Chapter 5
SIERRA BID SULLY good-night at about eight but she remained on the porch with a hot cup of tea. She took a great amount of comfort in routine—she usually got into bed with her water at her bedside and her book in her lap and read until she slept. But tonight her routine was screwed because she could hear Molly whimpering and her heart was breaking.
She wandered over to the Petersen campsite and saw that Molly was stuffed into her kennel outside while the family was inside. The dog cried and let out the occasional yelp. The bluish flickering that indicated a TV in the camper could be seen in the windows, which meant they probably could not hear Molly.
She was going to kidnap the dog.
No, Sully wouldn’t like that. And she was Sully’s guest. So...she would stay up until the dog finally went silent, and then she would sleep. In the morning she would report this abuse to someone, she’d figure out who. She would suggest to Mr. Petersen that he give her the dog to take to a no-kill shelter where she would surely find a wonderful forever home. Maybe she would stroke his ego and tell him he was a good man to take on the dog but it was okay if it didn’t work out with a pet, just do no harm. That’s what she’d do. One way or another she’d separate Molly from the Petersens before they left the campground.
She went to her cabin to get a blanket and pillow and she made herself comfortable in the hammock, just a couple of spaces away from the Petersens’ camper and a still very lonely and unhappy Molly.
Despite the sound of the whimpering dog, Sierra drifted off. She was wrapped up like a burrito in her blanket, snug as could be with the breeze rocking her when she heard a yelp. She jerked awake.
“Just shut the hell up!” Chad loudly demanded. There was another yelp. “I said, quiet!” The yelping grew louder.
Sierra bolted off the hammock and ran to the campsite where her worst fears were realized. Petersen held the dog by the chain collar and smacked her on the head again and again.
“Stop!” Sierra screamed. “Stop that!”
“Mind your own goddamn business,” he said, hitting the dog again.
It took a second to comprehend that he’d behave so, yell so, when he was literally living outside among a large group of campers. “Stop! I swear to God if you strike that animal again...”
He hit her again. Molly cowered and whimpered.
Sierra lost it. She threw herself at the man’s back, launched on him with her arms around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist. “You’re the animal!”
“What the hell...?”
“Treating a defenseless animal so cruelly, how do you like it?” she said, tightening her arms around his neck.
The man shook her violently, but she hung on. He tried prying her arms from around his neck, but there was no give in her. “Beast,” she muttered. “Animal!”
“Sierra! Let loose of that man!”
At Sully’s command, Sierra let go and fell clumsily to the ground, landing on her ass. The fall jolted her for a moment, and then she regained her wits and saw that Anne and her daughter stood in the open door of the camper while Sully stood a few feet away, one hand leaning on a baseball bat.
Petersen huffed a bit to catch his breath. “Good thing you warned her,” he said. “I was close to forgetting she was a girl and give her what for.”
Sully hefted his bat. “You forget that was a defenseless animal, too?”
“It’s my animal!”
“More’s the pity. We got some pretty strict cruelty laws in this county and that was plumb cruel. I called the police.”
“Well, good for you,” he grumbled.
“If you don’t want that dog, I got a home for her,” Sully said.
“Bugger off, old man.”
“Police chief might take her. He’s got four goldens already but he’s mighty fond of ’em and might fancy another. They sleep with him.”
“Take her,” Petersen said. “It’ll save me the trouble of drowning her.”
Sierra got to her feet slowly, brushing off her rear end. The very first thing she noticed was Molly sitting docilely beside her miniature kennel, her head cocked to one side with what looked like a satisfied expression on her face. Sierra quickly went to the dog, took her collar in hand and led her out of the campsite.
Petersen went into his camper, out of sight.
“Come along,” Sully said, heading off for his house, not the store, leaving Sierra and Molly to follow. “I bet you were a lot of trouble to raise.”
“I was hardly noticeable,” Sierra replied.
“There’s a lot of bullshit if I ever heard any,” he said.
He didn’t go inside, but rather to the front porch of his house. He took a seat in one of the rocking chairs, resting the bat on the ground beside him.
“What are we doing?” she asked, standing there.
“Have a seat,” he said. “Just keep a hand on the dog till she decides it’s okay to lay down and relax.”
“Where’s Beau?” she asked, because Beau was usually close to Sully.
“I penned him in the bedroom for now. Molly doesn’t need the distraction.”
