Pupcakes

by Annie England Noblin

  Brydie glanced around the room. She couldn’t believe it had been just three months since she moved in. She’d come here as a last resort, at the urging of Elliott. She’d come because she felt like she had no other option. If she’d had another option, she surely would have taken it, and now, leaving here was the last thing on earth she wanted to do. Saying goodbye to Pauline was the last thing she wanted to do.

  The day was crisp, clear, and sunny. It was a lovely day for December, and it made the little cemetery in Germantown look almost cheerful when Brydie arrived with Teddy in tow. She knew that there would probably be funeral-goers who thought bringing a dog to a graveside was inappropriate, and that’s why she was relieved to see Fred and Arlow standing next to MaryAnn and Thor.

  “Hello, Brydie,” Fred said when he saw her. “And hello there, Mr. Roosevelt.”

  MaryAnn pulled a tissue from the pocket of her crimson cardigan and wiped at her watery eyes. “I told Fred that having a dog at a funeral doesn’t seem altogether respectful.”

  “But we knew that Pauline would have wanted us to bring them,” Fred said. “She woulda got a kick out of it at least.”

  Brydie smiled. “I think you’re right. I couldn’t leave Teddy at home. Not today.”

  Behind them, people were starting to emerge from their cars and make their way over to the graveside. Some of them Brydie knew, and some of them she didn’t. Many of them, like Fred and MaryAnn, had their dogs with them.

  “We made sure everyone knew,” MaryAnn said. “We wanted to send her off right, me and Fred.”

  “She was one of us,” Fred said with a shrug. “And now you are, too, kiddo.”

  Brydie bit her lip and looked away in a feeble attempt to hold back tears, and that’s when she saw Nathan and Sasha coming toward them.

  He didn’t say anything as he took his place between her and Fred, but she could feel his eyes on her as she looked straight ahead and at the priest readying himself for the service. They hadn’t spoken since the night he took her to the nursing home to say goodbye to Pauline, and little had been said then. She’d been too upset, too tired, to have a conversation with him about anything other than Pauline, and so the air hung thick between them with everything they couldn’t say. Besides, she told herself. He’s already made himself quite clear.

  “Friends, we are gathered here today to honor the life of Pauline Elizabeth Neumann . . .”

  Brydie closed her eyes. She let the priest’s words wash over her as he spoke. She wanted nothing more than to sit down on the chilly ground and stretch out her legs. She wanted Teddy to sit on her lap while she cried. She wanted to be back in Pauline’s small shoe box of a room and talk about how she burned down her house on Thanksgiving.

  She didn’t open her eyes until she felt a gloved hand on her arm. She looked over to see Rosa standing beside her, wearing a small, sympathetic smile. Joe was standing stoically beside her. “How did you know?” Brydie mouthed to her.

  Rosa inclined her head toward Nathan. “He told us,” she replied. “Came by the store the next evening when you were home taking care of details,” she whispered back. “Wanted us to know you were having a hard time right now.”

  Next to Rosa, Joe cleared his throat and nodded toward the priest. “Shhh . . .”

  Rosa rolled her eyes, but complied. She kept her hand on Brydie’s arm, squeezing every so often.

  When they had bowed their heads and prayed for the last time, the priest said, “Now Brydie Benson would like to make an announcement before we all disperse on this beautiful day the Lord has given us.”

  Brydie took a deep breath and handed Teddy’s leash off to Rosa. She walked around to where the priest was standing and smiled at everyone. “Some of you may know that I live in Pauline’s house. I’ve been there for about three months, taking care of her home and of her dog. I’d like to take this time to invite you all over to the house to celebrate Pauline one last time. Pets are welcome, and there will be food.”

  Rosa handed the leash back to Brydie when she was finished. “Honey, I’m sorry about how tense things have been at work,” Rosa said. “What happened wasn’t your fault. It’s not your job to watch over Lillian.”

