An Unexpected Grace (24 page)

L
ila and Adam did not find Grace dead on the freeway. By the time they got there, she'd disappeared. They did not know if she'd run away or if someone had picked her up and driven off with her—and if that someone had been Marshall or another dog abuser.

True to Lila's word to the Great Spirit, however, she fought being negative and picturing the worst. Still, her promise could not stop her from being realistic. As she lay in bed early on her second morning without Grace, the reality was that she'd been gone for more than forty hours, her trail had grown cold, and the chances of finding her were dwindling to zero.

When the phone rang, Lila reached out from under the covers to answer, then hesitated. At best, Adam would be calling to plan another day of searching. At worst, Animal Control would be letting her know that a car had hit Grace in the night and she'd been killed. Hating to face another day without her, Lila braced herself and picked up the receiver.

“Lila!” Adam's shout was a pile driver to her early morning ears. “They've got our girl!”

Lila bolted up in bed. “
Who?
”

“The sergeant we met on the road. He put up our poster at the station. Last night one of his men lured Grace to his car with a roast beef sandwich.”

“Is she okay?”

“Supposedly filthy and hungry. She's at the station.”

“What if they made a mistake?”

“The sergeant thinks they've got her.”

“Are you
sure
it's Grace?”

“Only one way to find out. How soon can you be ready?”

“In two minutes.” Lila threw back the covers and leapt out of bed.

She grabbed her jeans, which were draped over the love seat, and stepped into them as she went to the closet. She pulled out a tee shirt without seeing what color it was and put on clogs without bothering with socks. From the dresser, she picked up Betsy's rose-quartz heart and slipped it in her pocket.

As hard as Lila had begged Yuri Makov not to shoot her, she begged the Great Spirit, “Please, please. Oh,
please
.”

 

The police station's walls were green plaster, and the floor was speckled gray linoleum. In a central room were rows of metal desks, and down a hall, doors led to private offices. Recessed floodlights in the ceiling washed the olive cast from the skin of Officer Sanchez, who was resting his palms on the black Formica counter. With his fingers spread out, his hands looked like giant asterisks for footnotes you were eager to read.

“I'll get Sergeant Lewellyn,” he said and started down the hall toward the office where Lila assumed the lost dog was being held.

She would have vaulted over the counter and run after him if Adam hadn't put his hand on her shoulder. “Easy, easy,” he said, like he was trying to coax the man-eating glimmer from the eye of a tiger.

Adam's cheeks were covered with light-brown stubble, and his eyelids drooped in a sleepy, sexy way. Lila's Horny Guttersnipe had little inclination to contemplate that delicious look, however, because the rest of Lila was wild with anticipation. She interlocked her fingers, squeezed till her knuckles turned white, and begged Grace to be there. Lila kept her eyes riveted on Officer Sanchez's back and willed him to sprint down the hall.

“I'm so scared the dog won't be Grace,” Lila said.

“Don't worry. She'll burst through that door and tear over here.”

“She can't run on her hurt paw.”

“Wanna bet, lady?” Adam asked as Officer Sanchez opened the door and Grace shot out.

She must have heard Lila's and Adam's voices and known they were there. She raced toward them wailing deep-throated cries that said,
Where have you
been
?! I've been desperate to find you! Why didn't you find me sooner?!

When Adam opened the counter's half door and let Grace through, she hurled herself at Lila's legs so hard she almost knocked her over. Lila sank to her knees, grabbed Grace, and hugged her like a lifeline.

“Oh, Grace! Grace!” Lila said again and again as her lips brushed Grace's fur.

She squirmed and licked Lila's face.
Oh, Lila! Lila!
Anyone could tell that was what Grace's squeals were saying.

“Good girl,” Adam said. Grace leapt up and rested her paws on his shoulders like she was trying to hug him. She licked his face too.

Then, squeaking and howling, she bucked and circled him and Lila like an ebullient conga dancer. Grace rolled on her back and kicked her paws in the air. She got to her feet and ran around them again. And again. Her fur was flying. Her ears were flopping. Her plumed tail was swishing, pure joy.

Grace's pink sock was gone; she'd lost her collar. Dirt had turned her golden fur a liverish brown, and hunger had brought out her ribs like a corrugated roof again. But two days on the streets had not dimmed the light in her eyes. The confidence she'd gained in her and Lila's months together still shone out of her.

