He froze in place as he reached the end of the hallway and looked down to the floor. He was jolted with the instant sting of betrayal as the realization of the situation confronted him from the face of the beagle hound looking up at him. They knew he was afraid of dogs. They knew he didn’t want a dog.
He had an awful, squirming feeling that traveled through him like the little droplets of water still funneling down under his pajamas. He had his pride. He wanted to be tough. He folded his arms in front of him as though his little arms could hold in all the emotion rising within.
“That’s not our dog! That’s not our dog!”
The sobs started with an explosion and went on unrelenting for the next twenty minutes. Sandra went to Nathan and Luke to Molly. He scooped up Lucy and took Molly’s hand, heading for her bedroom. He closed the door behind them as he replaced Lucy to the floor. Once again, she backed up toward him, sinking to the ground. She was used to sad bedtimes, but this was just as bad. Luke sat on the bed and patted the space next to him for Molly to sit.
“I have a job for you, Molly girl.” It was a term of endearment he’d used for her since they’d met when she was just four months old.
“Okay.”
“I know you haven’t been around dogs much, but I need you take care of Lucy for a little while.”
The crying sobs continued down the hall and Molly understood why her help was needed.
“Okay.” A little part of her was happy about Nathan’s temper tantrum. How else would she be so lucky as to get a bunch of time with Lucy all to herself?
“Nathan is going to feel better soon. Mommy and I just need a little time to talk to him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you stay here with Lucy and I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”
“Yep. Don’t worry, dad. I’ll take care of her.”
“I know you will, sweetie.” He pulled a long strand of curly hair from her face before heading for the door.
He smiled as he turned the handle and heard her whispering behind him.
“I love you, Lucy. You’re home now. This is my room.”
After those tear-filled twenty minutes, he, Nathan and Sandra were seated on the couch, Nathan’s head buried against his mother. She was stroking his hair, her shirt wet with his tears.
According to Nathan, his fear of dogs originated during a visit at a friend’s house, where an older sibling had been watching a horror movie about so-called demon dogs. He described one scene specifically, where one such creature had attacked a man, ripping his hand off and carrying it away with him.
After a lengthy counseling session, Nathan was exhausted, breathing deep long breaths and now only half listening to his parents tell him all the reasons why what he saw wasn’t real and how it was never going to happen to him. They were making a lot of sense as they explained to him the magic of special effects and movie making and how some movies were exciting and happy and others were made to be very scary.
He couldn’t tell them that the little beagle at the door didn’t really scare him that much after all. It was too late. And his initial response was so over the top that he was sort of stuck with it now, so he shifted gears, clinging to an equally emotional response to the perceived betrayal. How could dad bring a dog home when he knew he was scared of them? How could mom let him? How could Molly act so happy about it? Anger rose within and spilled over.
“My family is a bunch of jerks!” And the tears began anew.
Another long round of age appropriate counseling followed.
Sandra’s arm and shoulder were numb. And drenched. She freed herself from her son, partly because she was ready for the whole episode to end and partly because she needed to stretch and to change her top.
“I’ll be right back baby,” she kissed his wet cheek before getting up to take a breather in the bedroom.
Luke was left to wrap up.
“Hey buddy, I didn’t bring Lucy home to make you sad. I brought her home because she was sad. She was in a sad place in a sad house and I just knew that she’d be happier here with you and Molly.”
“It still isn’t fair.”
“Well, it isn’t unfair, either. And let me explain why. Having a sweet dog like Lucy in your life is going to be one of the best things that ever happened to you. I promise. I really promise. And you know I don’t promise anything unless I’m sure.”
Nathan looked up for the first time since the whole thing started. That part was true. Dad didn’t make a lot of promises, but when he did, you could believe him. Still, he wasn’t ready to give in just yet.
“I don’t want her. I don’t want her here.”
“Well, I understand that’s how you feel right now. But that will change. It will change.”
Sandra returned, happy to see that Nathan was finally talking. His face was a mess of hot, splotchy, redness.
“I’m ready go to bed now.”
“Okay, baby.” Sandra took his hand. “You want a book tonight?”
“Yes, please.”
She looked to Luke and gestured with her eyes toward Molly’s room. He responded with a half nod, but didn’t get up until she and Nathan were in his bedroom.
It wasn’t that late, but somehow it felt as though this afternoon’s practice happened days ago and that his trip to pick up Lucy could not have possibly occurred today. He was more exhausted than if he’d practiced for two hours in full gear himself.
He pushed Molly’s door open slowly. The room was dim. She was curled up in her bed, sleeping soundly. She’d fallen asleep with a party hat attached to her head. He gently pulled the string from below her chin and placed the hat on her bedside table.
Lucy was nowhere to be seen. His eyes shot back and forth across the room, but he made no sudden moves. He didn’t want to wake Molly. He looked under her desk, under a mound of stuff animals. He called to Lucy in a whispering voice. No response.
He looked to the closet and saw that it was open slightly on one side. He moved forward and pulled it open the rest of the way. And there she was, backed up as far as she could go into the corner, wedged between a box full of books and the closet wall. She looked at him with one eye only, as one side of her face was covered by its own pink party hat. He bent to pull it off before rubbing the top of her head.