Sierra sat down next to Sully. They rocked in the dark and she kept a hand on Molly, gently stroking her. When she’d stop, Molly put her head on Sierra’s lap. She was docile as a lamb. “Why are we sitting here?” she finally asked.
“I’m awake,” Sully said. “Might as well sit up awhile longer and see if there’s anything to see.”
“See? See what?”
He sighed. “Just give it a few minutes. Patience, Sierra.”
After a few minutes, she quietly asked, “Do you think the police chief will take the dog?”
“I doubt it,” he said.
“But you said—”
“Girl, I say a lot of things.”
Sierra just fell silent, Molly’s head in her lap while she scratched behind the pretty girl’s silky ears. She couldn’t imagine what they were doing just sitting there but she took comfort in the fact that Molly wouldn’t be back in Petersen’s care. Then in about fifteen minutes it all began to make sense. Chad Petersen started his big, extended cab truck, backed it up to the fifth wheel, threw the lawn chairs inside the trailer and his family into the truck, disconnected his hookup, reeled in the canopy, attached the trailer to the truck hitch and pulled out.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Round about ten,” Sully said.
“Hey, you knew he’d do that! Didn’t you?”
“I had an idea.”
“You heard the noise when he was hitting her and it woke you?”
“Sierra, I’m over seventy. I sleep in my drawers. You really think I’m spry enough to get my clothes and my boots on and run on over to the campsite in under five minutes? I knew what was gonna happen and just like you, I waited on it.”
“Just like me?”
“Didn’t you take up watch from the hammock?”
“Well...yes! You knew that?”
He nodded in the dark. “Didn’t really surprise me.”
“You think the police will come now?”
“I didn’t call ’em,” he said. “Didn’t want to waste Stan’s time. I knew once I called Petersen on it he’d just pull out.”
“What does it mean? Does it mean you won’t get paid?”
“I wouldn’t care, if it came to that, but as it happens I took a nice deposit from his credit card. What it means, I reckon, is you now got yourself a dog.”
Sierra was elated for a moment, until she started thinking about how she didn’t know quite what to do with a dog. She knew what not to do. She’d never hurt an animal. But she was no expert in training one. It wasn’t until Sully stood up to go to bed, finally, that she asked. “Can I borrow some dog food?”
“Just take a bowl with you to your cabin for water and Molly can have breakfast with Beau in the morning. Time she got on a decent schedule.”
“Are you going to help me a little bit?”
“If I don’t, that dog will starve or run off,” he said. “Good night, Sierra.”
* * *
It should have come as no surprise, Molly had not had a proper grooming in a while. She slept with Sierra, snuggled up close, quiet and content and...smelly. Fortunately, Sierra had the whole day to herself on Sunday and could not only make sure Molly had a thorough shampoo but that the linens in her little cabin were also laundered. “We’ll just start over,” she confided to her new best friend.
Molly had to learn some manners for dining with Beau at breakfast—she wanted whatever he was eating, even though it was the same food. It looked like manners could take a while. But Sully coached her to show Molly what to do, then praise her, then praise her again, then let her perform again. “Someone should have tried that approach with me,” she muttered. But Molly, for her part, acted as though she knew who had rescued her. She sat still, wagged and smiled up at Sierra in a way that threatened to melt her heart.
Next it was spa day for Molly and she was prettified. Sully had an extra collar and leash and Sierra employed both to try to show her how to walk beside her, and that was going to take forever. Instead, Sully suggested they show her how to come when called. Molly sat beside Beau, Sully hanging on to both dogs while Sierra told them to sit and stay. Then she walked away, turned back, said their names and the command, “Come.” Molly very likely did what Beau did, but she did it. And both dogs got a small cookie.
“I have to go to work tomorrow,” she said. “How will you manage?”
“Lots of hands around during the day, Sierra. We’ll manage. And if you change your mind, there’s a great shelter not far from here. They’d treat her right until a home can be found.”
“I fought for her,” she said. “Let me try. But if it gets too much for you, do you promise to tell me?”
“Not a lot seems like too much anymore,” he said. “We all deserve a second chance. And I reckon Beau will help train Molly.”
Sierra came home from work with a few new toys for Sierra. She made sure her cabin was puppy safe—nothing left out to get into trouble with. She first walked her, worked with her a little bit, then put her in the cabin with water and two new toys, and left her for only twenty minutes. Then she rewarded her with lots of affection, paid attention to her for twenty minutes, and left her again. That went perfectly well three times.
Then Molly chewed off the handle of her circular brush, which had been sitting atop the bureau. Out of reach.