Lila grabbed her again and kissed her. As she wriggled in Lila's arms, two brown shoes and khaki pant legs appeared beside her. Sergeant Lewellyn said, “We sure don't get to see happy reunions like this every day.”

Lila jumped to her feet and hugged him, too. “If we hadn't met you on the road, we wouldn't have Grace.”

Thrilled, she almost blurted out that for months she'd been nursing a grudge against two policemen—and Sergeant Lewellyn's kindness had made it fade away. But what was the point of letting the sorry past with Joe Arruzzi and Rich Mason—and Yuri Makov—spoil the exuberant present with Grace? With gratitude, Lila took her in her arms again. That was where Grace belonged. They belonged together.

G
race's stitches had not ripped out, but they were loose. Adam wanted Dr. Hightower to check them. As Adam drove out of Mill Valley toward the clinic, Grace stared out his Honda's back window, on the lookout for squirrels who might need to be taught a thing or two. Though dirty and hungry, she was smiling, smudging the window with her nose, and acting like Adam and Lila were taking her to a dog-biscuit factory. You'd never know she'd left them for a minute, much less for two harrowing days. She was doing just what Betsy said: Letting go. Moving on.

“Do you think Grace has forgiven us for leaving her on the porch?” Lila asked Adam.

“I'm sure she has.”

“You'd think she'd hold a grudge.”

“Dogs don't do that.”

“People need to be more like dogs.”

“That's what I've told you all along.” Adam reached over and squeezed Lila's hand.

She, now the dog person she swore she'd never be, squeezed back.

 

In Dr. Hightower's reception room Adam and Lila gave Grace handfuls of biscuits, which she crunched to bits and gobbled down. A vet tech in a coat with dog and cat faces printed on it led them to an exam room, where Dr. Hightower lifted Grace onto the table. She smiled and panted as if she were glad to see him and she knew he was trying to help.

“So let's have a look,” he said to her.

She presented her paw, like the pope allowing you to kiss his signet ring.

Dr. Hightower bent down and studied the stitches. “We need to clean her up and redo a few of these,” he said.

“Will it hurt? She's been through too much,” Lila said.

“Has to be done,” Adam said.

Dr. Hightower patted Grace's head. “We'll fix her up. It'll just take a few minutes.” He looked at her paw again.

Seeing him examine Grace made Lila think of her first visit to Dr. Lovell after she left the hospital. He'd breezed into the room and smiled at her below his wispy blond mustache. But he must have quickly sensed her anger and distress, because his smile faded. “You haven't gone for counseling, have you?” he'd asked.

“No. I don't plan to,” Lila had said. In other words,
The world is the pits. Counseling can't change that. Door closed.

“It's your decision,” Dr. Lovell had said and proceeded to examine her arm.

She'd sounded irritable because she'd not yet seen through the fog of what had happened to her or understood that above the fog the sun shines. And she hadn't yet adopted Grace, who became her counselor by setting an example. Lila hadn't seen the importance of laying down grudges and walking on.

On Dr. Hightower's table, Grace acted as if her injury were just a part of life, and without resentment she would tolerate whatever happened till the sun shone through her fog of trouble and warmed her again. It occurred to Lila that there was lots to be said sometimes for staying on the surface the way Grace did, instead of diving down to the murk. And the right way to get through life might be to accept what
is
, not obsess over why it happened.

 

In the meat department of the Wayfarer's Market, the refrigerated air chilled Lila's and Adam's faces and turned them pink. After examining sausages, chicken breasts, and hamburger, Lila and Adam decided to get a rotisserie-cooked chicken so Grace wouldn't have to wait for them to make her something to eat.

In the deli section, a man with a gold stud in his tongue put a chicken in a plastic container for them. Lila could hardly wait to feed Grace lunch. Nothing would be too good for her. After all she'd been through, she deserved anything she wanted.

Maybe with luck after a crisis, Lila thought, you rose like a phoenix from an ash heap, and your misery earned you a reward. She was ready to climb on a phoenix's back and let him take her flying. Lila was ready for her ash heap to recede so far behind her that she wouldn't see it anymore.

