The Secret of Everything (21 page)

It all rushed back—the endless kissing, the athletic sex, the lust-drunk depth of their explorations. She was in Vince’s bed, with Vince.

And his dogs. One of them huffed, perhaps disturbed by her faint movements. Tessa slid her leg out from under him. By the weight, it had to be Pedro.

Very carefully, she rolled over. Vince slept deeply, face half-buried in the pillows, only his beard-darkened jaw and the top of his head showing. And even that much made her chest ache in a warning way. That round of his left arm with its winding tattoo of words she couldn’t decipher, the scatter of that very, very dark hair. She wanted to lean in and kiss that angle of cheekbone, put a finger gently to his full lower lip, curl up with him. So beautiful. So real.

It made her feel breathless.

She took a mental snapshot, tucking the moment away. And
as quietly as possible, she slid out of bed, worked her way around the dogs. She found her clothes on the floor of the bathroom. It took a little longer to find her underwear, and they were soggy wet, the crotch missing. She gave Pedro a glare, but he only wagged his tail.

Moving soundlessly, she crept into the hallway, past the open doors to the girls’ empty bedrooms—much tidier than his own, and warmer. The first held a set of bunk beds, with pictures of princesses and cheery pink curtains. This must be Jade and Hannah’s room. Creeping noiselessly the rest of the way down the hall, she peeked into the last room and knew instantly that it was Natalie’s. Her bedspread was red and gold paisley, with the same pattern on the simple curtains, which someone had obviously sewn for her. An antique chest of drawers stood against the wall, and there were pictures of dogs and horses and bears all over the room. Paperback books were stacked on her nightstand and cluttered the floor, along with her shoes and a sweater. It smelled of sunshine and cinnamon and Herbal Essence shampoo.

Tessa lingered, feeling that ache low in her ribs again. Yearning, maybe. This was a bedroom where a girl could grow up, where she could change the curtains and the poster and still look out at the same steady view of meadow and mountains.

Firmly, she turned around and eased down the stairs, soundly built so they didn’t squeak.

And there in the foyer was the black-and-white pup. He raised his head, and the very tip of his tail slapped on the floor. In a surge of feeling, she knelt beside him and buried her face in his neck, rubbing his ears. Kissed the middle of his brow. “Good morning, baby,” she whispered. How could she leave him?

He gazed at her in worry and worship. Tessa thought of her
father and what he would say about this whole situation. That this was her dog, that he had something to give her or teach her, and she had an obligation to him. Dogs as angels, she thought, and a quiver of tears caught at the top of her throat before she could clamp them down.

Whatever. She made a soft kissing sound and gestured toward the door as she stood. He got to his feet and trotted obediently in the direction she pointed, waiting politely as she picked up her sandals and purse and scarf.

It had been pretty dark the night before, so she had not seen the extent of the clutter in the living room. Bad. It was bad. Not like a bachelor pad, stacked with pizza boxes and beer bottles and dishes crusted with food. This was laundry folded on the table in piles that never got put away. Toys scooped up into a chair but not into bedrooms. Shoes and socks shed by the door in a towering mountain. Eddies of dust on everything, and squirrels of dog hair under the table, and a vacuum standing to one side, ready to be used and left where it was.

It was a single parent with too much on his plate and no skills to properly keep a house. Tessa turned away from so much need and slipped out into the first break of morning, into the rain falling in miraculous, life-giving, steady sheets. She and the pup stood on the broad porch for a long minute, surveying it—the mountains rounding the horizon like a fence against the gods, the bowl of grasslands studded with prickly pears and yucca and sage. Even from here, she could hear the rushing swoosh of the river that held the eastern boundary, filled to the brim by the rainy night.

The porch needed some hanging baskets of petunias and something besides a couple of kitchen chairs, though she liked the spool table. The flower beds needed some marigolds and cosmos.

She shook her head. Somewhere, there was a woman who’d want to take all of this on—the land and the man and the children, all hungry beyond reckoning—but Tessa wasn’t that woman.

“Come on, baby,” she said to the dog, thinking maybe her father would adopt one more dog. She knew he would if she asked.

At the hotel, the overnight desk clerk stopped her. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but that dog can’t go upstairs.”

“I thought you allowed dogs.”

“We are very happy to allow well-groomed dogs. If you’d like to have him groomed, we’ll be glad to let him stay for ten dollars a night.”

“Can I give him a bath?”

The clerk almost visibly shuddered. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

Tessa nodded, looked down at the dog, then up at the clock. It wasn’t quite seven. “Okay,” she said, frowning, trying to think what to do. Where could she get a dog cleaned up at seven in the morning?

It was karma, her father would tell her, a quick return on her sneaking out of Vince’s house so early. He would be dismayed, and after the intensity of the night they shared, he had every right to be. She flashed on his big hands moving over her belly, his cheery stories as they ate, the sense of well-being when she woke up.

And the living room, stacked with clothes that had not yet been put away, the toys piled up in a chair, the vast loneliness written across that scene.

No
. It made a panicky heartbeat flutter in her throat.

“Come on,” she said to the dog. He needed a name, but the
first order of business was a bath. “Let’s go find us some breakfast, and maybe somebody will know where to get you a bath.”

