“Be practical, Quinn.” Bill sounded sympathetic but firm. “Animal Control is a clean, warm place.”
Her coat was a clean, warm place, too, but that would be a childish thing to say. Okay, she couldn’t keep the dog, that wouldn’t be practical, she had to give it to somebody, but there was no way in hell it was going to Animal Control. So who?
The dog looked at her with trusting eyes. Almost adoring eyes, really. Quinn smiled down at it. She needed to find somebody kind, somebody calm, somebody she trusted absolutely. “I’ll give it to Nick,” she told Bill.
“Nick does not want a dog,” Bill said. “Animal Control—”
“We don’t know that.” Quinn cuddled the dog closer. “He owns his apartment over the service station so he won’t have a landlord problem. I bet he’d like this dog.”
“Nick is not going to take this dog,” Bill said firmly, and Quinn knew he was right. As Darla had once pointed out, the best way to describe Nick was tall, dark, and detached from humanity. She was grasping at a particularly weak straw if she thought Nick was going to put himself out for a dog.
“Take it to Animal Control,” Bill said, and Quinn shook her head.
“Why?” Bill said and Quinn almost said, Because I want her.
The thought was so completely selfish and felt so completely right that Quinn looked at the dog with new eyes.
Maybe she was meant to keep this dog.
The thrill that ran through her at the thought of doing something that impractical was almost sexual, it was so intense. I don’t care that it’s not sensible, she could say. I want her. How selfish. How exciting. Quinn’s heart beat faster thinking about it.
Just a little selfish. A dog was such a small thing to want, not a change of life or a change of lover or really a change of anything much. Just a little change. Just a little dog. Something new in her life. Something different.
She held the dog closer.
Her mother’s best friend, Edie, had been telling her for years to stop settling, to stop being so practical, to stop fixing everybody else and fix herself. “I’m not broken,” she’d told Edie, but maybe Edie was right. Maybe she’d start small, with a dog, with this dog, with a little change, a little fix, and then she could move on to bigger things. Maybe this dog was a Sign, her destiny. You couldn’t argue with destiny. Look what happened to all the Greek heroes who’d tried.
“You can’t keep the dog,” Bill said, and Quinn said, “Let me talk to Edie.”
Bill smiled, his handsome face flooding with relief and good will. One happy Viking. “Great idea. Edie’s all alone. She could use this dog for company. Now you’re thinking.”
That’s not what I meant, Quinn wanted to say, but there was no point in starting a fight, so she said, “Thank you, good-bye,” instead. She rolled the window up, looking into the dog’s dark eyes. “You’re going to be just fine.” The dog sighed a little and rested her head on Quinn’s chest, keeping eye contact as if her life depended on it, trembling a little bit in her intensity. Smart, smart dog. Quinn patted her to slow her quivering and smiled. “You look like a Katie. K-K-K-Katie, just like the song. A pretty, skinny K-K-K-Katie.” She bent closer and whispered, “My Katie,” and the dog sighed her agreement and burrowed back to shiver into the dark warmth of Quinn’s coat.
Outside the window, Bill waved at her, clearly pleased she was being so practical, and she waved back. She could deal with him later, but now she was late to eat pizza.
With her dog.
Across town, in the brightly lit second bay of Ziegler Brothers’ Garage and Service Station, Nick Ziegler leaned under the hood of Barbara Niedemeyer’s Camry and scowled at the engine. As far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with it, which meant Barbara had an ulterior motive, and he had a pretty good idea what it was, given Barbara’s taste for married blue-collar men. His brother Max’s number must have come up. This was going to be a problem for Max, but nothing for Nick to worry about in general. People needed to go to hell in their own way, he’d decided long ago when he’d gone to hell in his, and if he had some scars from past screwups, he had some interesting memories, too. No point in getting in the way of Max’s memories.
He slammed the hood shut on Barbara’s Trojan horse, pulled a rag out of his back pocket, and wiped the gleaming paint to make sure he hadn’t left fingerprints. Then he walked over to the third garage bay to inspect his next problem, Bucky Manchester’s muffler.
