CHAPTER TWO
Hazel
Farewells, no matter how enthusiastic, were never easy. It was hard not to get attached or feel like you were losing a small piece of yourself. Though over the years I’d grown accustomed to good-byes. In my line of work, it meant I’d done my job and done it well. And that, above all else, was the most important thing.
“You know, normally I insist that a man buy me dinner before allowing him to kiss me, but you’re just too cute to resist,” I said, scratching Cannoli under his ear as he licked my cheeks all over, his face melting into my palm, his tailless butt wiggling in pure bliss.
Corgis were typically an outgoing, friendly, tenacious breed, but when Cannoli had arrived at the shelter five months ago, I’d quickly realized why three other rescue organizations had written him off as a lost cause. He’d refused to leave his kennel, cowering in the corner and curling into a ball, and when I had finally managed to persuade him out of the crate, he’d snapped at me. He’d been nothing but skin and bones, and his fur, which should have consisted of a thick, soft undercoat and a coarser outer coat, had nearly fallen out completely. Even after Cannoli had warmed up to me, simple tasks like baths and meals had been an ongoing source of anxiety that had racked his tiny legs with tremors—years of fending for himself on the streets as a stray had taken quite a toll on him.
Now, Cannoli was fluffier than the pastry I’d named him for and twice as sweet. The truth was, most shelters weren’t equipped for cases where an animal had been abandoned, neglected, or abused and required severe rehabilitation—they favored saving as many animals as possible, which meant they needed rapid turnover and easy adoptions. I took a different, more individualized approach. While that resulted in higher overhead costs, longer hours, and more stress, moments like this more than made up for it.
I stood, slobber cementing dog hair to my shirt, and grinned at Imogen, Cannoli’s new mom. She was also the person responsible for finding Cannoli behind a Dumpster and dropping him off at the shelter all those months ago.
“I don’t think you could have chosen a more loving companion to adopt. Cannoli is a changed boy, and it looks good on him,” I said, guiding her out of the main kennel area and into the hallway.
“It’s miraculous. Truly. After the other organizations had rejected him, I’m glad I took a chance on Rescue Granted and brought Cannoli here,” Imogen said as we followed Cannoli toward the lobby. “And that you felt we made a solid match.”
“I’m glad you came back to adopt him. He’s going to love living in his forever home with you.” I gestured with my chin at Cannoli, who glanced back at Imogen every few seconds, as if checking to ensure she was still there.
Another smart, permanent placement, and this time with a potential side benefit.
Imogen was a director at the Communities Foundation of Colorado and worked exclusively on the Denver Day of Giving event, an annual donation extravaganza that helped build awareness and provide monetary support for nonprofits around the area. Over the years, I’d submitted multiple applications, but Rescue Granted had never been accepted, as there were so many other, bigger local animal organizations with long-standing ties to the event that also saved many more dogs than I was capable of. This go-around, I’d decided to be more proactive and asked members of the Denver Day of Giving selection committee to visit the shelter to allow them to witness for themselves all that Rescue Granted had to offer. It also helped that I now had an in with Imogen and Cannoli.
“And I appreciate you accepting my invitation for a shelter tour,” I said, motioning her over to the reception desk to retrieve Cannoli’s send-off package filled with his favorite half-chewed plastic toy, the small blanket he liked to sleep on, and the bag of dog biscuits I’d baked earlier.
“What you manage to accomplish on such limited resources is mind-boggling,” she said, securing the leash to Cannoli’s collar and grabbing his box of belongings. “You have a rare gift, Hazel, and you should be proud.”
“Thank you, I am,” I said, not insincerely. I was proud, but being proud didn’t stop the bills from flowing in or prevent me from worrying about how or when I’d receive the next donation or grant. “Though I hope to push the shelter forward into more stable financial ground next year. Is there anything more the foundation requires in terms of my application? Anything I can add to strengthen it?”
“Your shelter is great, Hazel, and were it only up to me, you’d be a shoo-in.” Imogen sighed and shook her head. “But a piece of advice? One of the things the selection committee looks for is an organization with staying power. Something with wide public appeal and solid community engagement. Everything you’ve done here is lovely, but it’s hidden behind cinder block walls and hard to appreciate. How big are your social media accounts?”
Lackluster.
