The Tiger in the House

by Jacqueline Sheehan

  “Where’s that boyfriend of yours?” he asked. He tucked the plastic bottle of superglue into his jacket pocket.

  What boyfriend? Greg must have seen her with the guy from the online dating parade. Well not a parade. She had dated three men in the last year, each one remarkably unsuited to her. Or maybe it was Delia. She was unsuitable.

  “Where could you have possibly seen me with a date?”

  “I frequent The Daily Grind. I can’t give up my daily espresso.”

  That’s why he looked familiar. He was one of the regulars, likely head down into the Wall Street Journal, or faced into his smartphone.

  “I’m sort of taking a break from dating,” she said, completely aware how overused this sounded.

  Greg’s hair, a mix of white and brown, was thin enough that his pink scalp was visible.

  “That’s what I told IBM when I was about fifty-five. I need a break, I said to them. Except I never went back. That was ten years ago. We all knew they were going under.” He pulled a tape measure from his toolbox. “Don’t take a break for too long or you’ll end up supergluing elephants to shed roofs.”

  A gold wedding band on his left hand announced his marital status. “How did you meet your wife?” she asked. “You didn’t have Match.com back then.”

  “The old-fashioned way, at college in Chicago. Our first date was at a Pink Floyd concert, and neither of us could hear one word the other said. She told me she was more of a Marvin Gaye, Carly Simon kind of gal. I had never listened to any music where the bass didn’t pulverize my skull, but I sort of liked her music. Weird, isn’t it, how people find each other?”

  Weird? Was there something beyond weird, something that drew people together beyond what we could see or touch, a kind of vibrational wave designed for only two people? Radio wave matchmaking? Her parents had found each other at their college newspaper. Ira and his wife met through friends and knew the second they were in the same room for ten minutes. Ben and Michelle were married for twenty-five years, all without the aid of Match.com. Well, Ben did say they met at a bar, but Ben had been bartending his way through vet school.

  Delia slid one finger into her pocket and touched Tyler’s card.

  “Nice to meet you, Greg. I have to get back to work. Juniper said she gave you a list. She knows more about the requirements for the café than I do.”

  “Juniper? You mean J Bird. She told me to call her that.”

  Her sister had already pulled Greg into the fold of her life.

  He gave a wave, not quite military, but still, his fingers started at the side of his head and then pointed toward her. “Any time you need a tester for baked goods, I’m your man,” he said.

  Delia walked back to the storefront and felt a soft ocean breeze filter in between the houses and caress her face. How did the breeze find her, whistling in like it knew she was standing right there? How had Tyler found her?

  CHAPTER 16

  If Delia was going to see Tyler again, she wanted a buffer. Perhaps several. She had been rejected by Tyler once, and did not want a tête-à-tête, meaningful looks, a possible too-long hug, fingertips grazing over a menu. His business card felt magnetized, drawing the iron from her blood. Did she know anyone else circling their thirties who handed out business cards? Maybe he was professional all the time now. Mr. Medical Doctor. Maybe he wasn’t Tyler anymore.

  It was like seeing a ghost, and Delia had plenty of those to go around. She hadn’t given Tyler a number to call, certainly not an address. Yet when she came home from putting a coat of paint on the bathroom of the café, he had already called.

  “Delia, you’ll never guess who called and left a message. Tyler. Didn’t you guys go out? Wasn’t he the guy who moved to Portland in his senior year, all cool and West Coasty?”

  Her number was listed, making it easy enough for Tyler to find it. But still, the feel of him reaching out permeated her marrow.

  Baxter trotted to the front door and greeted Delia with his full-body gyration, head pressed into her thigh, a purring whine that melted her every time. How could a dog with such a dignified profile make such a silly sound?

  There were times when Delia and J Bird devolved from we are both adults together now. J Bird became thirteen and Delia became nineteen again. Or worse yet, Delia was thirteen and J Bird was seven, brand new to second grade, and Delia knew how to keep her occupied while her parents were off to the psychiatrist again for another round of promising medications.

  “Did you hear me?” said Juniper from the kitchen.

