Love at First Bark Page 22

  “Maybe it ain’t as complicated as you’re making it out to be.”

  “Maybe.” Ben tapped the table with his thumb before abandoning the list-making to check his phone, which he’d left on the counter. “I should make sure your mom hasn’t texted.” When he got to the counter, he saw that she had. “She wants you home in thirty minutes. You’re going to your aunt’s tonight. I’ll give you a ride.”

  By the time he finished texting, Taye was in the kitchen sticking Ben’s sad list of resolutions on the front of the fridge. The angular handwriting under his resolutions caught his attention. A closer glance confirmed that Taye had added three of his own.

  Meet a girl.

  Have a family.

  Live happily ever after and all that crap.

  Ben chuckled. “Fair enough, Taye. Fair enough.”

  * * *

  Using a stiff, short-handled brush, Mia swept acrylic paint onto the painted concrete blocks of the wall in the shelter. It was good to be creative again. Before beginning the mural project, she’d been skeptical of her ability to get her unrelated sketches to come together and to do the featured animals justice. But as the disjointed images she’d sketched so many times began to merge into one dynamic scene, her confidence was growing.

  Home from Minnesota and Ollie back in school, she dove into mural painting full swing. She couldn’t imagine a better activity to do while attempting to sort through the chaotic jumble of decisions needing to be made, from how to handle her feelings for Ben to what to do with the baby who shared half her son’s DNA.

  And since January was one of the slowest months at the shelter, the main room was relatively quiet, and it was a perfect time to complete the project without much disturbance. She’d volunteered here long enough to know that after the holidays were over, the winter months could be so quiet that they could become disheartening for the staff and volunteers. In January and February, often more animals were surrendered than adopted out. When this happened, inevitably the building filled to capacity and animals had to be turned away. And it was hard to forget that not all shelters could be as dedicated as High Grove to ensuring that each inhabitant found a forever home.

  This year, Mia was crossing her fingers that the winter blues wouldn’t set in along with the short days and quiet nights of January. There was so much here to look forward to this year. Megan was due to have her baby any day, and the staff and volunteers were feeling her excitement. In the back room, a poster poll was under way, with everyone weighing in on their guess as to the baby’s sex, weight, and date of birth. Mia’s guess was for a girl to be born on the fourteenth of January and that she’d weigh 8 pounds, 3 ounces, nearly a pound and a half more than Ollie, who’d been born four weeks early.

  Another reason for Mia’s hopeful attitude was that thanks to the now-complete renovations, there were ten more kennels for dogs and eight more for cats. With these extra kennels added to the record-breaking adoptions in December—a likely result of all the press and social media attention—they were entering their slowest months with more room to spare than usual.

  In an effort to help keep the shelter’s wave of support going, Tess, the shelter’s newest staff member, had come up with a fund-raiser that was sure to get its share of media attention. The weekend before the Super Bowl, the shelter would be hosting its inaugural High Grove Puppy Bowl in the gym of a nearby high school. Although the exact dogs participating in the games were still to be chosen, the halftime show was sure to be the highlight. During halftime, the litter of puppies that had been hash-tagged “miracle puppies” would be making their debut in the world.

  By the end-of-January event, they’d be ten weeks old and ready for adoption. The litter of seven had been found in an abandoned building at the eleventh hour. They were being held a couple of weeks longer than usual because they’d been considerably undernourished when they came to the shelter. Since then, the puppies had been the talk of the town, and Channel 3 had been airing weekly updates and showing pictures and video clips. The shelter had even gotten a bit of national attention, and some of the posts featuring the seven husky-mix puppies had been the most popular in the shelter’s history.

  Because of the hordes of attention the puppies had gotten, hundreds of adoption offers had come in. Many of the offers had included promises of sizable donations to the shelter. A few could be considered bribes and were being rejected. For the contest, interested families had been asked to submit an essay, and candidates were now being whittled down to a manageable number, thanks to a very thorough Excel spreadsheet Patrick had created. While most interested parties lived in the St. Louis area, some were from all over the country, and a few were from overseas.

  On the night of the Puppy Bowl, the chosen families would be announced, and Channel 3 would be there filming it. The media buzz the puppies had been getting was probably boosted by the fact that the stray husky involved in the puppies’ rescue had been adopted by Mason Redding, Tess’s boyfriend and third basemen for the St. Louis Red Birds. At Tess’s request, he’d agreed to emcee the event, and tickets had sold out in four hours.

  A few years ago, Ben had designed Mason Redding’s downtown loft, and they’d become friends in the process. Mia had met him once, six months ago at the party that had been thrown for Ben.

  Ben never name-dropped having friends like Mason Redding. Sometimes, Mia still had a hard time believing that he—a guy who’d summited Everest and had a crap-ton of money and connections—was interested in her. Since returning home, she’d spent more time than she cared to admit convincing herself that she’d made up a connection that wasn’t there. Convincing herself that his real interest was in doing right by his best friend and doing right by Ollie, and that what had happened up there had just been a matter of circumstance.

  And you throwing yourself at him.

