Good question. She supposed she’d been thinking that it was only a room. She tried once more to explain her motives, finishing with, “Anyway, it’s just paint. It can be painted over.”
Pop Pop went ballistic. “Painted over? Do you know how much painters cost?”
“I
can do it,” she said.
The wrong thing to say, apparently.
“You’re not getting anywhere near a paintbrush in this house again!” he raged. “Even leaving aside the black walls, you sploopled paint all over the carpet! I don’t know who this person you said you’ve been watching on television is . . .”
“Bob Ross,” she said.
“And the Rolling Stones!” her grandmother interjected. Now that she’d found her voice again, she seemed most disturbed that after decades of her vigilant efforts, Mick Jagger had finally managed to penetrate her Barry Manilow world. “She’s been listening to them on the sly, evidently.”
“I just downloaded a few songs.” As evidence, Jordan showed them the little MP3 player.
“You see?” Granny Kate snatched the device from Jordan and pivoted toward her husband. “She’s been
downloading!
” As if downloading songs was just the kind of nefarious Internet activity they’d been worrying about all along. “And Evelyn thinks she’s on drugs.”
Jordan rolled her eyes. “Evelyn’s a hemorrhoid.”
“Don’t you dare call our friends hemorrhoids!”
her grandfather bellowed.
Jordan shrank back. “I was only expressing an opinion.”
Her grandmother swooped down on her. “Your mother always said you were difficult to love, but we took you in for her sake. Now I realize our Jennifer had the patience of a saint! Well, I’m not a saint, and I’m fed up with your sulking and snippiness and blue hair.
Fed up!
”
Granny Kate fled the room in tears.
Jordan’s face burned.
Difficult to love?
Her mom had said that about her?
She heard a weird noise and looked down. It was the muffled sound of her own foot tapping against carpet. She tried to still the movement but couldn’t. Something was trembling so deep inside her that her brain couldn’t send out waves strong enough to make it stop.
Granny Kate must really hate me,
she thought. Why else would she have mentioned that about her mother, except to stick a knife in her gut and twist it? And Pop Pop wasn’t saying anything. He probably felt the same way.
Difficult to love.
Well, here was proof. They were the most mild-mannered people in the world, and she’d still managed to cheese them off.
She barely had the nerve to look into Pop Pop’s face. “I just wanted things to be different,” she said. “At least to
look
different. Wouldn’t you, if you were me?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Pop Pop?” she asked, her voice small.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Your grandma’s upset. This has been a difficult year, and you . . .”
And you’re not just the reason why, you’re also a walking reminder.
He didn’t have to say it. She knew.
“I think you’d better start packing your things,” he said.
5
T
HE
P
EOPLE IN
Y
OUR
N
EIGHBORHOOD
T
he next day, Grace decided to canvas the neighborhood for news of Iago. There was a black SUV in the driveway of the rental house next door, so she assumed that the person who lived there wasn’t at work. For some reason—perhaps because of the bungalow’s perky yellow paint job—she didn’t expect a tall, blue-eyed Dirk Squarejaw type to open the door.
When he saw her, he leaned against the doorframe and grinned as if Grace had materialized for his amusement.
“I’m your neighbor from . . .” She tilted her head in the direction of her dad’s house.
“Really? I thought the old guy lived alone.”
“The
old guy
is my dad,” she informed him. “He’s in the hospital.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that.” He shook his head, but that boyish smile remained firmly in place. “I’m always the last to know anything that’s going on around here. Too busy buzzing around the skies to keep up, I suppose.”
“Hallucinogens?” she guessed.
He chuckled. “Airline pilot. My name’s Wyatt Carter. I fly for SunWest Airlines. They’re based in Dallas, but so’s my ex-wife. So I’ve based myself here.”
He paused like a lame stand-up waiting for laughter, but the most she could manage was a cough of sympathy for the ex-wife. She tried to steer the conversation back to the point. “The thing is, Wyatt, my father’s dog is missing. You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“You mean that black-and-white dog, looks sort of like a mutant basset hound?”
Hope leapt inside her. “Yes! Exactly!” She picked a newly-minted flyer off the stack in her hands and thrust it at him.
He gave it a cursory glance. “Nope. I’ve seen him when your dad’s walked him, but I haven’t noticed him loose. I hope there’s nothing wrong with him.”
“He’s lost,” Grace said.
“I meant, nothing wrong with your dad.”
“He was hit by a car.”
“Oh.” Wyatt squinted. “Wait . . . The dog?”
“No, my dad,” she said. “His leg’s broken.”
“That’s awful. Poor old guy.”