  “It’s not my job to fall asleep at work, either,” Brydie replied. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “Well, now that that’s all settled,” Joe said, interrupting the two, “Brydie, I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”

  Brydie was touched. It was such an un-Joe like thing to say. “Thank you, Joe.”

  “And I spoke to the big man up in his ivory tower,” he continued. “They’ll agree to keep you full-time after Christmas if you’re interested.”

  “Really?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Thank you,” Brydie said, reaching up to give Joe a hug. “I promise not to fall asleep again on a tub of frosting.”

  “You’d better not,” he replied. “But Rosa and I both know you won’t stay with us forever. Just hopin’ you’ll stick with us long enough to train your replacement.”

  Memories of the shop building in downtown Memphis came to Brydie’s mind, and she couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks, Joe. But that won’t be for a while yet.”

  “Ms. Benson?”

  Brydie turned around to see a balding man wearing a black trench coat staring at her. “Yes?”

  “My name is Jacob Dwyer, and I’m an attorney for the estate of Mrs. Pauline Neumann. Do you have a few minutes?”

  “Sure.” Brydie turned back to Rosa and Joe. “I’d better talk to this guy,” she said, taking Teddy’s leash from Rosa.

  “We’d better get going, anyway,” Rosa said. “I left Lillian with a neighbor, and she gets anxious if I’m gone too long.”

  Brydie waved them off and turned her attention back to the lawyer. “So,” she said, “what can I do for you?”

  “Mrs. Neumann called me a few weeks ago. She wanted to make some changes to her last will and testament,” the man said. “She wanted to include you.”

  “What?”

  “Her most urgent request was that of Teddy,” he said. “She wanted to make sure that you had the option of keeping him if you desired.”

  Brydie looked down at Teddy. He was looking from Brydie to the lawyer, cocking his head from side to side as the lawyer spoke. “She asked me to take care of him just before she passed away,” Brydie said.

  “Of course, if you don’t want to keep him, she also arranged for him to go to a pug rescue in the Memphis area. They’re ready for him if that happens to be the case.”

  Brydie’s grip on Teddy’s leash tightened. “No,” she said. “I don’t want him to go to a rescue. I want to keep him.”

  The man nodded.

  “I would never,” Brydie said, her voice cracking slightly. “I would never send him away.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now that we have that issue settled.” He reached into his coat pocket and handed Brydie a sealed envelope. “She wanted me to give you this.”

  Brydie took the envelope from his hand.

  “Mrs. Neumann asked me to give this to you upon your agreement to take care of the animal,” he said. “She gave me express instructions that you not open it until Christmas Eve.”

  Brydie turned the envelope over in her hands. It smelled vaguely of lavender and vanilla. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s all in the letter,” the lawyer said. “We’ll talk again after the holidays.” He gave her a warm smile and a pat on the shoulder before walking away, his shoes crunching against the dead leaves as he went.

  Brydie stood there for a few minutes holding the envelope. She wanted to tear it open right then. She wanted to know what was so important that Pauline had called her lawyer and made him promise to tell Brydie to wait nearly another week, until Christmas Eve. She sighed, and shoved the letter into her pocket. She took a last look at Pauline’s casket before she turned away and beckoned for Teddy to follow. “It’s just you and me now, buddy,” she said.

  As she wal
ked toward her car, she noticed a man standing at one of the large oak trees. At first she thought it was the lawyer, Dwyer, but as she got closer she realized that this man was much older. He was wearing dark wool slacks and a matching blazer with circular leather patches on each arm. There was something oddly familiar about him, although Brydie couldn’t quite put her finger on it. When he saw Brydie, he turned and walked away, hurrying toward the edge of the cemetery.

  “Excuse me,” Brydie said, calling out to him. “Excuse me, sir?”

  At her beckoning, the man paused for a moment before turning around to face her. “Yes?” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Brydie said, out of breath from following him. She’d had to stop and pick up Teddy as she hurried. “Did you come for Pauline Neumann’s service?”