 

Adam removed Grace's new pink sock and helped her into his tub as if she were a Murano glass dog he'd just hocked his life to buy on eBay. He and Lila lathered and rinsed her three times, till brown-gray water stopped streaming from her fur. Though Grace had not been fond of baths, she did not resist the scrubbing. Once out of the tub, she did not shake water all over the bathroom as she had before. Impeccably cooperative, she sat at Lila and Adam's feet without complaining. She didn't even shiver.

“You think dogs feel gratitude?” Lila asked Adam.

“No doubt about it.”

He handed her a blue-striped bath towel—folded neatly into thirds—and he shook out its mate so they could dry Grace together.

 

While Adam was putting away Grace's shampoo and telling her what a beautiful girl she was, Lila went to the kitchen. The sun was shining through the windows like it was personally asking her to notice how good life could be. She opened the back door and let in the morning's warmth and the raucous caws of crows in Adam's pear tree. She called Betsy from his phone.

After her voice mail wished Lila a “really great day”—like the one she was having—she told Betsy that her rose-quartz heart had helped find Grace, and Lila intended to carry it in her pocket forever. She promised to call Betsy in a couple of days to make Grace and her a therapy appointment. Then she phoned Cristina and whooped, “Grace is home!”

“Thank God,” Cristina boomed as loud as Agnes Spitzmeier. “I was so worried about that precious!”

“No need to worry now.”

“Sauté her some hamburger.”

“We just gave her half a chicken.”

“That's not enough. Give her liver snaps. Beef jerky. Rawhide sticks. Anything that precious wants, you promise?”

Lila promised.

“I'm glad Adam was there to help you find Grace. He's a good man,” Cristina said.

“I'm at his house now. We just bathed Grace.”

“I knew you'd get to be friends.”

“Yes, well . . .” Lila would tell her more another time.

“I need to ask you something,” Cristina said. “We're thinking about staying here longer than we planned.”

“I thought you wanted to come home.”

“Rosie loves her school, and telecommuting is easy for me. In the fall we want to see the autumn leaves in Vermont,” Cristina said. “Would you keep house-sitting?”

“Sure.”

Cristina's house was half a mile from Adam's. He and Lila could wear a path through the woods on visits to each other.

 

The eggs Adam and Lila scrambled seemed like they'd been laid by a jubilant chicken, and the strawberry jam sat like a magic carpet on their toast. The kitchen had a golden glow because of their relief at finding Grace—and because they were glad to be together.

“Too bad Grace can't tell us where she went. I bet she had some interesting adventures,” Adam said.

“I don't want to think about them.”

“Maybe she fought off werewolves. She could have met a few trolls.”

“All I care about is she's home.”

On a pillow in the corner, Grace was lounging on her back with her legs flopped out, the Duchess of Supine. She was snoring her loudest rendition of “Adenoids in Trouble.” No one would ever have known she'd just been lost or her neck fur hid a ring of scars. In a little while, she would wake, ready to accept whatever life sent her.

N
o man had as appealing a chest as Adam Spencer did. He was digging a hole for a Japanese maple, whose beautiful scarlet leaves should have commanded Lila's attention. But she forgot the tree because sweat was glistening on Adam's skin and sunlight was glinting on his light-brown chest hair. As he stomped a shovel into the earth, she took joyful note of his quads and glutes.

Lila's Horny Guttersnipe was resting under the pear tree, watching Adam with a contented smile on her face. She never sulked as she had before. Lila had set her free, and Adam had worn her out with pleasure. Now smug with well-being, she knew her days of deprivation had passed. She acted like a Roman at the end of a banquet, too tired to ask a slave to peel her a final grape. At first Lila had been shy about her scarred breast, but Adam said she was beautiful. Her Horny Guttersnipe liked that.

Grace was lying beside Lila, studying a grasshopper she'd trapped between her front paws. Her eyes were crossed, and she had on what Adam and Lila called her “goofy face.” In the painting of her that Lila had just finished, however, she'd made Grace look as alert and smart as she usually was.

From Adam's photo, Lila had painted the violet-picket gate with the passion vine and trellis, and, just for him, she left the gate ajar so he could see the garden. For hours she'd labored over the hollyhock and foxglove blossoms and the gray-green catmint leaves. She painted the two griffins holding up the bench, too, and on a whim she sat Grace on the mossy thyme in front of it. Lila made Grace's widow's peak strawberry blonde and the feathery tufts of fur above her ears the right coppery color. Lila curled her light auburn tail around her haunch and took care that the tip matched the widow's peak strawberry.

