CHAPTER EIGHT
Hazel
Attacking the mixing bowl with all the elbow grease I possessed, I eyed the molasses and peanut butter on the kitchen counter for the dog treats and allowed myself to fantasize about plying my mother with the stickiest, chewiest, most-impossible-to-talk-with-your-mouth-full cookie I could concoct.
If I had to hear her remark one more time about how radiant I appeared in the photographs of Chris and me that Andrea Williams had plastered all across the pages of Sunday’s Colorado Post, I might turn fantasy into reality. I wanted to block out memories from the charity gala—not keep reliving them. As it stood already, I couldn’t get Chris’s words, his horrible actions, the way he’d so easily violated my trust, out of my head. How my body had totally betrayed my brain and melted into his kiss, albeit momentarily.
“Penny, don’t you agree that Hazel looked lovely?” my mother asked as she rearranged the decorative pillows on my sofa for the fifteenth time.
Since the car service had dropped her off at my house unexpectedly this morning, my mother hadn’t stopped fiddling with my belongings. I wasn’t sure if it was a result of her still adjusting to the new medication her doctor had put her on, or if my mother had forgotten to take her prescription in the first place. I was tempted to ask, but I didn’t want to make her feel self-conscious in front of Penny.
“Lovely is one way to phrase it, Evelyn,” Penny said from her perch on the barstool at the center island, lending me no assistance in baking the dog biscuits as per usual. She shot me a look that indicated what she really wanted to comment was not appropriate for my mother’s 1950s housewife mind-set.
“It’s all so romantic. It was nice to see you get swept up a little, sweetheart,” my mother said. “Maybe we could go shopping later, buy you something pretty and expensive.” Only my mother would believe that spending money was the solution to a problem, no matter how impractical or unsuited it was to me and my profession.
“If that’s the plan, skip the clothes and go straight for La Perla,” Penny said, then took a sip of her sangria.
“If I’d known you were just coming over to drink my booze and agree with my mother, I’d have thought twice before inviting you.” Narrowing my eyes at her, I combined the old-fashioned oats and whole wheat flour with the wet mixture I’d prepared earlier.
“Please. You don’t actually want my help, Miss Control Freak. You like things your way, and your way only.” Penny fished the maraschino cherry out of her glass and gleefully popped it into her mouth. Okay, fine. She might technically be right, but still. Penny could at least offer.
“Well, I’m certainly considering nominating you for quality control tasting.” Scooping out small spoonfuls of dough, I formed them into balls and placed the raw biscuits onto a buttered baking sheet, flattening each one with a fork.
Penny grinned like I’d stepped into a trap of my own design. “Now, Hazel, we both know Chris is more than happy to continue poison testing for you.”
I was going to kill Penny if she didn’t quit mentioning his name. I should have laced her drink with laxatives.
“Oh, surely you aren’t feeding the poor man dog treats,” my mother cut in, looking at me like I needed my head examined.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course not. Chris stole a tin out of the storage area without permission and ate them before realizing what they were.”
My mother laughed, as if it was the most endearing story she’d ever heard. Even without his presence, Chris had managed to impart his charm. “In that case, maybe you should bake something especially for him.”
“There’s an idea,” Penny added. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, after all.”
“And the way to yours is with a serrated knife between the ribs. Shall I use the one currently stabbed in my back?” I smiled sweetly at her.
Where was her loyalty? Best friends were supposed to support you, not side with the meddling parent. And besides, I’d told Penny everything that had transpired between Chris and me at the gala. She was fully aware of how betrayed and hurt I felt. So why was she encouraging my mother?
“Don’t get testy.” My mother crossed her arms over her cream blouse, the heavy gold bangle on her wrist sliding toward her elbow. “You should at least be thankful for all the exposure you’ve gotten.”
I stuck the treats into the oven and wiped my hands on a dish towel. “Except I don’t want that kind of attention.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, Hazel,” my mother quipped.
Seriously?
“Okay, we’re done talking about Chris Lalonde,” I said.