  Pans clattered, and the whoosh of water running down the sink meant she was cleaning up after a baking episode. Delia smelled sage; these must be the new scones. Freshly ground pepper, sage, and a hint of finely ground caraway. The latest experiment.

  Delia dropped her ever-present shoulder briefcase, big enough to hold her laptop for work. When she finally left Foster Services, she would never carry a briefcase again. She longed for the feeling of bread dough, full of promise and life.

  Fragrant scones cooled on a metal rack. J Bird was never happier than when she had successfully concocted a slight variation in a recipe. She held out her arms, palms up, and took a bow. Baxter took his favored position under the kitchen table, his head resting on his paws, brown eyes darting from sister to sister.

  “These are definitely going on our menu,” she said. Her auburn hair was held out of the food zone by a purple scarf rolled into a headband. Even sweating, with tendrils of her hair tumbling past the scarf and wearing a white baker’s apron, J Bird was beautiful.

  Delia pinched off the nose of a scone and popped it into her mouth. “Nice. The ground caraway is a third-level taste, not as prominent as in rye bread. I’ve never understood why they put caraway seeds in rye bread. Biting into them is like a caraway grenade.”

  Juniper put her hands on her hips. “The Tyler guy?”

  “Okay,” said Delia, “I saw him today. He’s moved back.”

  “He would like you to call him.” J Bird vacillated between being an annoying thirteen-year-old and the blistering hotshot baker she had become.

  “How can I? I don’t have time. I need to work on this last case. And the café needs so much work before we can open; I’m afraid we won’t make our deadline for an opening.”

  Juniper untied the apron and threw it on the counter. “Let me ask you this. How did your Match.com date go? Another improbable pairing, to use your words?”

  Baxter saw the apron toss as a sign for a potential walk. He stood up and went to the door that led to the backyard, looking back at them for confirmation.

  Delia conceded the point; she would call him back. And she already knew where they’d meet. Tomorrow morning at seven a.m. when Willard Beach at South Portland allowed dogs off leash, she’d bring all eighty pounds of golden retriever with her and J Bird. Two layers of buffer between her and Tyler should do it.

  * * *

  Delia, J Bird, and Baxter arrived at the parking lot in front of Willard Beach at six forty-five a.m. Great Danes squeezed their way out of two-door Corollas and teacup poodles emerged from V-8 Land Cruisers. Every car that pulled in held a dog, or two, or three. Since the moment he saw the sisters put on running shoes, Baxter’s level of anticipation remained sky high. His muscles flickered with each bump of the journey that meant beach, water, sticks, gulls, and the occasional decaying fish. He pressed his black nose against the window and whined a slow, high-pitched sound that was unique to beach arrivals.

  Delia opened the back door for Baxter, and he leapt out in a detonation of joy. Delia wished that she could be as happy as this dog, forgetting all wrongs from the past and planning no more than five minutes into the future. Was Baxter’s present moment larger than both her past and future? She had asked Ben this question several months ago while Baxter gracefully submitted to his vaccinations. “That’s it exactly,” he said, “sort of like a perpetual high.”

  “Tyler isn’t here. He’s probably not coming,” said Delia, tryin
g to keep a lightness to her voice, keeping a lid on her deep disappointment. She’d been awake since five and had changed her clothes three times, settling on jeans that looked the best in her gray-dawn mirror. Her stomach churned on too much coffee and nerves.

  J Bird was accustomed to being up this early. Baker’s hours started at four thirty. She managed a shift change with another woman at Bayside Bakery in order to be with Delia this morning. She wore a skirt from the Dusty Rose Gently Worn clothing store. The black skirt hugged her butt and ended midthigh. Even with running shoes, the outfit was pure J Bird.

  A car door closed, and both sisters turned to the sound across the parking lot. “Oh, my God, is that Tyler?” asked Juniper. She jumped up and waved as large as one woman could. “Tyler!”

