MADI HOWLED ALL NIGHT.
She started as soon as the lights went out, and Ethan dragged himself out of bed and tried talking to her, but that simply made her howl more.
He prided himself on being able to calm panicking humans, but it seemed that when it came to dogs he didn’t have what it took.
His head throbbing, he let her out of the crate to try and find out what was wrong and she shot past him, up the stairs into his bedroom.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
By the time he walked into the room, she was curled up in the middle of his bed looking as if she belonged there.
“No way. This is not happening.” He tugged at her collar and she somehow dug herself into the mattress, refusing to move. In the end Ethan picked her up and carried her back to the crate. “This is where you sleep.”
Why did anyone choose to have a dog?
Life was tough enough already. Why add in an extra layer of complication?
He found it incomprehensible.
His sister would have observed that he was the one who was incomprehensible.
You need something in your life other than work, Ethan.
His ex-wife would have agreed.
It was also the reason they were now divorced.
Madi lay down and Ethan felt a rush of relief.
All right. Maybe caring for a dog wasn’t so hard after all. You just needed to be firm and in command.
His smug feeling lasted until he turned the lights off.
Madi barked again, but this time the barking was interspersed with pitiful howls.
Conscious of the other inhabitants of his apartment block, Ethan let out a string of curses. What was he supposed to do? If he left her, he’d have his neighbors complaining. But he couldn’t spend the entire night getting up every five minutes. To deal with the challenges of his job, he had to be rested.
Throwing off the covers, he stomped downstairs again and tried being firm. This time he didn’t take her out of her crate.
Madi’s barking grew louder and more frantic.
Willing to do just about anything to get a few hours’ rest and avoid a complaint from his neighbors, Ethan let her out of the crate.
She sped upstairs to the bedroom.
Ethan followed and shook his head in disbelief when he saw her curled up in exactly the same place as last time.
The middle of the bed.
What was he supposed to do?
“You can stay here this once.” He couldn’t believe he was saying it. “Tomorrow I’m taking advice from Harriet on how to get you to sleep in your own bed. You should know I don’t often have overnight guests, so this is not going to become a habit. Are we clear?”
Madi lay with her head on her paws, comfortable and settled.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Ethan pushed her across to make room, slid into bed. “I hope you don’t snore. I need my sleep. I need to be awake to do my job well.”
He was talking to himself.
Madi was already asleep.
Ethan finally drifted off too.
When the alarm finally cut the threads on sleep, he didn’t feel as if he’d had any rest at all.
Madi was still asleep next to him.
Unbelievable, he thought as he dragged on his clothes.
Outside it was still dark, which wasn’t unusual. He spent most of the winter going forward and backward to work in the dark. The only light he saw was artificial. What was unusual was starting the day feeling worse than he’d felt when it had ended.
He took the dog outside as instructed and almost froze on the sidewalk as a frigid arctic blast of icy air wrapped itself round him.
Harriet was going to walk dogs in this all day? How did she do it?
She was obviously a lot tougher than she looked.
He went back to his apartment, gave Madi a cursory rub with an old towel and then got ready for work.
As he was about to leave the apartment, he took a final look at the dog.
“You’re going to sit there and be a good girl. Harriet will be here soon.”
Madi followed him to the door, staying close to his side.
“No, you are staying here and I am going to work. Do you understand?”
Madi wagged her tail.
“I’m taking that to be a yes.”
Hopeful that now that she’d had a comfortable night, she’d behave herself during the day, he left for work.
He arrived at the hospital to find the place in chaos.
There had been a fire in a warehouse close by and the department was crammed with patients suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.
Ethan dived into the deep end and forgot about Madi. He forgot about Harriet, his sister and even his niece.
His entire focus was his patients, which made it all the more surprising when he arrived home ten hours later to find Harriet still in his apartment.
The place looked exactly the way he’d left it. There was no pasta explosion, no flour avalanche, no visible signs that anything was amiss. Madi was lying on the floor, chewing her toy bone. The only clue that everything was not as smooth as it seemed, was Harriet’s presence and the expression on her face.
“What?” He removed his coat, showering the floor with snowflakes. He knew she’d planned to leave well before he arrived home, so presumably things weren’t as smooth as they appeared on the surface. “I take my bad news like a shot of tequila—fast and undiluted, so don’t hold back.”
“Madi wasn’t altogether happy today.”
“Given your ability to smooth rough edges, I’m translating that to mean things were really bad. How bad?”
Harriet sighed. “She doesn’t like being left alone. She was fine when I took her for her walk this morning, but when I returned this afternoon she’d been howling and barking for the entire time she was left on her own. She has separation anxiety.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I met Judy in the stairwell.”
“Who is Judy?”
Harriet looked puzzled. “She came to your door last night. You spoke to her.”
