried to restart her classes. She barely ate, barely slept, barely spoke, as weeks turned into months. Just sat and hugged Expo.

  Then she started taking him for walks, which made Olivia weep with relief. Then runs, which Expo loved even more, as Olivia had quit Search and Rescue by then.

  Then Haylee began running longer and longer, more than was good for the dog. When she started leaving him at home, returning pale-faced and drenched after hours on the streets, Olivia realized it had become an obsession. Miles and miles each week, through the endless rain and fog, through Golden Gate Park, around the Panhandle, up and down Filbert, growing thinner and rangier and quieter and harder-edged each day.

  Finally Haylee got a job cashiering in the corner grocery store, to shut Olivia up, mostly. Running. Expo. Work. That was her life.

  Then the partying started and what Olivia had thought was a difficult stage before, turned into a nightmare with a nearly tragic ending.

  When Olivia’s tech company offered her a buyout, she leaped at the opportunity to start over. Her plan was to get Haylee to a place as unlike New York City and San Francisco as possible. Where better than the Oregon coast?

  It was perfect.

  It had taken a rambunctious Labrador puppy to bring Haylee back to life and it was Gayle, thoughtful, intuitive Gayle, who had found him.

  He was too active for the service dog program he’d been bred for, Gayle had told her, and needed an owner up for the challenge.

  Haylee named him Strider, and he accomplished everything Olivia had hoped for, and more. Strider was joined by Ranger. Obedience lessons turned into agility. Haylee began competing. Then showing, then teaching.

  Then came the day Olivia purchased the property out toward the beach and set up Sunset Bay Sanctuary, ranch, boarding kennel, shelter, home.

  It was their life.

  She should have known better than to hope for perfect.

  * * *

  “Is she okay? The . . . girl?” Haylee couldn’t bring herself to use the girl’s name. The déjà vu was disconcerting enough.

  “They’re remarkably fine, though Child Protective Services is standing by, of course.” Olivia set out a plate of Daphne’s cranberry-orange scones, ajar of marmalade and two knives.

  “Of course.” Haylee broke off a small corner of crust. Poor kid. Kids, plural, she amended.

  No elephants in this room.

  “She’s a sweet girl, I think,” continued Olivia. “Under the ink and piercings. But she’s got baggage.”

  “Yes. It’s called a baby.” The elephants were kicking up dust, waving their trunks. Angry. Elephants never forgot, isn’t that what they said?

  A metallic taste flooded her mouth. She pushed away her plate.

  “Haylee.” Olivia touched her arm.

  “It’s not her, Liv. My . . . our . . . Sage would be sixteen, not eighteen. Lots of kids are named Sage. And she might have even lied about her name.”

  “She did lie on her paperwork,” Olivia said. “I saw her real name on her admission form. And her birthday.”

  The air around Haylee grew still, as if the very dust motes were waiting for what would happen next.

  “It’s her, Haylee.” Olivia lifted her cell phone. On it were two photos, side by side. One of Haylee as a teen.

  One of the girl.

  Haylee pushed the images away. “That’s not fair.”

  “Nothing about this is fair,” Olivia went on relentlessly. “I’m bringing her back to the ranch. When she’s discharged. Her and the baby.”

  “You can’t.” Haylee shook her head. “I’m not . . . this is a bad idea, Liv.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What about . . .” Haylee cleared her throat. “What about her . . . family?”

  Olivia pushed away her plate and sat back in her chair, looking pensively at Haylee.

  “Honey. Listen.” There was a terrifying gentleness in Liv’s tone. “There are more questions than answers right now, but the fact is, she came here on purpose. She sought you out.”

  Haylee shoved away, got to her feet, yanked open the fridge, stared blankly, then closed it again, marveling that even now, after all these years, it took so little to whirl her back in time to the day when the course of her life was hijacked as surely as the planes that had hit the towers had been.

  Suddenly Olivia was beside her. “It’s okay, Haylee. It’ll be okay. Haylee?”

  Olivia’s voice sounded like it was coming from the other room.

  This wasn’t Olivia’s fault. None of it was. Haylee owed her life to this woman, who, despite her own grief, had taken on the role of de facto parent and never faltered. Not at first when Haylee couldn’t get out of bed, wouldn’t leave her room, refused to eat, go to school, bathe. Not later when she couldn’t sleep, stayed out all night and wouldn’t, sometimes couldn’t, say where she’d been.

