“Now watch. Pray, Max, pray.”
Trent held the food away from me, but he was leaning over and I caught the smell on his breath. I knew what he wanted, and signaled.
“See?” Trent said, laughing delightedly.
“That’s so weird. I’ve never seen him do that before,” CJ said.
“He’s saying grace,” Trent said.
As the weather grew warmer, CJ and I would venture farther and farther on our walks. She eventually stopped pushing her tennis ball chair-thing out in front of her but would lean on a hooked stick a little as we slowly made our way down the sidewalk. I had learned to be very patient and would walk next to her at the pace she wanted to go—protecting her now meant making sure she didn’t fall over or feel pain from walking too fast. Sometimes Trent would come home in the middle of the day and walk with us, and he, too, adopted a slow gait.
It had been so long since I had been on a car ride, I had pretty much written off the idea that I would ever get to be a front-seat dog again, though there were always plenty of cars in the streets. So I was surprised when I was put in a crate, one with hard sides and a lot more room to move around in than the soft one, and carried out of the building by Trent. He put me on the backseat of a big car.
“Buckle the crate in,” CJ said. “It’s safer with the seat belt on.”
I yipped a little when the car drove off with Trent at the wheel. Had they forgotten I was here?
“Oh, Max, I know, but we’re right up front. You’re safer in the back,” CJ said.
I hadn’t heard anything I understood, but I could feel the love in CJ’s voice. I pondered my reaction. I wanted to keep barking until they let me out of the crate, but I remembered the time when, as Molly, I left the ocean with CJ and I took the long noisy ride with a dog barking the whole way—nobody let him out of his crate, and his barking was irritating to me. I didn’t want to irritate CJ—not upsetting her was how I took care of her now. So I settled down with a long, forlorn sigh.
“First time I’ve ever left New York in August. I was always so envious of everybody—the heat was murderous,” CJ said.
It was a long car ride.
“You’re not going to tell me where we’re going? Not even now?” CJ said after a while.
“You’ll figure it out,” Trent replied. “Until then I want it to be as much of a surprise as possible.”
It was very hot outside every time we stopped, but we spent the night in a place so cold I slept under the blankets with CJ. Trent had a different room, but it smelled pretty much the same as ours.
As I fell asleep, I thought of the last really, really long car ride I’d taken, where we wound up going to the ocean. Was that where we were headed now?
We had been driving a long time the second day and CJ slept a lot of the time, but when she woke up she suddenly became very excited.
“Oh my God! Are we going where I think we are?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Trent said.
“How did you find it?”
“It wasn’t hard to do. Public records. Ethan and Hannah Montgomery. So I called and said you wanted to visit.”
In my crate I wagged a little at hearing the names Ethan and Hannah spoken in the same sentence.
“Wasn’t hard to do for you. How come you know how to do all this stuff? I was always so much smarter than you,” CJ said.
“Oh right, you were smarter? I can’t even reply to that; it’s frying my memory circuits.”
They both laughed.
“Do they know we’re coming?” CJ asked.
“Oh yes. They’re pretty excited.”
“Oh my God, I can’t wait. This is amazing!”
I fell asleep, made drowsy by the steady droning of the car noises.
When I woke up, the scent wafting through the car made me dizzy. I knew where we were, and when the car stopped I cried, eager to get out. “Okay, Max,” Trent said. Warm evening air flowed over me as Trent opened my crate door and held my leash. I bounded into the grass.
Ultimately I shouldn’t have been surprised: eventually everyone returned to the Farm.
Several people poured out of the house and ran down to see me and also CJ.
“Aunt Rachel?” CJ asked uncertainly.
“Look at you!” the woman shouted, hugging CJ as the others milled around.
There were three women and two men and one little girl. I recognized the scents of all but the little girl.
“I’m your aunt Cindy,” another woman said. She bent down to offer her hand to sniff, but Trent pulled me back, my collar going tight as he yanked the leash.
“Uh, that’s Max; he’s not real friendly,” Trent said.
I was wagging, so happy to see everyone and to be back home. Were we going to live here now? That would be fine by me.
“He seems nice,” Cindy said. I strained forward and managed to lick her hand and Trent laughed. Pretty soon Cindy picked me up and I was nose-to-nose with everyone in the family.
“Let’s go inside,” Cindy said. She handed the leash to the little girl, whose name was Gracie.