“Whose reach?” Sully asked.
“Oh God, this is going to take forever!”
“Takes a lot longer to raise a human. Be patient.”
The next day she brought home a new brush and two rawhide chews. The brush went in the drawer and the rawhide came out only when she left the cabin for a while, then it was put away again.
When she came home from work on Thursday afternoon, Frank was sitting on the porch with Molly. Sierra parked behind the cabin and walked over to the store. When she came around the corner Frank told Molly, “There she is, girl.” Molly burst out at a dead run and nearly tackled Sierra, jumping on her, licking her face, half barking, half crying as if Sierra had just returned from war. It brought Sierra to her knees. She crooned to the dog, “I’m home, I’m home, I love you, too.” And then she let Molly lick her face until she was covered with slobber.
“She scratch you or something?” Frank asked when she came up on the porch.
“No,” she said, wiping her wet face. “No one’s ever been that happy to see me.”
* * *
Tom Canaday was seen around Timberlake all the time since he lived in the neighborhood. He was as involved in the kids’ school activities as much as his schedule would allow and all the local businesses knew him even if he did travel a bit farther for most of his building supplies to get the best prices. He stopped in the diner now and then, maybe for a cup of coffee or slice of pie. Really, he was a very sociable guy without a lot of time on his hands to be social.
“Hey there, fella,” Lola Anderson said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
He sat up at the lunch counter and she automatically poured him a cup of coffee. “I didn’t know it was your day,” he said.
“I’m working at Home Depot tomorrow and the next day,” she said, speaking of her second job. “You have a day off?”
“I’ve been putting in a lot of time at Cal’s barn. I took the day to catch up on a few other things since Cal’s spending the day in Denver with Maggie. Her car’s in the shop and he drove her in on Wednesday and will bring her back tonight. While they’re there, they’re looking at tile, carpet and flooring.”
“It must be coming along nicely,” she said.
“Looking good. And pretty much on schedule. How’s school?”
“Slow and steady, but I only take a few credits a semester and I’m taking the summer off from classes. I have a kid starting at community college in the fall—I can’t believe that.”
“Tell me about it—Jackson’s twenty already and Nikki starts in the fall.”
“Pretty soon we’ll be empty nesters,” she said, leaning on the counter.
“Not for a while,” Tom said. “I’ve got younger kids at home. But if we ever get caught up, we should try meeting for a movie or an ice cream or something. Something adult but without kids.”
Lola smiled patiently. “I’ve heard talk like this before,” she said.
“I mean it. It’s just finding the time, that’s all.”
Lola shifted her weight to the other leg. “How’s Becky?”
“Fine,” he said. “Great.”
But Becky was neither fine nor great, he thought. And he knew exactly why Lola had brought her up. Tom and Becky had been divorced for years but everyone was of the opinion they were still a couple, that Tom was never going to be finished with that relationship. It was his own fault. He’d been letting Becky come around, visit and stay with him and the kids and people just assumed they were not quite divorced.
That was all changing, but there wasn’t a delicate way to explain that. And he liked Lola. He’d known her most of his life. They both grew up around here.
The door to the diner opened and Connie Boyle walked in. He was wearing his navy blue fire department shirt. Now Connie might be a lot younger than Lola, and younger than Tom, for that matter, but Tom didn’t miss the way Lola’s eyes lit up and how she grinned when she saw him. All the women seemed to have that reaction—he was good-looking, a firefighter and single.
“Hey,” he said, sitting at the counter beside Tom. “What’s up?”
“Not too much. I just grabbed a couple of kids from school, got them home and started on their chores because they both want to go to friends’ houses since there’s no school tomorrow. I thought I’d take a run out to Sully’s and meet the new family member.”
“Sierra?” Connie asked. “You haven’t met Sierra?”
“Not Sierra—of course I met her, she’s been here two months already. And I’ve been at Cal’s most days so I’ve seen her plenty. It’s Molly, the new addition.”
“There’s another sister?” Connie asked.
“You haven’t heard?” Tom asked with a laugh. “I don’t usually get the drop on you when a new female comes to town. Molly’s a golden retriever pup about a year old. Sierra rescued her from an abusive camper.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Lola said. “That explains why she charged out of here the other day when I showed up to relieve her. She never said a word.”