“Did you find a leak in the Toyota?” Max asked Nick from the door to the office.
“There is no oil leak.” Nick stood under Bucky’s Chevy, wiping his hands on the rag, surveying the damage. The b-pipe looked like brown lace. He’d have to call Bucky and tell him there would be significant money involved. Bucky wouldn’t be happy, but he’d trust him.
“That’s what I told Barbara,” Max said. “But she said, ‘Look again, please.’ That woman is just overcautious.”
Nick considered warning Max that Barbara was not interested in a phantom oil leak, but he didn’t consider it for long. Max wasn’t a cheater, and even if he lost his mind and actually contemplated it, there was Darla. Darla was not the kind of wife a man messed around on and lived to tell the tale. Barbara was a nonproblem.
“She’s never been that fussy about her car before,” Max groused on as he came out of the office. “You’d think she didn’t trust us anymore.” He stopped to squint out one of the windows in the door of the first bay. “Did Bill knock Quinn up when we weren’t looking?”
Nick’s hand tightened on the rag, and he stared at the b-pipe for a couple of seconds before he answered. “Doesn’t seem like something Bill would do.”
“She’s going into the Upper Cut.” Max squinted through the window. “And she looks like she’s holding her stomach. Maybe she’s sick.”
The door was on Nick’s way to the office anyway, so he walked over and ducked his head to look past Max’s ear. Quinn did look awkward as she struggled with the door to the beauty parlor, her navy peacoat bunched bulky around her stomach, her long, strong, jeans-clad legs braced against the wind, the auburn swash of her pageboy swinging forward as she bent over. Then she turned to lean into the door, and he saw a dog poke its head up from the neck of her coat. “Forget it,” he told Max. “It’s a dog.”
“I am not adopting another dog,” Max said. “Two is more than enough.”
Nick stopped at the sink to get the last of the oil off his hands. “Maybe she’s going to give it to Lois.”
“It’s Wednesday,” Max said gloomily. “She’s meeting Darla over there for pizza. She’ll talk her into it, and then we’ll have to get used to another one.” Then he brightened. “Unless Lois kicks her out for bringing the dog in. She’s awful particular about that beauty parlor.”
Nick nudged the tap with his wrist. “If Quinn wants to take the dog in, Lois will let her.” The hot water splashed over his hands, and he scrubbed gritty soap into them, paying more attention than usual because he was irritated with Max and he didn’t like being irritated with Max. Nick turned the taps off and dried his hands and heard Max finish a sentence he’d missed the beginning of. “What?”
“I said, Lois would have to be in an awful good mood to let that happen.”
“She probably is.” Nick’s annoyance made him go on to add a little grief to Max’s life. “She’s probably heard that Barbara dumped Matthew.”
Max looked as startled as possible for somebody with a permanently placid face. “What?”
“Barbara Niedemeyer set Lois’s husband free,” Nick said. “Pete Cantor told me this morning.”
Max pointed a finger at Nick. “Anything else Barbara wants checked, you’re doing.”
“Why don’t you just run a full check on the damn car now so she doesn’t have to come back?” Nick walked over to the office to call Bucky. “Save us both a lot of trouble.”
“She’s a good-looking woman,” Max said. “Good job at the bank. You check the car.”
?
??I don’t need a woman with a good job. Barbara’s car is all yours and so is Barbara.”
“You own half the garage,” Max said. “Hell, you’re single. Why isn’t she asking you to check her oil leak?”
“Because she likes you better, thank God.” As Nick went in the office, he heard Max let out a sigh behind him, and then, a couple of minutes later, from where he stood dialing Bucky, he heard the hood go up on Barbara’s Toyota.
“Nick?” Max said from under the hood.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry about that crack about Quinn. I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”
Nick listened to the busy signal at the Manchesters’ and thought of Quinn, warm and determined and dependable, the complete opposite of her scatty sister, Zoë. Quinn in trouble wasn’t funny. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I know you’re close.”
Nick hung up. “Not that close.”