“I’m working on growing them,” I said, which was only a slight step above a total fabrication.
I hated social media for the lie it presented to the world. I knew that the more people sold their friends wide smiles, picture-perfect memories, and postcard-worthy houses, the more there was to hide. It was a hard lesson for me to learn, but one I’d taken to heart early—and often—thanks to my father.
“Animal welfare issues are very on trend right now, and I know that sounds crass, but it’s true,” Imogen said. “You need to lean into that popularity, cultivate and embrace it. Okay?”
“I’ll look into getting an intern to help with the rescue’s social media reach,” I said, because what else could I do but acquiesce? I’d have to pay said intern in dog licks and cookies, since there was zero room in the budget to hire additional personnel, but if it meant earning a spot in next year’s event, I had no choice but to figure something out.
“That’s the spirit,” Imogen said, squeezing my wrist. “Now, I think it’s about time I brought this little runt home. I’ve planned a welcome party for Cannoli this evening.”
I escorted Imogen to her car. As I watched her taillights disappear around the corner, my cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket. Evelyn lit up the screen, and I inhaled a deep, steadying breath before I answered.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, walking back into the shelter. A sudden onslaught of barking from the main kennel area greeted me. It was quickly approaching afternoon playtime.
“Honey, I don’t know how to get home,” she said, her voice high and strained, as if she was on the verge of crying.
“Are you driving?” I asked, trying to lessen my own alarm and surprise. My mother compared operating a motor vehicle to performing surgery. She claimed the bumper-to-bumper congestion, the noise, her horrible sense of direction, and her constant tendency to get overwhelmed fried her nerves. That, along with the fact that she couldn’t take a Xanax when she drove, only elevated her anxiety. She used the prescription far less than she had even five years ago, but knowing she could rely on it whenever necessary helped keep her level. Trapped in afternoon traffic, behind the wheel of a car she put all of six thousand miles a year on, meant she couldn’t reach for her security blanket without risking impairment.
“The car pickup service had a last-minute problem. It was drive myself or miss my appointment,” she said.
“So you’re at your therapist’s office?” I asked, grateful that she’d at least found her destination without causing an accident or inciting a panic attack. Thank god her psychiatrist had never changed locations in the ten years my mother had been receiving treatment. Her entire existence revolved around routine, and any unexpected variation to her schedule sent her spinning.
“Well, I was, but then . . .” She trailed off, honking and shouting muffling her words.
“Then what?” I asked when she didn’t respond. “Mom?”
There was more honking, and when she finally came back on the line, her voice had become sharper and tighter. “Well, then I ran into construction on Broadway, so I was forced to detour.”
I exhaled. Okay, so she’d hit a snag, but this wasn’t out of control yet. I could still help her through it. Not like last time, when she’d called me only after she’d ended up stranded across town out of gas.
“That’s inconvenient, but all you need to do is follow the detour signs. They’ll eventually lead you back to Broadway.”
I could practically hear the leather of her steering wheel cracking beneath the grip of her palms as she said, “I don’t see any signs, Hazel.”
I sucked in a deep breath, suppressing my annoyance. Getting irritated at her wouldn’t solve the problem.
“What road are you on now?” I asked.
“Santa Fe,” she said, seeming anything but sure.
“Can you tell me a cross street?” I asked, moving behind the reception desk to the computer and clicking on the Internet browser icon, the barking in the main kennels growing louder.
“I don’t know. The signs are too blurry and traffic is racing too fast—I can’t read anything,” she said. “This is why I always stick to Broadway.”
“I know, but Santa Fe runs parallel to Broadway, which will still get you home,” I said.
“None of this looks right, Hazel. What if I’m going in the wrong direction or have already gone too far?” she asked.
“Are the mountains on your right or left?” I asked, praying she hadn’t gotten so lost that she was now halfway to Wyoming. If my mother had managed to get so far off track that she needed to turn around, she’d lose what little composure she was clinging to, and I really didn’t want this newfound independence of hers to finish on a sour note.
“The Rockies are on my right,” she said, her voice finally sounding certain.
Thank heavens. Right meant she was heading south and in the direction of her house.
“Hazel, people are still honking at me and swerving around my car, and one gentleman in a huge truck even flipped me off.” Her voice cracked on that last part. Any moment now she would break down in tears. “I just don’t understand why there was construction on Broadway.”