He tried to coax her out, but she would not budge. Her eyes told him why. They said everything. Good or bad, right or wrong, her nights with Kyle had been spent just like this. Bunched up in a space too small, too dark and devoid of contact. And yet, it was what she knew. It was where she felt secure at this moment. It broke his heart to leave her there, but it was the right thing. For now.
He could not have known how torn she was. The smell of him was drawing at her to leave that little space and once again feel the security of his closeness. At the same time, the events of the day had taken their toll. And like her previous master, she was falling back on old habits of retreating into a dark space and shutting down. She watched him step away from the closet and go to the bedroom door before pressing her paws into the carpeted floor and scooting herself back as far as the walls would allow.
* * * * *
A spear of sunlight cut through the tiny slit between Molly’s bedroom curtains. The warm ray found its way through the open closet door and settled upon Lucy’s closed eyelids. She blinked in response, having never before had the pleasure of being awoken by the morning sun. She’d slept through the entire night without waking. Another first. She emerged from the closet with a yawn, stretching her limbs.
The room was full of interesting scents she’d never had the pleasure of discovering. The smells in Kyle’s home had been markedly caustic, dominated by the odor of bleach, ammonia and air freshener. This was more organic, more pleasing to the snout. She loved this place already.
She made her way toward the bed where Molly was still sleeping soundly. She wasn’t sure how best to get the child’s attention. Her belly was asking for its quarter cup, her bladder needing for a pat
h to the yard. She sat there silently at first, head up and on alert for the slightest indication of movement.
After a moment, she took a more direct approach. She whined softly from a place deep her throat. No response. She moved closer to the bed and tentatively stood, her paws resting against the mattress. She was not tall enough to peek over it. More whining. The child’s face was not far from her own. She could hear its gentle breathing. She whined a little louder.
Then finally came a stirring from above as Molly wriggled and stretched on the bed. All at once, memories from the previous night flooded her little head. For a second, she wondered if it had been a dream. She shot up and scanned the room, hoping to confirm that it was real.
She leaned to look out over her bed to the floor below and was elated to see the sweet face looking up at hers.
“Lucy!”
Lucy responded with a chirping bark. It was the first sound Molly had heard from her.
“Awe Lucy! Keeping talking, girl!”
More barks in response. Molly giggled, unable to contain her amusement. And in that instant, the generally subdued beagle pup discovered her inner vocal beagle. The energy generated by the child’s infectious laughter got Lucy’s heart pounding. She could not help but wish to communicate with an equal intensity. With no forethought, but only her instincts to guide her, she tilted her head back, her nose toward the ceiling and let out a howl to accompany the laughter. The gesture set Molly off anew, her laughter exploding yet again, with Lucy’s howls now coming one after another.
There was no way for the rest of the family to adequately translate the boisterous sounds. They had never lived with a dog in their home. And until they learned the meaning of such a raucous, their only reaction could be alarm.
All at once, Luke and Sandra burst through the bedroom door. Before them a human pup on her bed, positioned on all fours and howling, her little neck arched to the ceiling. On the floor before her, the beagle pup doing the same, its tiny mouth stretched into a conical shape in order to produce the best beagle howl possible. Without understanding it, these two young girls were declaring in the most instinctual way possible, “We are family.”
* * * * *
Luke was true to his word. Being the parent most often at home, he’d taught the kids the ins and outs of pet care. Little Molly had the maternal instincts of a person much her senior. She wanted every part of feeding, brushing, bath time and play time. And aside from Luke, Molly was Lucy’s favorite.
Nathan was a different story altogether. He wasn’t afraid of Lucy, yet he stubbornly clung to the powerful shock associated with the night of her arrival. No matter what anybody said, they couldn’t make him like dogs. He didn’t like them. He never would. His own transference into this life had come with its necessary veil of forgetfulness. As such, he could not have known that his former life had also been punctuated by a dysfunctional relationship with a member of the canine species.
And for a child so young, Nathan had the true misfortune of wrestling with more than one internal conflict. He was too serious for a child his age, made even more so by the circumstances of his young life.
He had a daddy, his real dad. But daddy lived in another state. He’d left the family, “in the blink of an eye.” That’s how Nathan explained it, whenever there was a reason to. He’d heard the phrase before, and it seemed fitting to describe the abrupt loss of his father. Nathan had gone to sleep one night, just a regular, ordinary night. And in the morning daddy was gone, in the blink of an eye.
Before he knew it, there was a new man in their lives. It seemed that daddy had left and came right back as someone else, as Luke. They were different people. He knew that. But sometimes it was just tricky, keeping it all straight. Sandra suggested that they call Luke dad, reserving “daddy,” for their biological father. She thought it would be less confusing that way. It wasn’t.
As Molly’s attachment to Lucy grew, Nathan’s reaction was equal and opposite. His internal resistance was stubborn and strengthened in proportion to every giggle from Molly and every wag of Lucy’s tail. A once understandable fear of dogs was now becoming an irrational collection of thought processes, one compounded upon the next.