“He’ll be fine, they say. But he’s very upset about Iago.”
“Who?”
“His dog—the missing dog?”
The reason I’m here.
“So if you do see him . . .”
“Let you know? Roger Wilco.” He grinned. “What did you say your name was?”
“Actually, I didn’t.”
He laughed. “So, ActuallyIDidn’t, are we permanent neighbors now?”
Until that moment she had never realized how much she could look forward to a casual conversation being over. “I’m just visiting for a couple of weeks.”
“We should get together sometime.”
Unbelievable. “I’ll be pretty busy.”
“Well, if you’re ever not busy, you know where to find me.”
And I know how to avoid you.
She attempted a smile and made her escape. The door didn’t close behind her, and she could almost feel that laser gaze on her butt as she walked away.
Next to Wyatt Carter’s bungalow stood another one-story house, although this one sprawled across the entire corner lot. In the old days, Sam’s good friend Seeger and his sister, Rainbow, had lived there. Now it was a student rental. Several beat-up cars with orange UT stickers on them sat in the drive.
Two guys lounged shirtless on an old couch on the front porch, nursing beer bottles. They noted her approach with easy smiles and sleepy, half-hooded eyes. Students. No wonder her father despaired.
“Hey,” they said in unison.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m visiting my dad, two houses down. He’s in the hospital.”
“No shit! The old professor? Wha happened?”
“An SUV ran him down on the drag.”
“No way!”
“That’s cold.”
“He’ll be okay, but he broke his leg.” This information was met with more exclamations of disbelief. They seemed genuine. In fact, she couldn’t buy her father’s suspicions that these guys had been up to any shenanigans. They didn’t look as if they had the initiative for dognapping, or anything beyond keggers and Frisbee tossing. “The thing is, his dog is missing. You guys haven’t seen him, have you?”
She handed over two copies of the flyer, which the guys gaped at for a moment.
“Oh, no! That cool sawed-off-looking thing? Great dog.”
“Seriously great dog.”
“Well, if you happen to see him, could you let me know?” Grace prompted.
“Will do.”
The other guy sent her a mock salute with his beer bottle and drawled, “Rest assured, ma’am, we will definitely be on the eyeball for said dog.”
“Thanks.” As she walked away from this Bill and Ted’s Excellent Dogwatching porch, for the first time she began to lose hope that she would actually find Iago.
Her phone rang. It was Ben. She picked up, eager to hear news from home.
“Am I glad—”
Ben’s panicky voice interrupted her. “Where’s the key to the storage cabinet?”
This was not a just-wanted-to-hear-your-voice call, evidently. She squinted down at the sidewalk, trying to switch mental gears. “What storage cabinet?”
His voice was tight with impatience. “The one with the credit card machine paper in it! I’m going nuts here, Grace!”
“It’s on the shelf under the register.”
“What would a key be doing there?”
“Not the key, the little rolls of paper for the credit card machine. The storage room key is on the key-shaped brass holder hanging on the door of the employee coat closet. It has a red plastic key ring with the words
storage closet
written on it.”
“Well, how was I to know?” he asked in a testy voice.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I have to go,” he said, cutting her off.
“Wait! How are—”
He stopped her before she could finish. “Vomiting. Vomiting all the time.”
She frowned. She’d been on the verge of asking him about himself, but she presumed he was talking about the cats. “Oh God. I’m sorry, are—”
“I
really
have to go, Grace. I’ve got a customer waiting for some purchasing action here.”
“Of course. I’ll call you—”
The line went dead. As she stood in the middle of the sidewalk with her phone still unfolded in her hand, she felt so dislocated it almost made her queasy. It was hard to believe that just about thirty-six hours ago her most pressing concerns had been running out of chips at the party and who would win the Tournament of Stupid Games.
Impulsively, she dialed the number for her mom’s house in Portland. Her mother had once owned an escape artist Pomeranian; she might have some tips for hunting a lost dog. Plus, she just felt like calling someone who would really talk to her.
Her half sister, Natalie, picked up the phone and let out a breath when she realized who was calling. “Oh, Grace.” A yawn traveled over the line. “I’m
so
tired. I was at work until one in the morning.”
Grace frowned at the sidewalk. “Pools are open until one?”
“What?” Natalie asked, confused.
“I thought you were a lifeguard.”
Natalie sputtered. “
Hello?
Lifeguarding was last summer. This year I’m working at the Crab Shack. I’m making more money, but I smell like a fish stick.”