She always talked in circles when this sort of thing happened—it was a by-product of her anxiety. Anytime something made sense in her brain, she’d suddenly come up with some reason why it didn’t.
“It’s going to be okay, Mom, but I need you to calm down so you don’t get into a wreck. Is there somewhere you can pull over?”
“No, I’m in the middle lane—there’s nowhere for me to go,” she said, then added, “Oh, wait, there’s a Chick-fil-A up ahead.”
“That’s good,” I said, quickly typing in Chick-fil-A locations + Santa Fe Drive South into Google. Two stores popped up in the search results, both within distance of her neighborhood. “How about you park there for a bit, so I can guide you through reprogramming your GPS?”
She sighed heavily. “I’m so stupid. I told myself I should have rescheduled my appointment when the driver canceled, but I thought I could do this.”
“You did do it, Mom, you just had a hiccup. But we’re fixing that, okay?” I said, reminding myself that this wasn’t her fault, grateful that she’d avoided succumbing to a full-blown panic attack.
My father had spent the majority of their marriage convincing my mother she was worthless, incapable, and weak without him. And when she had managed to accomplish something, he’d gone to great lengths to point out all the things she could have done better. Even now, years after the divorce and his death, she still believed my father’s lies. She’d become her own worst enemy, still always afraid to misstep or do the wrong thing, trapped in a vicious cycle of bouts of anxiety and the carefully controlled calm in between.
“Let me know when you’ve arrived at the Chick-fil-A,” I said.
A few beats later, my mother sniffled out an “I’m here,” followed by the sound of the engine shutting off.
“Do you still carry that bottle of Klonopin with you?” I asked, keeping my tone steady, nonaccusatory. My mother hated it when I broached the topic of her prescriptions, but if she hadn’t removed the medication during one of her manic purse-cleaning sprees, then she could take a pill after eating her favorite sandwich from Chick-fil-A to aid in settling her nerves without impeding her driving.
She huffed. “No, the bottle is in the master bath cabinet. Otherwise I would have taken one, Hazel. Please give me some credit.”
I wanted to tell her not to act so testy, but she sounded less frazzled now and I didn’t want to rile her up again.
“All right, Mom, do me a favor and put me on speaker—you remember how.” A few seconds passed, then the slight tinny echo infused the line. “Great, now hold down the home button on your iPhone until it beeps, but don’t say a word.”
“But why?” she asked.
“Do it, then I’ll explain.” Blessedly, Siri’s voice filtered through the phone, and before my mother could say anything, I said, “Siri, get me a route home.”
“Oh, a map popped up. Is it supposed to do that?” she asked, as if I hadn’t spent an hour and a half teaching her how to use the GPS when she finally, finally upgraded from her old flip phone.
“Siri will call out directions for you. Drive slow, listen carefully to her words, and you’ll be fine,” I said.
The bell above the entrance chimed, and I glanced up to find some guy too hot for his own good waltzing into my shelter. He was all tousled dark hair and chiseled jawline and strong shoulders, his gray T-shirt stretched tight across his broad chest.
I stepped out from behind the reception desk as he strode over, his expensive jeans that had no business being near dog crap clinging to his muscled form. He stopped in front of me, then did a slow pan from the top of my head to my beat-up Keds and back up. With his index finger, he pulled down his sunglasses just far enough to make eye contact.
“Well, aren’t you a pleasant surprise. And here I anticipated a place full of mutts and lost causes,” he said, not even caring that I was in the middle of a phone call. “Nice murals, by the way.” He nodded toward the colorfully painted scenes covering the walls that depicted dogs running, jumping, and digging in the earth.
My stomach twisted, and not in that nostalgic high school way that sometimes still happened when someone I admired or found stupidly, shockingly, mind-blowingly handsome smiled at me. Oh no, that definitely wasn’t what was happening here, even if he was stupidly, shockingly, mind-blowingly handsome. Because the second the Abercrombie model opened his mouth, I knew exactly who he was: Chris-freaking-Lalonde, the Colorado Blizzards’ own infamous wide receiver. How many times had I heard that charming voice on television?
I suppose I could forgive myself the attraction—I didn’t often catch sight of the man outside the confines of his jersey and helmet—but if there were ever a cure to inconvenient lust, I’d discovered it in the cockiness he radiated.