  “Yes,” the man said.

  “I’m sorry, you’ve just missed it,” she said. “Did you know her?”

  “Yes,” the man said again.

  Brydie was beginning to think that that was all the man could say. His face was deeply lined with age, but his eyes were bright and dark. She’d seen them before, those eyes. She knew she had. “I’m having a few of her friends back at my house,” Brydie said, still trying to figure out where she’d seen him. “You’re welcome to come by. I can give you the address.”

  “No,” the man replied. “I just came to . . . I just came to pay my respects to Polly.” He turned and continued on toward his car.

  There was something about the way he called her “Polly,” some kind of familiarity in his voice, that gave Brydie pause. He’d clearly known her for a long time, in another life. Nobody she knew called Pauline “Polly.” And that’s when it hit her. The man’s eyes. His lined face. The way he spoke. She knew who he was. She knew who he was, because she’d seen him before—a much younger version of him in pictures.

  “Excuse me,” Brydie said, hurrying after him again.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you again, but are you . . . would you happen to be . . . well, is your name Bill?”

  The man’s mouth dropped open just slightly. After a few seconds of weighty pause, he said, “It is.”

  “You were married to her once?”

  “I was,” he said. “A long time ago.”

  Brydie reached out and touched his arm, her fingers brushing against the smooth leather patch on his elbow. “Please,” she said. “Please come back to her house with me. I have something that I think belongs to you.”

  “I’m sorry?” The man knit his bushy white eyebrows together. “Something of . . . mine?”

  “It’s yours now,” Brydie said. “It won’t take but just a couple of minutes, and the house isn’t far from here.”

  The man hesitated, clearly hedging his bets with this woman standing in front of him, arms full with a chubby pug. “Okay,” he said. “I will stop by.”

  “Thank you,” Brydie said, putting Teddy back down onto the ground. “Thank you so much.”

  CHAPTER 40

  NEARLY EVERYBODY CAME BACK TO PAULINE’S HOUSE AFTER the service, and the living room and kitchen were both full of people and their dogs. Brydie was relieved she’d been up half the night baking.

  “Brydie,” MaryAnn said, approaching her before Brydie had even taken off her coat. “I have someone I want you to meet. This is Marshall Good. He has the most glorious little gift shop near Midtown.”

  Marshall stuck out his hand to Brydie. “It’s a gift shop and bakery,” he said. “We’re expanding the first of the year, and MaryAnn tells me you make treats for Thor that are out of this world.”

  “She does,” MaryAnn replied. “They’re simply amazing, and my Thor can’t get enough.”

  “It’s just a hobby,” Brydie said, feeling her cheeks redden. “But Thor does seem to like them.”

  “Well,” Marshall said, “if you change your mind . . .” He handed her a business card. “Give me a call. I’d love to stock them in my shop.”

  “Thank you,” Brydie said. From the corner of her eye, she saw Bill enter the house, and when he saw her, he gave her a small wave. “I’ll give you a call. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go and speak with someone. It was nice to meet you.”

  Brydie set the card down on the dining room table next to her keys and made her way over to Bill. “Bill,” she said, “I’m glad you decided to come.”

  “You’ve made me quite curious, I must admit,” he said.

  Brydie motioned for him to follow her. “It’s back in the bedroom,” she said.

  BRYDIE LED HIM to the bedroom, where the photo album was still sitting on the bed. She reached up into the closet and pulled down the Tupperware tote with the hospital blanket and birth certificate. She sat down on the bed.

  Bill was standing in the middle of the room looking around. He walked over to the crimson curtains and touched them lightly. “This whole house looks like Polly,” he said.

  “What I want to show you is right here,” Brydie said. She held up the tote and the album. “I think that Pauline would want you to have them.”

  Bill sat down next to her and placed the tub on his lap and the album on top of the tub. He opened the album to the first page. “I haven’t seen these in such a long time,” he said. “Such a long time.”