“You’re the boss,” Penny sang as she reached across the counter to steal the sangria pitcher and refill her glass.
My mother walked over to the wooden display cabinet and started clearing the trinkets, books, and DVDs off the shelves.
“Mom, can you leave my stuff alone?” I asked. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, but many of those items carried special meaning for me, and when she got fidgety like this, it was like handling a live grenade—the slightest miscalculation could pull the hair trigger on an attack. If she broke something . . .
“Sweetheart, I just think if you got rid of a few unnecessary things, you might discover you’ve got room for one or two more important ones.” She sighed and shook her head, her perfectly coiffed hair swishing with the movement. “Rescue Granted is a huge part of your life. But maybe it doesn’t have to take up so much space. You could scale back, try new things, live a little more.”
“She’s referring to you finding a man,” Penny interjected, kicking off her ballet flats and crossing her legs on the barstool. “Like Chris Lalonde, for example.”
Flashing her a glare that could freeze the alcohol in her cup, I gathered the dirty mixing bowls and utensils and put them in the sink.
“Would you dating be so awful? I mean really, how long have you had some of these knickknacks? Like this hideous jar,” my mother said, her fingers pulling at the rim of Rhubarb’s treat canister—the one I’d created at a paint-your-own-pottery class shortly after my uncle had brought her home from the breeder. The glaze was cracked, but the colored bones and my poor attempt at drawing a Rottweiler still brought a wobbly smile to my face.
“Mom, please don’t touch that.” But even as the request left my mouth, I watched in horror as the container teetered over the shelf’s edge and crashed to the ground.
Just like that, the switch flipped.
In an instant, my mother dropped to her knees and began collecting the jagged shards of porcelain into her palm. “I’m sorry, Hazel. I should’ve been more careful,” she said in a rush, the words jumbling together. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mom. Leave everything where it is,” I said, kneeling beside her on the floor and putting my hand on her wrist. “Mom, stop. It’s not worth it. You’re going to cut yourself.”
“I can fix it. The pieces are big enough I’m sure I can glue them back together. See?” Her voice quivered as she attempted to arrange the mangled chunks of the base into the correct configuration and failing. “The canister will look good as new.”
“Really, it’s fine,” I said, careful my tone didn’t betray the hurt and annoyance thrumming through me. None of this was fine. Yeah, the porcelain could be glued back together, but the cracks would still be there, permanently spoiling the memories of Rhubarb the jar contained. But of course I couldn’t tell her that—my mother already felt guilty enough as it was.
Shaking her head, she quickened her efforts. “No, I—”
“Just leave the canister alone, Mom! You’ve already done enough damage,” I snapped, my heart beating hard and fast. At the sharpness of my voice, the pieces clattered to the ground again, and my mother cast her gaze away, her shoulders hunching forward as if she wished she could curl into herself and disappear.
“Hazel, inhale a deep breath before you say something else you’ll regret,” Penny said, hopping off the stool and rounding the island. Opening a drawer, she retrieved a gallon Ziploc and passed it to me.
“I know, I know,” I said, scooping the shards into the plastic bag, my cheeks hot and tears burning my eyes.
My mother had only been trying to help—and had acted reflexively, a by-product of the years she’d spent living with my father and his temper—and yet I couldn’t bring myself to apologize for losing my patience. To assure her it wasn’t her fault, that accidents happened all the time and she didn’t need to berate herself over a mistake. Because while she hadn’t ruined Rhubarb’s treat canister on purpose, the fact remained that it was still ruined and would never be the same again.
“I swear it wasn’t intentional,” my mother whispered brokenly as the timer on the oven dinged. “It’s only that I want so much more for you than—”
“Than what I currently possess,” I finished for her. I stood and tucked the plastic bag with the remnants of Rhubarb’s treat jar under my arm. “I’m aware.”