  Or whom she’d been with.

  “Did you know?” She turned jerkily and forced herself to look at Olivia. “Did you know, when the social worker contacted you?”

  Her aunt pressed a knuckle to the line between her eyes, as if trying to ease an ache.

  “I suspected, because of her name,” she admitted. “But it was just a guess. And I certainly did not know about the baby. No one knew about that.”

  Haylee’s jaw sagged. “You guessed. And you didn’t tell me.”

  “I did warn you, Haylee.”

  She braced her hands on the countertop and let her head hang.

  Haylee whirled around, then sank to her haunches. “How could this happen? She was supposed to be going to loving, happy parents who wanted her. How could she end up . . . homeless and pregnant? This can’t be right. It can’t be.”

  She pressed her fingertips into her skull, overcome with the enormity of her mistakes, trying to convince herself that the girl in the photo, wearing Owen’s dimple, the baby Haylee had so carelessly conceived, and so deliberately chosen parents for, who was supposed to grow up with everything Haylee had lost, was just as lost and broken as Haylee herself had once been.

  She’d fixed her mistake. She’d made certain of that. She had protected her child from the likes of... herself.

  “This can’t be right,” she repeated, as her teeth started to chatter. “I’m not ready.”

  Olivia gathered her into her arms and they settled on the kitchen floor. “Breathe, honey. Breathe. You can do this.”

  She’d given the same comfort on the dark night when Haylee had finally brought the squalling, slimy infant into the world.

  At the time, Haylee hadn’t believed that she could survive everything life had thrown at her, but of course, Olivia had been right. Like poor Sage in the emergency room that morning, she’d put her head down, pushed through the pain, and done it. And when it was over, she’d closed that door and moved on. Found her dogs. Learned to survive. Learned to live.

  She couldn’t open that door again.

  But she couldn’t live with herself if she stepped away, either.

  Chapter Five

  “We loved getting off the grid and exchanging our cell phones for some cowboy hats. Olivia is a fantastic host and you haven’t lived until you’ve had Daphne’s cinnamon buns for breakfast!”

  —Mel and Tessa Shulman

  Daphne glanced out the big window overlooking the yard the next morning, checking for the men. Breakfast was almost ready. Gideon and Huck were
still out at the stables, no doubt delayed by Tyler’s and Duke’s attempts to help. Those boys desperately needed what they provided at Sanctuary Ranch and Daphne was glad they’d gotten them before foster care, juvenile hall, or the street ruined them beyond redemption. However, if they delayed breakfast, they’d be sorry.

  “Good morning,” came a voice at her ear.

  Reflexively, she whirled around, left leg up and cocked, and barely stopped herself from inserting her foot into Jamie’s taut midsection.

  “Holy shit,” sputtered Jamie, leaping sideways. “I love it when you do that.”

  Daphne cleared her throat and straightened her apron.

  “How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me?”

  Old habits died hard. Especially when you practiced them daily.

  “I thought you heard me. I’m here to help but never mind.”

  “Not so fast.” Daphne shoved a basket at her. “You’re on egg duty.”

  The open-concept kitchen was set up with numerous workstations, allowing Daphne to run cooking and baking classes for their guests from time to time. Because their next group was only a family of four, she hoped this would be her chance to work on preserves and canning. It had been an excellent season so far, with a steady flow of fruit and vegetables coming in from the garden, and Daphne looked forward to refilling the cellar for winter.

  Olivia tromped in, kicking her boots off on the wide-planked porch.

  “Seen Haylee yet today?” she asked.

  “Nope,” said Daphne. “Check the kennel.”

  “She’s working with a new dog.” Jamie preened, fake-buffing her fingernails on her sleeve. “I found him for her.”

  “I wouldn’t boast about that yet,” Olivia said. “I’ve met him.”

  “He’s awesome,” Jamie protested.

  “Those eggs won’t collect themselves.” Daphne shooed Jamie out to the henhouse.

  “Have some coffee, Liv.” Daphne gestured to the sideboard with her chin. “You don’t look right.” There were circles around Olivia’s eyes and she’d cinched her hair in a single, poky ponytail in the back, instead of coaxing it into her favored braid.

  “Gee, thanks.”