  “They were in the basement,” Brydie replied. “They’d been down there for a long time. I found some of the pictures and that tub there in a trunk a few weeks ago when there was a flash flood and some water got into the basement. The trunk was locked.” She looked down at her hands. “I took the hinges off.”

  “That’s just like Polly,” Bill mumbled, turning the pages. “Just like her.”

  “There was a chair by the trunk,” Brydie continued. “I think she must’ve gone down there often . . . when she was still able.”

  Bill looked up at her as. “After we lost our baby,” he said. “After we lost our Elise, Polly took down all of the pictures in our house. All of them. She packed them away and told me that if we couldn’t have pictures of our child to fill our house, then we wouldn’t have any pictures at all.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “No,” Bill said, circling a picture of Pauline with his thumb. “If you’ve never lost a child, then you certainly cannot.”

  “I used to think never having a baby was the worst thing that could happen,” she said.

  “She never got over it,” Bill said. “She was never the same. I was never the same. I told her we could try again, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She left six months after. I always hoped she would go on to have a happy life.”

  “Did you?”

  Now Bill offered her a smile. “In my own way. I married the local florist’s daughter and we had three girls.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “It is,” Bill said. “They’re lovely. They take good care of their old father. But I’ve always felt like I was betraying Polly and Elise somehow. By never . . . by never telling people that I had four daughters instead of three.”

  Brydie felt her chest tighten. “I think both of them would have wanted you to be happy.”

  “I loved her,” Bill said. “Polly was the love of my life.”

  “She told me about you,” Brydie said. “I’ve been living here for the last few months taking care of her house and her dog. She was in a nursing home, but she was feisty right up until the very end. She told about being married to you, and she told me about how she burned your house down one Thanksgiving.”

  Bill laughed. It was a deep, throaty laugh. “She always used to love to tell that story. Especially because my mother hated it.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Bill closed the album. “Thank you for showing these to me.”

  Brydie nodded. “I’m going to give you some time,” she said, standing up. “Can I get you anything?”

  “You’ve given me quite enough,” Bill said. “Thank you.”

  Brydie left the old man staring at a younger version of himself and
went back out into the living room to where everyone else had congregated. Someone had taken it upon themselves to go outside with the dogs, and through the sliding glass doors that led to the patio, Brydie could see Teddy and Sasha outside giving chase to Thor.

  If Sasha is here, thought Brydie, then Nathan must be around here somewhere.

  Brydie glanced around the house. She didn’t see Nathan. She considered for a moment that maybe it was Myriah who had come over with Sasha, but she shook her head. That didn’t make any sense. Nathan had been at the cemetery with Sasha. She’d invited everyone back to Pauline’s house. She just hadn’t anticipated that he would come.

  She wandered into the kitchen, picking up used paper plates and cups as she went. It seemed an odd thing to wish for after a funeral, but she hoped that everyone was having a good time. Rather, she hoped that they were all enjoying their time together, talking about Pauline. She pulled out a plate of peanut butter balls from the refrigerator and busied herself putting them on a platter to take into the living room.

  “Brydie?”

  Brydie turned around, a peanut butter ball between her fingers. “Hi.”

  Nathan smiled at her, shoving his hands down into the pockets of his dress slacks. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry to crash like this. I know you probably don’t want me here.”

  “Everybody is welcome,” Brydie said, turning back around to the peanut butter balls. “I invited everyone.”

  “I know,” Nathan said. “I wanted to say so much after Pauline died, but for the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure what to say to someone who was grieving.”

  The peanut butter ball between Brydie’s fingers was beginning to melt, and the slightest bit of chocolate was sliding down the inside of her thumb. “It’s okay,” she said. “Maybe there isn’t anything left to be said.”

  Nathan didn’t say another word to her, and Brydie watched as he walked outside to collect Sasha, hooked the leash to her collar, and slid out through the back gate. As she watched, she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was Bill, clutching to his chest everything Brydie had given him.