“Oh.” Her mother hadn’t told her what Natalie’s summer plans were, or her little brother Jake’s, either. And when Grace went by the house now, sometimes she felt as if her younger siblings looked at her like the old baby-sitter who’d dropped by for a visit. “Is Mom at home?”
“No—work. She’s doing morning shifts these days.”
When Jake and Natalie were both in elementary school, their mom had gone back to school and become an LVN.
“I can tell her to call you when she gets home,” Natalie said, obviously eager to crawl back into bed.
“No—I’ll call her. I’m in Austin.”
“Why?”
“Visiting my dad.”
“Oh! Right!” She yawned again. “Mom mentioned that, I think. She’s worried about you leaving the store with what’s-his-name.”
“Ben.”
“Right. I thought it was weird. The only other times she mentions the store is when she’s complaining about how you’re a slave to it. Now when you finally do get away . . .”
“It’s because I’m home. In Austin, I mean. She and my dad—they’ve never been on the best of terms.”
Natalie snorted. “No kidding! I can’t imagine Mom marrying an old man. She must have been really desperate or something.”
“He wasn’t so old back then. Just forty-five.”
“Like I said—an old man.”
Grace bit her lip. “I’d better go. I’ll call Mom back later.”
“ ’Kay. Good night.”
Grace said good-bye and hung up, feeling even more disconnected than before.
“Can I help you?”
At the sound of a woman’s voice just behind her, Grace spun on her heel. She had spotted this woman earlier working in her yard. The blonde, who appeared to be in her mid-thirties, lived two houses down on the other side of her dad’s property, next to the white two-story house where the weird kid named Dominic lived. She wore a sunny yellow linen tank top, white shorts, and espadrilles. Not exactly the clothes Grace would have chosen for working in the yard.
“My name’s Muriel Blainey.” She extended her head forward and tilted it slightly like a curious bird. “I’ve seen you going door to door. Is there some sort of problem?”
The neighborhood watch, Grace presumed. She introduced herself and explained, “My father’s dog has disappeared.”
“Iago? I am
so
sorry! Was this before or after the accident?”
“I think it must have been just after,” Grace said.
“Well, the poor doggie hasn’t been around my house,” Muriel informed her, making a sympathetic pouty face. “Have you tried the animal shelters yet?”
“I called them.” The creases in Muriel’s forehead alerted her to the fact that this was the wrong answer. “But I guess I’ll go in person this afternoon. Of course.”
“I assume you’ve called every vet in the phone book by now.”
“Well, not
every
one.”
Not good enough, Muriel’s expression said. “And you have flyers?”
Grace handed one over.
“Every pole should have one,” Muriel instructed her. “And all the local businesses. If you need to borrow a staple gun, my husband has one. He’s away on business in California, so it’s not as if he’ll be needing it this afternoon. I’ll get it for you right now and we can have all your flyers out in a jiffy.”
Grace felt the negligible weight of the small packet of thumbtacks in her pocket. Totally inadequate. Everything about this woman made her feel unprepared. “I think Dad might have one somewhere,” she said, edging away. She couldn’t shake the alarming suspicion that if she actually accepted Muriel’s aid, she wasn’t going to get away from her until the very last flyer was stapled to the very last phone pole.
“I’ll knock on your door if I need it,” Grace promised her. “Thanks.”
She hurried to the house and shut the door. Staple gun! A normal person would have kept his toolbox in the garage, but this house had no garage and her father was definitely not normal. She searched the closets, the little mudroom to the side of the kitchen, and even the window seat in the dining room, which had been used as a junk repository for decades. Nothing. Finally she remembered the upstairs storage closet.
Growing up, she’d always loved the closet because it resembled a little room. It even had its own tiny window. She’d always imagined setting up a sort of clubhouse in it. Not that she, a lone kid visiting from halfway across the country, had any friends to invite to join this club. . . .
Forgetting the staple gun, she picked her way over storage boxes and old vacuum cleaners and made her way to the window. It was just a tiny vertical rectangle, but it had the same woodwork and double panes of glass that the windows downstairs had. Beneath a heavy layer of dust, the paint was pinkish beige. A color from long ago, she supposed. Now the trim inside was off white. Her dad had just had the whole place repainted a few years ago, inside and out. The exterior was a deep red color with rich brown trim that made the old craftsman design look sharp, especially against the gray stonework around the porch. It was one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, and her father’s pride.
Something captured her attention through the accumulated grime on the window glass. At first it was hard to credit what she was seeing, because it seemed to be just a black-and-white smudge in the distance. Impulsively, she used the tail of her T-shirt to wipe a semi-clear spot on the glass and pressed her face close. Unbelievable!