My mother insisted that I meet someone, settle down, but how could I? Settling down indicated stability, but for the last nearly twenty years, the only stability I’d known was the instability that was my mother and her episodes. So I didn’t need the five-hundred-dollar-an-hour shrink I used to see on a weekly basis to tell me how easily I could end up like her—I simply needed the stamina to avoid it.
Agility training always put me in a good mood. Every new challenge brought out each canine’s unique personality, and the way the pups charged fearlessly through the course, tails wagging furiously whenever they conquered an intimidating obstacle, never failed to make me smile. And I needed cheering up after the scene with my mother this morning, so I’d offered to help Donna—my most experienced volunteer—with today’s late-afternoon class even though it was my day off.
“Remember, trust is key here. Dogs take their cues from their handlers. So if you hesitate, they hesitate,” I said to the small crowd of owners and their adopted pets huddled around me in the grass. “If they’re afraid of an obstacle, it’s on you as their master to show them there’s nothing to worry about.” I tossed Sausage and Beans a treat for successfully demonstrating to the group how to properly run through the nylon tunnel setup in the training area at the other end of the yard.
“So, what, you want me to crawl through that pipe thing on all fours?” asked the middle-aged man I’d paired with a border collie named Butterscotch four months ago. Their bond hadn’t completely settled, but since Butterscotch was an overweight and understimulated working dog and he was a man who’d survived a heart attack that his doctors had called the widow-maker, they were a match. They only needed some encouragement to fully realize it.
“If you aren’t willing to do the obstacle, why should you expect your dog to?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the sun that felt too warm and intense for November.
“You plan on adhering to your own advice?” came Penny’s voice from behind me.
A shadow fell over me, momentarily blocking the glare, and I turned to find her leaning against the fence, watching with a wry grin as Butterscotch wrangled her owner in circles. Ignoring Penny’s comment, I faced the group and said, “All right, everyone, ready to practice what we’ve talked about?”
The man grumbled but followed the other people leading their pets over to where Donna was standing at the start of the course. I motioned to her that I needed to go. She nodded, then shouted to the class, “Who wants to go first?”
Whistling to Sausage and Beans, I strode over to Penny. She’d traded her leggings and sweater from earlier for a pair of painted-on jeans and a shirt that didn’t even aspire to reach her navel, which could only mean one thing: Penny intended on dragging me to a bar.
“I’m not going to the Grizzly Rose with you,” I said, shuddering at the idea of being coerced into country line dancing—or worse, forced to ride the mechanical bull at her favorite club.
Penny pushed out her lip in a pout but quickly recovered. “Okay, fine. I’ll save the Griz for when you’re really bent out of shape. Harvey’s has three-dollar pomtinis for happy hour anyway,” she said, referring to the hole-in-the-wall joint across the street from the shelter.
“Why would I waste calories on that trash when there’s perfectly good Italian ice cream waiting for me at home?” I asked, heading back inside to the kennels with Sausage and Beans yipping and sniffing at my heels.
“Because you’re going to need a cocktail,” she said, propping open the door to the rehab area to allow Sausage and Beans to pass through.
I groaned. “Why?”
“Well, I’m about to agree with Evelyn, so you should probably get liquored up . . .”
A pang of guilt shot through me at the mention of my mother. In all my life, I’d never spoken so sharply to her, treated her as if her feelings hadn’t mattered or like her past hadn’t damaged her. I knew the emotional abuse my father had doled out in his constant quest for perfection in his home. And it had been my mother who had been tasked with maintaining that absolute perfection—and my mother he’d blamed when the slightest thing had gone awry.
I unlocked Sausage and Beans’ crate, then guided them over to the small bed they insisted on sharing and refilled their water bowl, refusing to meet Penny’s gaze. When I didn’t respond, she bumped my shoulder. “Your feelings matter, too, in case you were doubting that,” Penny said, as if voicing a truth I hadn’t allowed myself to consider. “Now come on, I’m thirsty for cheap vodka.”