“Mom, I have to go. A stray just ambled in off the street,” I said.
Chris raised an eyebrow. “Stray?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe a member of the opposite sex had dared to insult him.
“And judging by his comically wide swagger, he probably needs to be neutered,” I continued, staring at him pointedly. I had no idea what he was doing here, but whenever a mongrel wandered into my shelter, I made one truth crystal clear from the beginning: I was top dog.
“Oh, is the poor thing in terribly bad shape?” my mother asked, her voice nearly drowned out by the navigation system on her phone spouting off exit signals in the background.
“Nothing a flea bath and rabies shot can’t fix,” I said, still making eye contact with Chris, who was looking at me with an amused smile. “But I’ll stop by tomorrow as usual. Don’t forget that the lasagna’s in the fridge for tonight. You only need to reheat it in the microwave for eight minutes, and I can help you clean up the dishes in the morning.”
My mother promised she’d remember to eat dinner. Confident Siri would get her home, I hung up and put on the best don’t-mess-with-me face I could muster.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I’m looking for Hazel Grant.”
“You found her.”
“Really?” he asked, with a lopsided grin that knocked me momentarily off-balance. “What a nice surprise. With a name like Hazel I expected a sixty-year-old woman with gray hair and T-shirts with dog faces on the front and dog butts on the back. But that’s clearly not you. So, you like my swagger, huh? Imagining what else I could do with these hips?”
“I assumed the swagger was a side effect of the enormous weight of your ego. I can see I was correct.”
“Ah, so you do know who I am.” He hooked his sunglasses on his T-shirt collar. Thick lashes framed eyes that were a startling shade of brown, more chestnut than chocolate, and I had to stop myself from asking if they were real.
“This afternoon’s problem, obviously.”
When my uncle had said someone from the Blizzards would swing by to volunteer, I thought he’d meant someone from the front office who needed to burn off the charity hours the franchise encouraged all employees to tackle throughout the year. What on earth had possessed my uncle to send this walking, talking Ken doll?
Chris laughed, as if my barb had rolled right off him. The sound was low and deep, yet it somehow filled the room and ignited it with life. “You know, there isn’t anything wrong with admitting your day just got a whole lot better with my arrival.”
“You’re right. Because now I don’t have to be the one to clean the kennels. This way,” I said, turning toward the door that led to the back area, where the barking still hadn’t subsided.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s the hurry, Hazel? Let’s chat awhile, get to know each other better,” he said, lightly touching my arm.
It was meaningless, something he probably hadn’t thought twice about, but the feeling of his skin on mine had my body threatening to go on the fritz and my heart ready to pound out of my chest. I swallowed, willing my brain to start functioning, and moved away from him.
“Ah, so you decided on the sweet-talking angle.” I cleared my throat, hoping he couldn’t hear the warble in my voice. “I figured it would be that or a sulky attitude. Neither will work.”
“Work?” He asked it in a way that indicated he understood my meaning but was intentionally being dense.
I suppressed a sigh. He was insufferable. “You expected what? That you’d stroll in here, flash those pearly whites that are all over highway billboards, cozy up to the woman in charge, and be on your way?”
“Yeah, basically.” He shrugged. At least he was honest. “I’m not really one to mingle with the canines, Hazel.”
“Hate to break it to you, buddy, but the rule around here is that you gotta work for the biscuit. No shortcuts or cheating.”
Nothing about his expression changed, so either he hadn’t picked up on my dig or he was purposely ignoring it.
“I mean, I got a few tricks up my sleeve, if that’ll do it for you,” he said.
Chris grinned and wiggled his eyebrows in a playful, almost boyish way, and something about it rattled me. Maybe because it’d been years since I’d been around a man who wore his charm like armor, or maybe it was because despite the messages my brain was shouting, my body reacted to Chris. Viscerally. Whatever the reason, it felt as if he’d lobbed a grenade at my perfectly ordered existence. But I’d learn to adapt, steady myself, knock the arrogance off his shoulders, and have a grand time doing it—I couldn’t afford the alternative.
“Well, Chris Lalonde, I sure hope scooping up crap is one of them,” I said, retrieving the pair of rubber gloves from my back jeans pocket and pressing them against his chest. As the smile melted off from his face, I felt the world settle back on its axis.