  Even from a distance, Delia could see that his legs were still tanned from years in the California sun, not white like most of Maine’s inhabitants. J Bird did a fancy birdlike dance, arms overhead, high-stepping all the way across the parking lot while Tyler opened the back door of his car and released a dog, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Baxter, who trotted beside J Bird, immediately raised his tail and puffed out his chest. Tyler’s dog must have been a female.

  Delia tucked the car keys on top of the passenger side rear wheel and followed her sister, feeling ordinary, a black-and-white image compared to J Bird’s full-color print. Would Tyler remember the times that were anything but ordinary?

  Without hesitation, J Bird opened her arms and hugged Tyler, squealing as if she had won the lottery. As Delia approached, Tyler looked at her over J Bird. He mouthed, “Hi.”

  He grabbed J Bird’s shoulders and said, “You are still as bouncy as when you were a kid, but honestly, it’s going to take me a minute to accept the fact that you’re all grown up.”

  J Bird launched in for a second hug, laughing. J Bird and Tyler were midhug while Baxter and the other dog investigated each other head to butt. Delia was alone, not knowing where to put her hands, where to look.

  “I think the dogs like each other,” said J Bird, releasing him. Tyler’s chestnut-colored dog lowered her chest to the ground, butt up, in a clear invitation to play. “Let’s get them out of the parking lot. I mean, I’ll take them out of the parking lot. Come on, pups.” She ran with the two dogs toward the beach.

  “Delia,” he said. “It’s so good to see you.” He took two steps to her frozen island and wrapped his arms around her. The scent of him sent Delia reeling, eight layers deep, the soft claret of his sweatshirt, worn at least four times, his hair, shampooed this morning, soap, something that had to be from years of California air, and beneath it all, his skin, embedded like hers with the lingering hint of smoke, trapped beneath the epidermal cells, emerging in fearful sweat.

  She had to remember this wasn’t a class reunion, this was a reunion of catastrophe. Tyler was a marker in time of fire/hospital/ funerals and the sight of his family’s moving van pulling out.

  “I was shocked to see you yesterday,” she said, pulling away. Did her voice tremble?

  “I knew that I’d run into you. Actually, I only arrived here last week. Mercy Hospital offered me a position that I couldn’t refuse.”

  Isn’t that what his father said about the job in Seattle that yanked their family three thousand miles away? Of course you could refuse a job. Delia was three weeks from refusing hers.

  “Come on, let’s catch up with J Bird and the dogs,” she said.

  Fog rolled in from the ocean and covered them with a fine mist. Tyler hadn’t shaved his head like nearly every other man their age when they looked in the mirror and saw the first hint of receding hairline. Tyler’s hair, the color of golden sand, was a relaxed thicket, short enough to show a tight, defined line along his neck, long enough that the mist curled a top lock across his forehead.

  They crossed the parking lot and took a paved path to the beach. J Bird was near the water in the vortex of two whirling dogs.

  “What’s your dog’s name?” asked Delia. She took off her shoes, wanting to feel the abrasiveness of the sand.

  “She’s not my dog. She belongs to my landlord. When they heard that I was going to Willard Beach, they begged me to bring her. Her name is Lucy. They said this beach is known as the Canine Riviera.”

  The sand was cold, infused with salt.

  “You always loved to go barefoot,” he said, smiling.

  They had spent hours on the beaches along the coast when they were dating. Was he as pulled back into the past as she was? She was slipping out of her skin, rushing headlong into the other life before the fire, swimming like a fish in the shallows with Tyler, wrapping her legs around his waist, immune to gravity.

  Delia dragged her weightless body back into the present. “Look at them,” she said, pointing at the dogs.

  The dogs played a game that looked very much like tag. First Baxter ran up to Lucy and slammed his front paws on the ground, butt up, then ran away. Lucy chased him at top speed, her jaws open, eyes wide. They ran side by side for an undetermined amount of time until they stopped and Lucy pounced on her front paws, butt up, and she ran off with Baxter in pursuit. J Bird tried to keep up with them, zigzagging around, head back, laughing.