I offered her a half smile and trailed after her, listening to her ramble on about her own family drama as we crossed the parking lot toward Harvey’s. “And get this, I go home after I left your place to change clothes and my grandma calls me into the dining room, and do you know what I find?”
“Baklava,” I said as we stepped into the packed entryway, hot, recycled air replacing the chill from outside. The atmosphere inside Harvey’s felt thick and smelled of sweat and stale beer. The place was so loud that the Bruce Springsteen song pumping through the overhead speakers could barely be heard.
“Funny, but no,” Penny shouted. “Grandma had lined up every pair of socks I own on her mahogany table and made me stand there while she held up each one and explained why I’m still single. The calf-length ones that I sleep in? I’m tragic and desperate. The bleached purple ones with holes in the toes? I’m a slob. My favorite sweat-absorbing running socks? No man likes a woman who’s fitter than him.”
I laughed, and she playfully punched my arm. “They’re socks, Hazel. Socks! If my grandmother hadn’t handed me a hundred-dollar Victoria’s Secret gift card, I might have stuffed one of those cotton things she hates so much into her mouth.”
“Rhea’s not too off base, Penny,” I said as we wove through the crowd. “Men are insecure creatures.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t all date professional athletes, you know.” She put a dramatic hand to her chest. “I could run marathons and never outstrip Chris’s athleticism.”
“Appears those two are finishing up,” I said, gesturing to the middle-aged guys sitting at the bar pocketing their wallets. We quickly claimed their chairs once vacant and tried to ignore the stream of patrons hovering around us all clamoring for their drink refills. “And for the hundredth time, Chris and I are not dating.”
Penny smiled. “I’m so glad you brought that up.”
I scoffed. “I did no such thing—”
“Hold, please.” She raised a finger, then leaned across the sticky wooden top to give the overworked bartender a generous view of her cleavage and ordered us each a pomtini. Facing me again, Penny tossed her hair over her shoulder and said, “Now, where were we?”
“Not discussing Chris Lalonde.”
“Too late, you created the opening,” she said. “But I’ll wait until we receive our drinks to talk about your love life like proper thirtysomethings. It’ll be very Sex and the City of us.”
As if on cue, the bartender laid down two pomtinis complete with a lemon twist. Great. I sipped the syrupy-sweet liquid, the sharp bite of alcohol burning my throat, and said, “I don’t want to talk about Chris.”
“Then we can talk about Evelyn. Your choice.” Penny shrugged and took three large gulps of her own cocktail.
“What about my mother?”
“Well, for starters, there’s the way you handled her breaking Rhubarb’s treat jar.”
“I didn’t mean to lose my patience with her,” I replied, feeling defensive at her tone.
“It’s not about losing your patience, Hazel. It’s about the fact that you refuse to recognize you’re just like Evelyn when it comes to this fierce need to protect yourself. Your coping mechanisms are different, but the issue is still the same.” She stared at me as if I were more transparent than glass. “Evelyn rarely goes outside her house, because if she does, things could go wrong and she’s terrified to mess up. But, Hazel, you won’t deviate from your set schedule for the same reasons. Your prison might be bigger, but it’s no less one of your own construction. You need to understand that not everything that can’t be controlled is a bad thing.”
Penny made it sound as if I was a timid, shaking chihuahua too afraid to leave the safety of my crate. Like I’d never done or experienced anything of value. But I’d gone to college, traveled to other parts of the world, purchased a fixer-upper home, and built a small business from scratch. The comparison simply didn’t hold merit. I was nothing like my mother—and I certainly didn’t suffer from the same issues.
“And anyway, Evelyn was right,” she continued. “You could stand to loosen up, try different things outside your comfort zone, live a little more.”
“I don’t need to ‘live a little more.’ I have a very full life,” I muttered, studying the way the condensation on my glass trickled down the sides.
“So do the dogs we save. We bring them in, shivering and frightened, and with our help, they calm down, discover their footing, and learn how to trust. But the pups don’t find joy in the confines of the kennel. That only comes when they take those first wobbly steps outside to something bigger. So no, Hazel,” she said, shaking her head before polishing off the rest of her drink. “What you have is a very safe, predictable life.”