When Max didn’t say anything else, Nick went back into the garage and put his mind where it belonged, on the Chevy. Cars were understandable. They took a little patience and a lot of knowledge, but they always worked the same way. They were fixable. Which was more than he could say for people. Nothing a good mechanic could have done about him and Zoë, for instance. He didn’t think about Zoë much any more; even the news she’d gotten married again ten years ago hadn’t made much more than a crease in his concentration. Nothing like the crease Max had just made with that crack about Quinn.
“Nick?”
Max’s voice was still a little worried, so Nick said, “You don’t suppose Barbara has two cars, do you? You could be spending some significant time with her.”
“Funny,” Max said, but he went back to work and let Nick concentrate on the muffler. It was the only real problem he had, anyway, since Max would never cheat on Darla, and Quinn was always rescuing strays and giving them away. Nothing in his world was going to change.
Except Bucky Manchester’s b-pipe.
Across the street, Darla Ziegler plopped herself onto the beat-up tweed couch in the tiny break room of the Upper Cut just as Lois Ferguson came in scowling, her impossibly orange upsweep making her look like a small torch. Lois had been trying to establish her authority over Darla ever since she’d taken over the Upper Cut six years before, but Darla had watched Lois eat paste in kindergarten. After that, there was no turning back.
“You done for the day?” Lois snapped. “It’s only four.”
“It’s pizza day,” Darla said. “I’m done.”
“Well, you made that Ginny Spade look good, I’ll give you that.” Lois folded her arms so tightly that her gray smock stretched flat over her bony little chest. “Better’n she has in years.”
“Yeah, maybe now she’ll meet somebody and get over that worthless, cheating Roy,” Darla said, and then kicked herself for forgetting that it had only been a year since Lois had lost a worthless, cheating Matthew.
“Matthew wants to come back,” Lois said, and Darla sat up a little to pay attention to Lois for a change just as Quinn came breezing in the door from the shop with her copper hair flying and a dog tucked inside her peacoat.
“I know I’m late,” she said. “I’m sorry—”
Darla blinked her surprise at the dog and then held up her hand. “Wait a minute.” She looked at Lois. “You are kidding me. He left her?”
“Who left who?” Quinn struggled to shrug her coat off one arm at a time. The dog looked fairly ratty, Darla noticed. But rescuing ugly dogs was business as usual for Quinn and not nearly as interesting as the bomb Lois had just dropped, so she kept her attention on Lois.
“That’s a dog,” Lois said.
“Good call.” Quinn draped her coat over the back of one of the avocado armchairs. “I’ll hold on to her. She’ll never touch the floor, I swear. Who left who?”
“Ha.” Lois’s lips curved in a tight little smile as she returned to her triumph. “Barbara left Matthew. The Bank Slut dumped him good yesterday.”
“Wow.” Quinn sank into her chair with the dog cradled in her arms.
“Jeez.” Darla sat back, exhaling as she considered the development. “They’ve been tighter than ticks for a whole year. What happened?”
“Something on that damn trip to Florida they took.” Lois’s lips pressed together harder. “He never took me on any damn trip to Florida.”
Darla ran down the possibilities in her mind. “Another man?”
“If it was, he’s gone, too. She’s in town, and she’s living alone in that little house of hers, and Matthew’s down at the Anchor.” Lois sat down in the other rump-sprung armchair across from Darla. “He wants to move back.”
Darla shrugged. “That makes sense. What guy wants to live in a motel?”
“You going to take him back?” Quinn asked.
Lois shrugged. “Why should I? I got the house to myself and this place. What do I need him for?”
Darla thought about Max. “Friendship. Fun. Sex. Memories. Somebody to kiss on New Year’s Eve.”
“He left me for a Bank Slut,” Lois said. “How much friendship do you think we got at this point?”
Something about the way Lois rolled the words Bank Slut off her tongue made Darla fairly sure Lois wasn’t focusing her anger on Matthew. Maybe this marriage could be saved. Lois would sure be easier to work for if it could. “You married him the day after we graduated. You were with him for sixteen years. He only spent a year with Barbara Niedemeyer, and now he’s sorry. That’s something.” At least, Darla assumed he was sorry. If he wanted to come back to Lois knowing how bitchy she could be even before he left her for a younger woman, he must be really sorry now. “And he makes good money.” She thought back to the last time Matthew had fixed their sink. “He makes damn good money.”