“Are you talking about Mrs. Crouch?” He’d lived here for six years and he hadn’t known her first name was Judy. Even if he had known, he wouldn’t have felt comfortable using it. Mrs. Crouch wasn’t a first name person, although it seemed Harriet had managed to crack through the formality. “She complained?”
“She didn’t exactly complain. But we both agreed it couldn’t continue. She came in and I made her tea. I hope you don’t mind.”
Ethan tried to imagine the austere Mrs. Crouch sitting on his sofa sipping tea.
“You’re a surprising woman, Harriet Knight. Mrs. Crouch isn’t known for her tolerance or her desire to communicate.” Something for which he’d frequently been grateful when he returned home in the early hours from the hospital and met her in the elevator.
“She’s probably a little shy with people before she gets to know them. I know all about that. And she has lived on her own since her husband died, so that probably doesn’t help. You lose a little confidence, I think. I’ve seen it happen with Glenys.”
“Who is Glenys?”
“One of my clients. I walk Harvey for her.”
“Harvey?”
“The detail doesn’t matter. What matters is that Judy is probably suffering in the way Glenys is. It’s lonely for her. And of course she rarely sees Margaret—”
“Wait—who is Margaret?”
“Her daughter. She lives in Austin, Texas. She moved there eight years ago, two years before Bill died. And Margaret has just had a baby.”
Ethan was struggling to keep up. He hadn’t even known Mrs. Crouch had a daughter. “Bill was her husband?”
“Yes, and naturally Judy is a little upset at the thought of not seeing Charlene.”
“Charlene?”
“Her first grandchild.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Why? My grandmother once told me that having grandchildren was the highlight of her life. Unlike when you’re a parent, you don’t have the responsibility. You can simply have fun with them.”
“That’s not the part I can’t believe. What I can’t believe is that she told you all this voluntarily.”
“Well, of course she told me voluntarily.” Harriet lifted her eyebrows. “Or maybe you think I tied her to the sofa and tortured her with Earl Grey tea?”
“I’ve never known her to be particularly forthcoming.”
“Have you even tried talking to her?”
“I—” It was a fair question. Ethan ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Honestly? No. Our communication is mostly monosyllabic greetings when we run into each other in the elevator. Usually when I bump into her I’m either in a rush to get to work, or comatose returning from work.” He hadn’t known she’d lost her husband, that she lived alone or that she had a daughter.
He was fairly sure his ex-wife wouldn’t have known that, either.
But Harriet knew.
“I always feel if there’s a problem the best way to handle it is conversation, and conversations are best conducted in a comfortable environment not in a drafty corridor. So I invited her in.”
“You told me you find it difficult to talk to strangers.”
“I do, but in this instance we bonded over our concern for Madi. Did you know Judy has a Shih Tzu?”
“A—what?” Was that a disease he hadn’t heard of?
“A Shih Tzu—it’s a breed of dog.”
“No. I didn’t know that.” Ethan flung his coat across the nearest chair. “I’m learning from you every day.”
“Turns out she’s finding it hard to walk it herself, so I’ve promised to take him out as I’m in the building anyway with Madi.”
“So apart from being Mrs. Crouch’s new best friend and picking up some business along the way, what else happened?”
Harriet hesitated. “Judy wasn’t super happy about the howling.”
“I’m not super happy, either.” Ethan gave Madi a look, and she looked right back. He was learning that dogs had particularly expressive faces. “She howled for most of the night.”
“Oh no!” Harriet sounded appalled. “The poor thing.”
Ethan leaned against the kitchen counter, not sure whether to be amused or exasperated. “Don’t I deserve a tiny scrap of sympathy?”
“Were you anxious and frightened?”
He held her gaze. “I was terrified. I cried all night. Shivered and sobbed like a baby.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Somehow I can’t picture that.”
“Well, maybe not sobbed, exactly, that would have required energy and I didn’t have any. I don’t know why. Oh wait, it was because I had a dog howling in my ear when I should have been sleeping.”
Harriet knelt on the floor and hugged Madi. “Were you scared in a strange place? Were you uncomfortable?”
“I can assure you she slept in maximum comfort in the middle of my king-size bed. Someone needs to teach her to share.”
“The topic of where to sleep in a king-size bed isn’t generally covered at dog obedience.” Harriet stood up. “You shouldn’t have let her sleep on your bed. That’s bad.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You’re teaching her bad habits.”
“She came to me with those habits fully formed.”
“She should have slept in her crate.”
Ethan folded his arms. “And if you have any useful tips on how to persuade her to do that, I’m listening.”
“Did you try soothing her with your voice?”
“I tried everything short of pouring her a whiskey and singing her a lullaby.”
Harriet gave him an exasperated look. “How did she end up on your bed?”
“I opened the crate and she ran. She clearly has some sort of inbuilt radar for supreme comfort.”
“Why didn’t you speak to her firmly and take her back?”
“I did. Several times. But she started howling, and having to move apartments because my neighbors hate me is a high price to pay for a few nights helping my sister. I had to be fit for work today so in the end I left her where she was.”