“Happened about a week ago. Sierra was keeping an eye on the camper because he treated the dog badly. Here’s how Sully said it went—the camp quieted down except for the dog, crying and barking from the kennel she was stuffed into, a kennel about big enough for a little cocker spaniel. Sierra didn’t even go to her cabin—she hung close by. And when the guy came out of his camper and started beating the dog to shut her up, she challenged him. When he wouldn’t stop, she jumped on him. Sully said she hung on him like a tick on his back and he couldn’t shake her off. At the end of a scene right out of a bad movie, the camper and his family left and Sierra has herself a completely untrained, abused, young and crazy golden.” He sipped his coffee. “Gotta be worth seeing.”
“Sierra attacked him?” Connie asked.
“So it’s told. No surprise there, I guess.”
“No surprise,” Lola said. “She might be young and small but she has no shortage of guts. We like that here.”
“She might be a little stupid,” Connie said. “What if he’d turned on her, knocked her senseless just in self-defense?”
“Sully was waiting up, too. He does that when things don’t feel right at the campgrounds. He wanders around with his handy dandy baseball bat, the only weapon he carries. I wonder if he’s ever used that thing.”
“How’d you hear about this if you haven’t seen the dog?” Lola asked.
“I work with Cal every day. Cal keeps tabs on his sister, almost every day. And Maggie is at Sully’s on days she’s not in Denver. Trust me—there’s no shortage of conduits for the news.” He drank the last of his coffee and checked his watch. “Time to see if the kids ran out on their chores.” He put a dollar on the counter, gave Connie a slap on the back and told Lola he’d see her soon. He walked the two blocks home.
One of these days he should make good on all his promises to take Lola out, but it was awkward. Ever since Becky left eight years ago, he’d been acting like a married man even though his wife lived elsewhere. But like every small town, people noticed when she came around, when she stayed a few nights or a weekend. Once one of the old biddies in town asked his Nikki where her mother slept when she visited. Tom told Nikki to politely say, “None of your business, ma’am.” But the truth was, Becky slept with him. Even though he knew Becky had boyfriends, knew she wasn’t a faithful wife or a wife at all, knew he was just a fool. He’d told himself they were divorced, it was her choice to date, see men. It was his choice not to date or have girlfriends. He had secretly kept hoping she’d realize she’d been hasty and come back to her family.
But everything had changed last year. Last year when he learned Becky hadn’t had boyfriends, not really. No matter how Becky referred to these men, they were customers. She had explained herself as an escort, just a little company, not necessarily an intimate. No matter what she said, Tom knew what she was.
And speak of the devil. When he rounded the curve to his street, whose car was parked in the drive behind his truck but Becky’s. She had stopped warning him of her visits, stopped asking if it would be all right. He hadn’t had the heart to tell his kids, not even the oldest ones, not for his sake or Becky’s, but for theirs. They loved their mother. And why wouldn’t they? She was probably the prettiest, sweetest girl in town.
He walked in and found her in the kitchen, rinsing out a coffee cup. She turned toward him, smiled and said, “Tom.”
“Where are the kids?”
“They’re finishing their chores. I told them I’d take them out for pizza if their chores were done.”
“But unfortunately, you’ve been called away,” Tom said. “You can’t do this, Becky.”
“They miss me. I miss them.”
“I know. But you can’t pretend nothing has changed. At least I can’t.”
“I told you, that’s over now.”
“You do as you please, Becky. But you can’t change the past eight years and I can’t change the way I feel.”
“Nothing was ever different with us. It had nothing to do with us.”
He laughed hollowly. “Seriously? Yes, everything changed with us. How many were there, do you think? A hundred? Two hundred?”
“Not even close. Hardly any,” she said.
“Do you know how many women were in my life? From the day you left till now? Zero. Well, there was you—pretending you were working in a doctor’s office and going to yoga classes with girlfriends.”
She shook her head sadly and tossed her beautiful red hair, hair that was not really red. Her blue eyes teared—she was the only blue-eyed redhead he’d ever known. She affected duplicity with such an air of innocence it still shook him. “I was not pretending.”
“I won’t let you do to them what you did to me, Becky. You can see them, only here and only if you make plans with me first. And you can’t spend the night anymore.”
“I’ll sleep with the girls...”
“No, Becky, no. Don’t force my hand.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, a catch in her voice.
He almost laughed. She was arrested three times for solicitation and thought that having the charges vacated, the third time with the help of Cal Jones, criminal defense attorney, meant it had never happened.
But it had happened.