  “So you went to med school. I didn’t see that coming at all. What made you decide that?” said Delia. A Frisbee flew low over their heads. It was caught in midair by a standard poodle, ears flying, front paws tucked in, looking more like Pegasus than a dog.

  Tyler walked on the ocean side, wearing a kind of heavy duty flip-flop. So West Coast.

  “It’s a long story. And a little sappy. Please don’t laugh if I say it was because I wanted to help people, because it’s true. I went to Stanford.” He kicked a long strip of seaweed out of the way. “But I wanted to come back here to Maine. I must have been implanted with a homing device that went off about a year ago, pulling me back here. California was too unrelentingly sunny and happy for me.”

  Should Delia stop pretending, chatting on the surface while her emotions rolled like earth tremors? Could you ever pick up where you left off, especially if where you left off was orphaned, smoke-charred, watching the back of a moving van bump along the street?

  He bent over to pick up a piece of driftwood. He rubbed it with one palm. “How about you, Delia? What are you doing?”

  What was she doing? “I work with kids who need foster care. I’ve done it for ten years, but I’m leaving soon to start a bakery with J Bird.”

  Tyler stopped rubbing the bleached piece of wood. “Don’t tell me you’re involved with the little girl who was found at the murder scene? That was the first thing that I read when I moved back.”

  “If a child needs an emergency placement, that’s exactly what I do. But I can’t talk about my cases. You should know that.” Delia stopped walking and put her hand on his arm. “This feels awkward. I’m not good at dodging the issue. It’s hard because the last time I saw you was all mixed up with the fire and my parents’ deaths and you breaking up with me. Why do you want to see me now?”

  Her voice didn’t sound like her own; it was mixed with the collision of love and death. Tyler’s deep brown eyes did not waver or seek shelter on the horizon or the dogs galloping around them.

  “One of the things that I’ve learned about being a doctor is not to show when I’m petrified of doing the wrong thing. Like right now. Like when I walked into the coffee shop and saw you. Part of me wanted to run away and the other part of me was so glad to see you. . . .”

  Delia’s cell phone went off with the now-ominous cricket sound of Ira. She dug the phone out of her jacket pocket.

  “I have to take this,” she said. “Work.” She took a few steps from Tyler and turned away.

  “Sorry to bother you,” said Ira, “but I just got a call from Erica. Hayley told her that she talks with her mommy on Skype. She actually said, ‘The Skype.’ Where are you right now? I know it’s early but can you get over to Erica’s house and find out more about her mother? I don’t want to lose t
he thread of this.”

  “I’m in South Portland at Willard Beach, not far from their neighborhood. I knew it! This kid has family out there. She has a mother. Okay, I’m leaving right now,” she said.

  One child, untethered and dangling in the stratosphere, could be reunited with her mother. Or at least the possibility was within sight. Each time this happened, each time a child was reunited with a parent and the outcome was at least adequate, Delia felt like she was rewriting history. Parents did come back. They did look for their lost children.

  “I have to go. Can you give J Bird a ride home? Oh, God, I don’t even know where you live? Do you live in Portland?”

  Tyler held up both hands, palms facing Delia. “No worries. Do what you need to do. Please call me.”

  She hadn’t meant for him to hear her end of the phone conversation. The location of foster kids was never revealed to the public. But Tyler wasn’t the public, and she hadn’t said exactly where Hayley lived.

  Was Tyler relieved that she was leaving? Had it all been a mistake to get together? Her bones shifted deep beneath her skin; she was the one relieved. She knew how to do her job; she didn’t know the terrain of Tyler.

  Delia waved her arms at Juniper and shouted, “I have to leave for work. It’s important. Tyler can drive you and Baxter home. Okay?”

  Her sister trotted over, and the dogs followed her. She smiled a huge smile at Tyler. “Okay with me, except I’m not ready to go yet. Are you? These dogs are insane about each other. Can we stay until nine, when the beach switches over to anti-dog time? And then I can show Tyler where J Bird Café is.”

  Tyler looked at Delia and shrugged. “Sure. Lucy probably hasn’t had this much fun in a long time. Her people said they never give her as much exercise as she needs.”