“In the middle of the bed?”
“Yes.” He glared at Madi. “You need to rethink your sleeping habits.”
Madi wagged her tail.
“Oh—” Harriet pressed her hand to her chest and he frowned.
“What’s wrong? Indigestion? Chest pain?”
“No, I—” she said, and let her hand drop, “it’s you. You’re teasing her.”
“Teasing? I was scolding her.”
“You were teasing her, and she knows you were teasing her because she’s wagging her tail.”
“Then she clearly isn’t well tuned in to the subtleties of body language.”
“You like her.”
Ethan ignored that. “Have you been here all afternoon?”
“You like her.”
He sighed. “She’s not completely awful. Compared to some of the humans I meet, she’s pretty cute. Now answer my question.”
“Yes, I’ve been here since four o’clock. I didn’t like to leave her. It didn’t seem fair.”
“Thank you.” He lifted his hand. “And before you say anything, I know you are talking about the dog, not me. That’s fine. You’re right, it isn’t fair. But life rarely is and in the meantime we have to find an option that works for all of us, because we can’t carry on like this. She’s cute, but she is wrecking my life. I have to be able to concentrate at work, so if you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.”
The irony of it didn’t escape him. He was used to making split-second decisions in a fast-moving, tense working environment but he had no idea what to do about this unexpected disruption to his life.
Was he going to be sleeping with the dog until his sister returned?
“I don’t suppose you’d consider working shorter days until she is settled?” The way she said it made it obvious that she didn’t think for one moment he would consider it.
And she was right.
Ethan thought about the throng of people in the emergency room and his already overstretched colleagues. “Not an option. Can you come more often?”
“You want me to come three times a day? I suppose I could, but I’m not sure that will help. It won’t solve the fact that she’ll be alone in between those times.”
“Could you put her in your backpack and take her with you on your other walks?”
Her eyes widened. “She’s a dog, Ethan. Not a sandwich lunch.”
“I’ve seen people carry dogs in handbags.”
Her head turned toward Madi. “She’s not a large dog by most standards, but she wouldn’t fit into any bag I’ve ever seen. That’s not an option, either.” She hesitated. “I know you’re not super keen on the idea, but I could take her home with me.”
“No.” Ethan shook his head and then realized how rude his response probably seemed. “Don’t be offended. It’s not that I don’t want to. Frankly, it would be the best option all round but Debra wanted me to take her. I can’t go against her wishes. I said I’d give Madi a home, and I’ll give her a home. We have to find another way. And taking her back to your place won’t work if the problem is that she wants company.”
Far from being offended, her gaze softened. “I’m not offended. I’m impressed at your loyalty and the fact that you do what you say you’re going to do. Plenty of people don’t.” She looked at Madi. “I suppose we will have to go with the three walks a day option and see how we get on. But I’ll need to get Debra’s approval because it will cost—”
“Cost doesn’t matter. I’ll pay. Let’s not bother Debra with this. And before you say anything, it’s not simply because I don’t want her to know I’m inept. She has a lot on her plate right now and I don’t want her worrying. But you don’t think three walks a day will work, do you? And if you do more it will hardly be worth you leaving.” He stared at her, wondering why that option hadn’t occurred to him before. “That’s it.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not worth you leaving. So you could stay. Dog sitting. I have a comfortable guest room with its own bathroom. You can treat the place like home.”
“Wait! Slow down.” Something that looked like panic flashed across her face. “We don’t offer dog sitting. Solo walks only.”
“It’s snowing. They are forecasting more. What if you’re not able to get here one day? I will lose my job and my home. And where would Madi and I live then?”
“Are you trying to guilt-trip me?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“You’re seriously suggesting I stay here?” She said it slowly, as if she couldn’t quite believe what he was asking her to do.
He couldn’t quite believe it, either.
“Yes, and believe me that’s not something I do lightly.” He made the joke but she didn’t laugh. She looked anxious and undecided.
“I c-c-c—”
Can’t.
Dammit. He’d stressed her. Again.
She shook her head in frustration. “No.”
He noticed she’d chosen a different way to say the same thing. It was a common strategy among people who stammered. One word sticks, lead with a different word.
“You’re not comfortable staying in a stranger’s apartment, particularly when the stranger is still there. I get that. But this is an emergency. You’re looking at a desperate man. I cannot be my best self at work if I’m up all night with a howling dog. And I’m not a stranger. This is our third meeting. Our relationship has already lasted longer than some marriages.” He was relieved to see her smile. “For the sake of my sanity, my sofa, and most of all for Madi, please move in. You can bring whatever you need to run your business here.”
“Again, no.”
“Harriet, I’m begging you.” On impulse he bent and scooped up Madi, trying not to drop her as she wriggled and tried to lick his face. “And, more importantly, Madi is begging you too.”
“That’s manipulative.”
“It’s the truth. Will you do it?”