  Mia stopped midstroke and rolled out her cramping right shoulder. She couldn’t let her thoughts go there again, or she’d get nothing done. She’d asked for time, and Ben had promised to give her all that she needed. That was all there was to it. Nothing more. All she had to do was call, and he’d be there for her.

  She was working on a ladder on a section at the top of the wall just under the ceiling, painting the yellow-red leaves of a maple tree in fall. She had another hour to paint before she needed to get home to Ollie and take him to his swim lesson tonight. The shelter was a half hour from closing, but empty aside from the staff and one other volunteer. It was already almost dark, and Mia suspected no more customers would come in before closing.

  Megan and Tess had set up a large, expandable playpen in the front room for the husky-mix puppies and were rolling balls back and forth as some of the puppies charged after them. The rest were more interested in tackling each other or gnawing on shoelaces. Megan, who was a big-but-cute pregnant ball, had gotten down on the floor with them and was relying on the edges of the enclosed pen to send back the balls she missed.

  Patrick had been at one of the adoption desks for most of the day. He’d been working intently on his massive Excel spreadsheet and not interacting with anyone, aside from when he’d stopped at 10:42 and 2:42 for breaks and 12:02 for lunch.

  Mia was still rolling out her aching shoulder—she was not a fan of painting with her arm over her head—when he sat back against his chair and huffed.

  “I’ve got it narrowed down to the thirty most deserving adoption applications like you wanted, Megan. But I’d prefer to limit the pool to twenty-eight. The rest will be kept in a separate sheet until after the Puppy Bowl in case we need to give them another look.”

  Mia wondered why twenty-eight was better than thirty since they were both even numbers, which Patrick was a stickler for, but decided not to ask. As of last night, when the application window closed, 417 applications had been received. When Megan had been overwhelmed at the prospect of picking between so many moving essays and deserving applications,
Patrick had volunteered and had jumped into narrowing the selection process with his usual knack for practicality and thoroughness. His Excel spreadsheet expanded across thirty columns and included factors others might have missed, like a search of discoverable social media profiles and perpetrator sites, in addition to the basics like how many animals were in the home, if there was access to a fenced yard, and if there was previous experience with training puppies.

  When Megan had looked over Patrick’s spreadsheet earlier, she’d asked him not to pay as much attention to a few of his columns, like the one labeled “grammatical errors in essay” and another labeled “use of nonsensical words.”

  For the next half hour, Mia went back to painting, and Megan and Tess continued to wear out the puppies while Patrick talked through his top picks. When he was finished, the biggest question everyone had was how they’d decide among such deserving candidates. Patrick was in favor of making a random decision through a drawing, but there were two applications that stood out above the rest, and everyone agreed they made the list no matter what.

  The first and most extraordinary was submitted by the granddaughter of the man who’d once owned the abandoned warehouse where the puppies were found. Although her grandfather had lost the building to the bank in the late nineties, it had been in the man’s family since the nineteen-thirties when his grandfather had built it to operate his then-thriving bottle-making factory. In her essay, the woman explained that her grandfather had passed away a few years after the company went into foreclosure, and that his family had since been saddened by the fact that the building had been empty ever since and would likely be tore down at some point in the future.

  The woman, who’d been a dog groomer for ten years before earning a teaching degree, had written how pleased she was that the long-empty building had provided shelter for the puppies and that adopting any one of the seven dogs would be a tribute to her grandfather’s legacy. Patrick had verified her story right down to finding images of some of the more elaborate bottles that had been made there.

  The second application they felt strongly about was submitted by a family in northern Idaho. The woman had written about a team of sled dogs and driver who’d all nearly perished while training for the Iditarod several years ago. The team had survived four days of exposure while trapped and waiting out an intense early-season storm. All had suffered injuries, and the driver’s injuries had been severe enough that he’d been unable to care for the dogs.

  The woman and her husband had learned about the dogs’ plight and, at considerable expense, had paid to have the entire dog team treated for their injuries and had gone on to adopt two of the huskies who’d suffered the most extreme frostbite. The dogs had needed lots of TLC and training as they learned to live as pets and members of a household rather than as working dogs.

  Although the first several months had been hard, the woman said it was the best decision she and her husband had made for their family of five, and the two huskies had been loved dearly for their spirit and tenacity. The last of their two adopted dogs had passed away a year ago, and the woman wrote that the day her husband had declared he was ready to bring another dog into their life, they came across the puppies’ story on Facebook. Both were hopeful to be able to bring one of the puppies into their home.

  Since three of the seven-dog litter looked and acted more like stubborn and rambunctious huskies than the rest, it had been decided prior to beginning the selection process that those pups would need to be adopted by people who had experience with huskies. The breed was one of several that the shelter adopted only to people who had experience with more challenging dogs. This family not only fit that bill, but everyone who read the essay was moved by the compassion and generosity the couple had shown to a team of injured dogs over two thousand miles away from their home.

  With her shoulder and neck in knots from all the overhead work she’d done the last few hours, Megan decided it was time to be finished painting for the day. She climbed down from the ladder as the puppies were being carried to their kennel in the back. Setting her brushes aside, she cleaned her hands on her painting towel and scooped up one of the puppies, a bright-blue-eyed female who looked a lot like John Ronald, their beautiful husky-mix father.