“I make good money, too,” Lois said. “Who needs him?”
“Well, you do,” Quinn said, practical as always, “or you wouldn’t be talking about it.”
“It just makes me mad, that’s all.” Lois’s jaw clenched tighter before she went on. “We were doing just fine, and then she comes in with her broken bathtub drain and stopped-up sink and plans for a second bath downstairs, like she needed a second bathroom, living there all alone, if you ask me, she had it planned—”
Darla tuned her out, having heard this rant before, several times, in fact, since Barbara Niedemeyer had walked off with Matthew the previous April. As far as Barbara planning it, well, it wasn’t as if Matthew had been her first married man. Really, Lois should have caught on when Barbara had started talking about the second bathroom. Darla would have caught on with the second service call. The woman had a track record. Matthew was number three, for heaven’s sake.
“—and now he thinks he’s going to come waltzing back in,” Lois finished. “Well, the hell with him.”
“I’d think about it some more,” Darla said. “Barbara’s sort of like the flu. Men catch her, but then they get over her. Gil and Louis don’t seem to have any warm feelings for her. Last I heard, Louis was getting married again. I mean, obviously, Barbara’s men recover. And Matthew makes damn good money, so he’s going to have his chances if you don’t take him back.”
Lois glared at her.
“She has a point,” Quinn said. “If you want him back.”
Darla spread her hands and tried to look innocent. “All I’m saying is, if you really didn’t care, you wouldn’t be this mad. Take him back. Make him pay. You work it right, he’ll take you on a damn trip to Florida.”
“You don’t get it,” Lois said. “What if it was Max?”
The thought of Max cheating was so ridiculous, Darla almost snickered. Max was gorgeous and about as nice as a human male could be, but women didn’t even flirt with him because he was so clearly Happily Married. Or at least, if she were honest, clearly uninterested in any change in his life. That wasn’t quite the same thing, really. Darla’s urge to snicker faded, and she told herself she was lucky to have a guy who was so content. “I’d say, ‘Max, you j
ackass, what the hell were you thinking?’” she told Lois. “And then I’d take him back. He’s your husband, Lois. He fucked up and he should pay, but you shouldn’t just give up on him.”
Lois still looked mad, but there was some thoughtful mixed in with the mad.
“Unless you don’t love him anymore,” Quinn said. “Unless you really want to be free to do what you want.”
“Hello?” Darla said to her. This wasn’t like Quinn, the fixer. “Of course she wants him back.”
Lois stood up. “That’s ridiculous,” she said and went back out to the shop, slamming the door behind her.
“You know, I don’t understand Barbara,” Quinn said, frowning as she patted the dog in her lap. “She’s a nice woman. Why does she keep snagging other women’s husbands?”
“Because she’s not a nice woman,” Darla said flatly. “What’s with you telling Lois to be free? Lois wants to be free like she wants to be middle-aged.”
“I just thought she should think about it,” Quinn said, settling back in her chair, not meeting Darla’s eyes at all. “There’s nothing that says that life is always better if you have a man around.”
“It is in Tibbett,” Darla said. “You really think Lois wants to hang out at Bo’s Bar & Grill and pick up divorced drunks for recreation?”
Quinn made a face. “Oh, come on. There has to be a middle ground between marriage and Bo’s.”
“Sure. There’s Edie’s life.” Darla stretched out on the couch again. “Teaching all week, going to garage sales with your mom on her time off, reheating leftovers in a lonely house at night.” It sounded like hell to Darla.
“Alone doesn’t have to mean lonely,” Quinn said. “I think Edie likes the solitude—she’s always talking about how good it is to get home where it’s quiet. And you can be with somebody and be lonely.”
As far as Darla was concerned, being lonely with somebody was probably the way most people lived. Not that she was lonely with Max.
Quinn cuddled the runty little dog closer and did not look happy, and Darla narrowed her eyes. “Something wrong with you and Bill?”