“I’m not going to talk about this now, with our youngest two kids upstairs. Take them to pizza and then tell them you can’t stay. Leave. Or I’ll tell them now, tell them why I don’t agree to let you spend the night or let them stay with you. I’ll tell them. I’m going to have to tell them eventually.”
“Even though it’s all in the past?”
“Well, I can’t be really sure of that, can I? It’s in the past until you’re arrested again, right?”
“It must be nice to have never made a mistake,” she said in a mere whisper.
He gave a huff of laughter. “Oh, I’ve made plenty and you know that. I just never had to be bailed out for any of them.”
His youngest son, Zach, came bounding downstairs. “I’m done,” he announced.
“I’m almost done!” his fourteen-year-old daughter, Brenda, called from upstairs.
And I’d like a life, Tom thought. I’d like a chance to start over even though I waited too long. He admitted it was his fault. He’d been naive and because he always loved Becky so much, he stayed in denial about the fact that she had moved on. She was no help, coming back again and again, sleeping in their marriage bed, giving the pretense that she was still at least partly into the marriage.
Yes, he had foolishly hoped...
But it had been almost a year since that last arrest and he was cured of all naïveté. He’d finished the grief and torment and feelings of betrayal, and all he wanted now was to have a normal life. If he could just remember what that was.
* * *
Lola fed her sons, eighteen-year-old Cole and sixteen-year-old Trace at the diner. Some nights she left them dinner, some nights they went to their grandparents’ house, some nights they went out with their dad, Dave, from whom she’d been divorced for ten years. She and Dave got along fine as long as they spent very little time together. Dave was on wife number four and, by now, her sons were done with all the steps and halves. Once every couple of weeks, maybe, Dave would take them out for pizza or a burger and that was about it. He never was any good with support payments but sometimes she could guilt him into buying something the boys needed, like gear for school sports. He was basically a good-natured deadbeat dad and serial marrier—someone she’d never been able to count on.
It was Friday night and prom was coming up—Cole was going with his girlfriend, Jen. Jen was on the prom committee and it was a big deal. Cole worked part-time for the grocer down the street, Trace worked part-time at the grill, mostly busing and cleanup. They were letting him take orders now and then, but he couldn’t serve alcohol. He was too young. The boys had good, hard jobs that helped Lola in convincing them to continue their educations so they wouldn’t be unpacking vegetables and washing dishes for life.
Just as she was doing for herself, finally getting her degree. She’d worked in nearly every small business around Timberlake and a couple in Leadville since she was sixteen and she hoped to remain in the area as a teacher, even though those jobs were hard to come by. Elementary school was her first choice.
The most important thing to Lola was that she liked her life as a single woman. Ten years postdivorce, she was settled. She was very busy, had plenty of friends, her mom and dad were close by and in good health, her little house was comfortable and easy to take care of and, as far as she was concerned, there was nothing missing.
It was true there was no man in her life. She’d had a few dates over the years, and they were only dates. She’d gone skiing with a recently divorced dentist and they’d had a good time; but there were no sparks. One of her professors took her out a few times; he was considerably older and the relationship had not progressed, which was just as she’d have it. She’d gone out with a firefighter or two but it had been friendly and casual and they still saw each other around town. She was not looking for a lover, didn’t really need another friend.
Lola was confident, energetic, funny and smart—she knew this about herself. What she wasn’t was pretty. She was overweight, her massive, curly black hair was beginning to thread with gray though she was barely forty and, even though she got enough sleep, she had dark circles under her eyes. She’d never quite figured out how to shape her brows right and she wasn’t good with her crazy hair so she kept it short. Short and shapeless but for the loose curls. She only bothered with makeup for special occasions—namely the dentist, the professor and two firefighters.
But she wouldn’t mind having a male friend, someone she was really comfortable with. She didn’t care about falling in love and had absolutely no illusions about a second marriage. The last time she was in love was Dave, and that had been a disaster. But a kind guy to hang out with, a companion—that would be nice. In fact the one man who intrigued her was Tom Canaday. Unfortunately he was clearly still very screwed up about his divorce and if there was anything Lola wanted less than a man it was a man’s baggage.
But what she loved about Tom was that he never complained. His ex-wife had left him with four kids to raise on his own and he shouldered the responsibility, took it on and got it done, was a great parent, remained positive and happy as though he, too, liked his life. She wondered if it was true, what they said, that he’d never really accepted the divorce, that his incredibly beautiful ex-wife still paid regular conjugal visits. Because if that were true, then they had nothing in common, after all.