  Mia cuddled the sleepy girl against her neck and cheek and headed into the kennels to the private room next to quarantine where the puppies were being held until their public debut. The puppy’s thick fur was disarmingly soft and carried a distinct puppy smell. Mia stroked her under the chin and pressed a kiss onto her forehead as the little girl yawned. Even after volunteering here for this long, there was a part of Mia that still wanted to lounge around doing nothing more than cuddle away the hours with little ones like this.

  No surprise to her, the puppy’s bright-blue eyes and strong resemblance to her father brought Mia’s thoughts around for the umpteenth time to Brad and his little blue-eyed human and the phone call she needed to make. Delaying it any longer wasn’t the right thing to do. It seemed like a year rather than ten days since Stacey had handed her the letter.

  As she lowered the puppy into her kennel alongside her siblings, Mia forced away a memory from earlier this week of Ben hoisting her up against the fridge on New Year’s Eve as he pushed back her hair and his mouth closed over the side of her neck. Her blood flooded south as her body remembered as well. Bent over as she was, she grew light-headed enough that she had to grab the kennel door as she stood straight again.

  She wanted lots more of that—lots and lots more of that—but she couldn’t think about being with Ben without thinking of the judgment that would come. From Brad’s family. From friends and neighbors. From the moms at Ollie’s school. This left thoughts of her personal life at an impasse. But none of this changed the fact that this baby was here. Now. And as Ben had confirmed, he was a handful for his young mom. Reaching out felt like the right thing to do.

  After helping Megan and Tess get the puppies settled and cleaning up her painting supplies, Mia headed out. On the way here, the afternoon had been relatively mild and she’d been feeling indoor-bound since coming home, so she’d walked the easy mile here. Now that the sun had set and the temps had dropped below freezing again, the walk home wasn’t as appealing.

  While zipping up her coat and tugging on her gloves, Mia figured now was as good a time as ever to place the call that she’d gotten as far as queuing up on her phone three or four times before. And no surprise, as soon as the ten numbers that could connect her to Stacey were lit up on the screen, her thumb froze over the call button.

  Making the call felt like a no-going-back decision. She was on the cusp of swiping out of the dial screen when she stubbed her toe on an uneven slab of concrete and her thumb smacked down on the button. She could hear her phone ringing even before pressing it to her ear. Hang up. Hang up. Hang up.

  “Hello?”

  Damn. Mia opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Stacey sounded so impossibly young. Brad, what were you thinking?

  “Um, hello?”

  “This is Mia.” So this was it. She was actually making this call.

  “Oh! Hi.” A pause. “I was afraid you wouldn’t call.”

  Mia could hear a muffled, whiny cry in the background. The kind of cry Ollie made when he was a baby and it was the witching hour and nothing would satisfy him and it was too late for a nap and too early for bed. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t sure either.”

  “I’m glad you did.” Mia heard the muffled clearing of Stacey’s throat as the baby’s cry grew louder. Even though Mia had only met the young woman once, she could perfectly envision the long, straight sweep of Stacey’s light-brown hair as she bent over to lift her child. “Look, there’s so much I want to say. Can we meet? Brody’s so fussy right now. I know I won’t be able to get half of this stuff out. And I usually come off better in person anyway.”

  Mia counted out a few cracks on the sidewalk as she considered
the request. She’d known the question would come up. Stacey had asked as much in her letter. “Yeah, I guess. Sometime when my son’s in school.”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday. He’ll be in school, right, and I’m off till four. If it works for you.”

  Mia had an abandoned and expensive house to get on the market, a mural to paint, and a mound of bills to wade through. She absolutely didn’t need to rush this. “I could meet for a half hour maybe.” Before she knew it, she’d spouted off the name of a coffeehouse in the Grove and they arranged to meet at ten thirty.

  She hung up and slipped her phone into her pocket, adjusting to the silence that hung in the brisk night air without the crying baby to punctuate it. So I guess you’re doing this.

  Chapter 23

  Although she’d done her best to have it be otherwise, there were the lazy, unfettered mornings of weekends, and there were school mornings. Try as she might, Mia hadn’t yet mastered helping Ollie manage his time on weekdays. He’d have his pants on and find something to distract himself for ten minutes before he could follow with his shirt and socks.

  Sometimes it was a book. Other times it was his Hot Wheels or a set of LEGOs. This morning he’d turned on her grandparents’ ancient computer with its dial-up slow connection and was using the internet to research how souls separated from bodies when Mia came inside from the backyard with the dogs. He was standing in front of the desk munching on a multigrain waffle when she glanced at the misspelled words he’d typed in the search bar.

  “Ollie, you’re supposed to ask before you get online, remember? And honestly, sweets, a random internet search isn’t going to give you the answers you’re looking for.”

  “No one has answers.”

  Mia could see angry tension lining Ollie’s shoulders. They were drawn up almost to his ears. “Anger is a good thing,” Ollie’s therapist had told her on his second visit last week. “When he finally reaches it, you’ll know he’s gotten to another stage of processing.”