In a month Lila intended to give Adam the painting for his birthday. For now, the maple he was planting was meant partly as a gift for her. He wanted it as a focal point outside his kitchen window—and as a place for Lila to come if she needed soothing. Adam also suggested that the tree could be a memorial for the people Yuri had killed.

As he finished digging, he said, “Maybe we should include Makov in the memorial too.”

“Why?”

Adam shrugged. “Just a thought. He'd want to be part of it. He'd feel like you forgave him.”

Not once had it occurred to Lila what Yuri might have wanted. She'd been so mad at him she hadn't cared. Now that Adam had mentioned Yuri, though, perhaps, wherever he was, he needed the peace of knowing she didn't hate him anymore. In her mind, she told him that she'd let go of her grudge and moved on.

Still, Lila couldn't bring herself to go whole hog, dress him in an Armani suit, and put him in an opera box, where he could hear Maria Callas sing eternal arias. So Lila imagined him in a meadow ringed with white-capped mountains, and she let the von Trapps yodel for him once in a while. She arranged for his dead father to bring him pierogi, and she invited the people Yuri had shot to visit him if they wanted to.

Adam and Lila lifted the maple out of its black plastic pot and set it in the hole. They rotated the tree so its most leafy side was turned toward the kitchen window. Lila steadied the trunk while Adam spread out the roots and shoveled in planting mix and freshly dug soil. As he watered the maple, the wet earth smelled fresh and promising. In time, the tree would grow to Adam's roof and shade the porch.

 

When Adam, Grace, and Lila arrived at Pet Stop, Albert Wu was setting Magnolia, his cockatiel, outside the front door on her perch.

“So here's the wandering dog,” Albert said. As he smiled at her, his malnourished beaver toupee seemed to fluff up with extra vigor, and his cheeks crinkled and hid his eyes.

When Lila and Adam had been searching for Grace, they'd told Albert that she'd broken through the screen door. So he urged them to buy a special metal grille that was guaranteed to hem her in.

“I don't need it,” Adam said. “I'll never leave her on the porch alone again.” He sounded humble. He'd learned a hard lesson.

He and Lila left Albert stacking dog beds in his front window, and made their way to the collar-and-leash department. Since Grace's paw had now healed enough for walks, they tried scarlet and navy collars on her. Neither dazzled against her fur the way the forest green one had so they got her another green one—along with a bag of peanut butter biscuits and a pig's ear.

At the cash register, Adam asked, “What do you want to do about Grace's ID tag?”

“Get her another one.”

“Which one?”

“I haven't thought about it.”

Adam picked up the cardboard that the sample tags were stapled to. “What about this fire hydrant?”

“Grace is too dignified for that. She's an elegant dog.” Lila ran her finger over the gnome's valentine. “I still like the heart best.”

“It's too small.”

“It worked fine before.”

“There's not enough room for my phone number on it.”

For a second Lila thought Adam was saying he wanted Grace back and he was bumping Lila off the tag. Then it dawned on her that he wanted to share Grace and to be engraved on the tag
with
Lila.

The week before, they'd been looking through the New to You Shop, and on a top shelf in the kitchenware department had been a shiny copper soup pot without a nick or scratch. Just as Lila was about to pick it up, Adam reached over her head and grabbed it.

“Perfect condition,” he said.

“
I
want it.” She was feeling that rush of excitement when you find a treasure in a thrift shop—like a lion feels when a gazelle with sumptuous flanks limps by.

“I saw the pot first.” Adam was grinning.

“You just picked it up faster than I did.”

“Want to flip a coin?”

“I guess, but I was first.”

“Why don't we share it?” Adam asked.

Sharing a soup pot was simple, but sharing Grace was serious. If Adam were on her ID heart with Lila, they were talking about being there for Grace through thick and thin, together. They were talking about working as a team. They were talking about responsibility and commitment, long term.

“If we get the largest heart, we can both be on it,” Lila said.

“Good. It's settled.”

Lila guessed it was.

As he filled out the order for the large heart they would share, she got the shivery feeling that what was going on was bigger than they were.