“Lucky Dog is on Alameda, right next to the river,” the clerk said. “They open at nine.”

“Thanks.” He was only doing his job, she supposed, but really—his shudder was a bit much.

Out on the plaza, which was mostly empty, she felt a sharpness of autumn in the air and thought of what Vince had said. At least it had stopped raining, and the steady downpour left everything washed clean and damp, the air as crisp as cookies. Summer fled the mountains early. As if to emphasize that fact, a clatter of leaves swept off the cottonwood and danced across the cobbles. The dog sat next to her, neatly waiting for instructions, and something about his patience pierced Tessa right through the gut.

“Why did you pick me?” she asked.

The dog looked up, shifted paw to paw. Blinked. It was if he said,
Don’t you remember?

“I don’t remember. I wish I did.” She headed for a bench near the tree, gesturing for him to follow her. Sitting down, she faced him and looked deeply into his face. “What’s your name, baby? What do you want me to call you? Something Irish, maybe, or are border collies Scottish? Something with sheep?”

He regarded her with the gentle expectation of a wise old teacher waiting for a student to come up with the answer. She threaded a lock of fur through her fingers, peered off into the distance.

Suddenly, the dog shivered and climbed under her legs, quivering all over. Tessa said, “What?”

Across the plaza strode the beautiful man from the restaurant the very first night she’d been here, the one who made her think of a coyote, all lean fury and ragged intensity. His hair,
loose down his back, lifted as he made his way across the plaza to a shadowy spot along the portico, where he tucked himself into the darkness beside a pillar and peered at a place across the way. Again that red fury rippled out from him, singeing the air like a careless fire.

He lit a cigarette and smoked it, watching his prey, whoever it was. Tessa looked over her shoulder, not seeing anything, but after a while she felt uncomfortable and stood up. The dog whimpered, skulking along the ground, and she murmured softly to him, “It’s all right. You’re safe with me.” When she glanced back, the man was gone.

She walked around the block to the damp, cool grounds of the church. It was deserted so early in the morning, but the rain had rendered every leaf and blade a violent green. She settled on a bench by the tomatoes, the dog leaning against her in relief. “Did he hurt you, sweetheart?”

He blinked at her sadly.

“Bastard.” No name came to her still, so she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. “My dad will know.”

He shifted, waiting expectantly with her as the phone rang. Absently, she stroked him, tugging out a burr from the fur beneath his ear, another out of his back. “You’ll like being groomed, baby. I promise.”

“Good morning, princess!” Sam said after the second ring. His voice was craggy. “You’re up early.”

“Oh, dang! I forgot it’s not quite six there. So sorry, Dad. Go back to sleep.”

“No, you know I like to talk to you anytime you call. What’s up?”

“Well, I seem to have acquired a dog. You might need to take him when I get back to work.”

“Is that so? What kind of dog? How old?”

“That border collie mix I told you about; maybe six months old. Oh, Dad, he’s sitting here with me on the plaza, and he’s the sweetest thing, and so, so, so smart. He found me the first night I got here and I’ve seen him every day since, and now I can’t leave him.”

“It’s Brenna, you know.”

“Brenna was a girl dog.”

“Doesn’t matter; you know that. I’ve been waiting for her to show up again for a long time. I bet he’s got a star on his forehead, doesn’t he?”

Sure enough, there was a star. “Dad, border collies just have those markings.”

He laughed, low and dark.

“Well, Brenna or not, I need a name for him, and I thought I’d get some input.”

“You ask him?”

She tugged his long silky ear and his eyes drifted half shut. “He says he’s lucky,” she said suddenly.

“Call him Felix,” Sam said. “That means lucky.”

“Are you Felix?” she said, and he licked her wrist. She laughed. “Okay, I guess that’ll work. Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime, princess.”

   I
n the gray morning, Sam headed out to the beach to walk the dogs. Loki and Wolfenstein raced ahead on the sand, while Peaches made her slow way along the waterline. Sometimes, she paused to smell something or just stand in senile confusion. Sam gently brushed the ancient apricot-colored poodle’s long curls every evening to give her some stimulation. The vet shook his head every time Sam brought her in, amazed she was still alive.

There had been storms for a couple of days and the beach was littered with debris, which the dogs explored with exuberance, bringing back joyous little finds—a stick, a fish head, a rock. Sam laughed. “A rock, Loki?” The dog barked and ran the other way with his buddy.

Sam spread a rain poncho out on the damp sand and sat down. Peaches hobbled over to sit close to him. She wore a sweater, hand-knit by a woman who would like to knit a whole lot more with Sam. He gently discouraged her whenever he could, though Peaches’s sweater was so perfect he couldn’t refuse. He petted her soft little head, then took out a notebook and a pen and tried to organize his thoughts.

He had to tell Tessa the things she didn’t know. If she was hanging around the commune, running into his old friends, sooner or later she’d hear about all of it. He’d really hoped to spare her.

Why the hell had she gone trooping back there, anyway? All these years he’d kept her psyche and heart safe, and she was about to undo every little bit of it.

At the thought, his whole belly went hollow, and he prayed to a God he hadn’t believed in since 1967. “Let her know I lied for good reasons,” he said, and started to write.