“That’s not fair.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I cut my eyes away, studying the group of sorority girls and fraternity guys all decked out in their Greek letters flirting and having fun near the billiard tables, then looked back at Penny.
“It’s not? Okay, I’m going to walk you through how tonight will transpire. You’ll limit yourself to two martinis. Why two? Because three cocktails means you’re not comfortable driving, and you won’t call an Uber because heaven forbid someone you haven’t fully vetted knows your address,” she said, arching an eyebrow that dared me to contradict her. “And so you’re going to sip your two pomtinis slower than molasses, then leave me here to pick up some lame guy and make bad decisions, which you could have a full part in but won’t.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but she held up a hand to silence me, now clearly on a roll.
“You’ll get home, change into those threadbare PJs I’ve tried to throw away countless times because of the holes in the hem, zone out to the Property Brothers on HGTV, eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and crash into bed at eleven so you can wake up early the next morning to prepare for intake at the shelter before doing it all again,” she finally finished. “Tell me which part I’m wrong about.”
“I prefer gelato,” I said, hating how I sounded like a petulant child.
Penny snorted. “Oh, right, how could I forget the Cherry Garcia in place of Phish Food incident of four years ago? You bought one mislabeled pint of Ben & Jerry’s and swore off the brand forever.”
“You can’t blame me,” I said. “It wasn’t what I wanted, expected, or paid for.”
“Which effectively sums up your life’s philosophy: One strike and you’re out. You refuse to budge on anything or allow people to screw up. Which has totally prevented you from having any real relationships apart from me, Evelyn, your uncle, and the dogs you rehabilitate.”
“Except I’ve experienced these ‘real relationships’ you speak of, and where did that get me, Penny? Every guy I’ve dated has turned out to be a fraud.”
She nodded, as if granting me that small point. “I agree with you that Jeff was a cheating jackass and not someone who belonged in your life, but Mark was a decent enough guy.”
Was she serious?
“He lied about having a record,” I said, raking frustrated fingers through my hair. “And if he’d lie about that, he’d lie about far more important things.”
Penny didn’t understand, because she came from a family that was overinvolved in one another’s lives. There were no secrets or lies or hidden agendas, and though she might complain about Rhea’s intrusive help, Penny never actually had to wonder where she stood with her grandmother. She could afford to take things at face value. I could not.
“It was a public intoxication charge Mark got during his sophomore year at Colorado State—years before meeting you—and yet, even after he apologized repeatedly for hiding that information, you wouldn’t hear it.” Penny tilted her gaze toward the ceiling and inhaled a deep breath, as if exasperated by me. “And now you’re applying the one-strike rule to Chris.”
I shook my head, dismissing her words. “Chris purposely kissed me in front of Andrea Williams as a way of getting back at me for confiding in my uncle, so don’t accuse me of acting unreasonable. He’s the one who violated my trust, and now he has to accept the consequences of those actions.”
“You’re right. That was wrong of him. No question. But, Hazel, you’re so skilled at keeping everything on an even keel—your love life, your professional life—and I get why, I really do, but there’s a time and place,” she said, her expression going soft and sad and full of pity. “You can’t ignore everything that’s disruptive. It’s dangerous.”
“Except Chris isn’t dangerous to me,” I said, my words strained, my throat working against the lie.
“The hell he isn’t!” Penny slapped a hand on the bar top. “He scares you, pushes you into trying things you’d normally shy away from, and you know what? I’m glad. It’s about time someone challenged you, forced you to see gray in your black-and-white world. Life is meant to be experienced in Technicolor. There’s so much you’re missing. And I promise you this: Someday you’ll realize that the good people—just like the bad ones—can transform you into a better, stronger person. If you let them.”
Perhaps Penny was right, but what she was suggesting was a major risk. Because the only way I’d know what someone could bring to my life was to let them close enough to destroy it—and my heart.