Since Lucy’s arrival, he’d had numerous instances to give up and give in to the infectious joy Lucy brought to the rest of the family. Even as he occasionally caught himself smiling at some silly Lucy-induced event, those odd and darkening thoughts were quick to overcome that tiny joy and replace it with something else.
His observations were quite accurate when it came to the “pecking order,” according to Lucy. It was obvious to him that Luke was her favorite. Lucy was a friendly dog, but when she had a choice, she stuck to Luke. When he was not around, Molly would do. If there was no Molly, Sandra was the last resort.
And if none of them were around, Lucy wasn’t around either. If Luke was gone and Sandra was helping Molly with her bath, Lucy would vanish. It didn’t take her long to understand that hanging out in Nathan’s company alone was not a safe place to be. When there was no one watching, Nathan was free to be completely honest about his feelings. And that honesty came in the form of kicks, pinches and other physical contact.
Lucy found her sanctuary from the torments bundled up tight in Molly’s closet, where she’d spent her first night in the home. She was fortunate only that Nathan did not go out of his way to find her. Lucy was keenly observant to the family’s daily patterns. And if for some reason she found herself vulnerable to Nathan’s cruelties, she hightailed it to just that spot. On occasion, Luke would find her there, his assumption only that it was a place of comfort for her, a psychological remnant of her former life with Kyle.
Although there were hours of happy bounding, barking and chasing about the house, Luke was aware of an abiding sadness behind Lucy’s eyes. And in moments of reflection, there were flashes of guilt. He knew how attached she was to him, how she sensed his moods. In observing her sadness, he wondered whether she was merely reflecting back the sadness she sensed in him. He thought about it enough to do a little research, discovering that yes, a dog will often instinctually adopt the disposition of its master.
His keen observations were at least partially correct. Lucy was a product of her experiences to this point. She most certainly would have become a different version of herself, had her life begun in better place. She’d been born into a metal crate with her mother and litter mates. The pups were separated from their mother as soon as weaning could take place. Then when the pups had demonstrated a reasonable aptitude for housetraining, they were put up for sale. So Lucy moved from a crate surrounded by family to another crate, a solitary confinement crate with Kyle.
And it was that extended confinement that stifled the canine GPS she’d brought back with her. Had Luke not come to her directly in this life, she likely never would have sought him out. That instinct had been muted by the power of her experiences.
She knew she loved him. She found her most contented moments simply existing in his presence. But the tenacity that was Grace, the part that wanted to be back here on Earth more than anything, was stifled to the point of near silence. Lucy knew only knew that she loved Luke as her savior and her comfort.
The sadness in her eyes, that was a mixture of all these things. The heartbreaking intensity of a sad beginning in this life, of feeling alone. And now there were new things to be sad about. This human, this man, she loved him. And yet from him also, there was a sense of sadness. It was not the same as Kyle, but in some ways, it brought her back to that lonely feeling. And on top of that was abuse suffered at the hands of the boy child.
Yes, Lucy’s eyes were an expression of sadness, but Luke could never have understood the complexities of that emotion. Those eyes were speaking to him all the time, trying to explain. But the translation was lost, muddled, muted.
Lucy came to accept the mixture of sadness and joy found in Luke’s company. The sadness was most certainly not as powerful as the peace his presence brought h
er. And she would be content to take the good with the bad. She was used to the sadness. She could live with it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A house with children is a busy place. And there were times that the chaotically happy energy was palpable, contagious. There were times that Lucy seemed to discard the cloak of this lifetime’s costume and escape for reprieves of freedom. Sometimes playtime got her heart racing such that she could not contain herself, and she sprinted in the yard with the abandon of a fireman’s hose escaping the grip of strong hands.
Sometimes she howled from a place so deep inside that it were as though she were releasing her very soul to the sky. Sometimes the sadness within was shut away for just long enough that she could experience the true joy of being a dog, a dog who belonged to someone.
A dog’s life is a speeding train. Even when at rest, their hearts are in a constant race, plowing ahead of us. They live their lives in fast forward mode, while humans, with their slower rhythms, take our sweet time. And all the more bittersweet it is, the life of a dog. Too excited for every simple event in life to hold back, they zoom ahead toward the next joy.
Sometimes they slow enough to spend quiet moments with ones they love. And those are magic moments – moments when a human being might enjoy the illusion of a dog’s life slowing down to match our pace. Moments spent snuggling, stroking, whispering. They do their best in those times to slow down for us before they go racing ahead again.
It was just a tiny speck in a storm of dust, just an inkling that might be noticed for the briefest time before being lost again. But that grain of sand in a desert of memories seemed to counsel Lucy that time was speeding by, that every quiet moment spent ignoring her racing heart to match Luke’s pace was precious.
She would lay next to him on the couch, having quickly learned that it was an effective way of keeping him put. Luke hated to move when she was so relaxed, her head in his lap. There were times that he should have been doing something else, should have long since risen, but often he would ignore the call and exist with her there a little longer. He sensed her need for comfort and he wanted to give that to her. He had no understanding that those needs stemmed not only from the experiences of her young life, but from dangers within his very home.