It was such a pleasure to mount the wooden steps, even though it did take more of an effort than when I was a bigger dog. Proud that I knew my way, I forced myself through the door first, feeling the leash go slack as Gracie dropped it.
There was a woman sitting in a chair in the living room. She was old, but I’d know her scent anywhere. I bounded right across the room and into her lap. It was Hannah, Ethan’s mate.
“My goodness.” She laughed as I squirmed and licked at her face.
“Max!” Trent called. He sounded stern, so I hustled off Hannah’s lap and ran over to see what sort of trouble I’d gotten into. He snagged my leash.
“Grandma?” CJ said.
Hannah stood up slowly and CJ walked to her and they hugged for a long time. They were both crying, but the love and happiness between them swept through and touched everyone who was watching.
TWENTY-SEVEN
We did not stay on the Farm to live, but we spent more than a week there. I loved racing around with my nose down, tracking all the familiar scents. There were ducks in the pond, a whole family as always, but though I stood and watched them for a while, I didn’t bother to chase them. Not only was there never any profit in that, but the two largest ones were as big as I was. It was the first time in a long while that I thought about how small a dog I was as Max. It did not seem right that a dog should be the same size as a duck.
There were strong horse smells in the barn but no horse to be found, which I considered fortunate. If CJ had wandered in there I would have faced down that horse again, but the prospect of doing so as Max, and not Buddy, made me more than a little afraid.
CJ spent much of her time walking and talking with Hannah, who moved at the same slow speed as my girl. I stayed by their side, proud to be protecting both of them. “I never gave up hope,” Hannah said. “I knew that this day would come, Clarity. CJ, I mean, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” CJ said. “I like it when you call me that.”
“I could barely contain myself from screaming like a teenager when your boyfriend telephoned.”
“Oh, Trent? No, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“He’s not?”
“No. We’ve been best friends forever, but never like as a couple.”
“Interesting,” Hannah said.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Nothing. I’m just happy you’re here, that’s all.”
One afternoon it rained and the roar on the roof was as loud as the cars I could hear from my special carpet on the balcony, only without the honking. The windows were open and the wet, earthy smells came flooding into the room. I lay lazily at CJ’s feet as she and Hannah sat and ate cookies without giving me one.
“I feel guilty that I didn’t try harder,” Hannah told CJ.
“No, Grandma, no. If Gloria sent you that lawyer letter…”
“It wasn?
??t just that. Your mother moved so many times after Henry … after the plane crash. And life has a way of getting so busy you don’t notice how quickly time is passing. Still, I should have done something, maybe hired my own lawyer.”
“Are you kidding? I know Gloria. I grew up with her. If she said she’d sue you, she meant it.”
My girl went to Hannah and they hugged. I sighed, smelling the cookie crumbs still on the plate. Sometimes people will set a plate down for a dog to lick, but most of the time they forget.
“I have something for you, though,” Hannah said. “See that box on the shelf, the one with the pink flowers? Look inside.”
CJ crossed the room and I sprang to my feet, but she merely picked up a box and brought it back. It didn’t smell very interesting.
CJ held the box in her lap. “What are these?” she asked. Whatever was inside smelled like papers.
“Birthday cards. Every year I bought you a card and wrote you what had happened since your previous birthday. Marriages, births … they’re all in there. I didn’t realize when I started how many cards I’d wind up writing. At one point I had to find a bigger box. No one expects to live into her nineties.” Hannah chuckled.
CJ was playing with the papers in the box, completely oblivious to the obvious connection between the cookie crumbs and her deserving dog, Max.
“Oh, Grandma, this is the most wonderful gift I’ve ever received.”
At dinner I would lie under the table and Rachel and Cindy and other people would sit with CJ and talk and laugh and everyone was very happy. So I was surprised the day when Trent began moving suitcases out of the house and into the car, because I knew it meant that despite how happy CJ was, we were leaving.
Humans do that: though it might be more fun at the Farm, or a dog park, they will decide to leave and then that’s it; they leave. It’s the job of the dog to go with them once he’s marked the area with his scent.
I was in my crate in the car. My girl had completely forgotten I was a front-seat dog. “It’s like Grandma gave me all the memories of my life, the life I missed. All my memories in a box,” CJ said as we drove. She was crying and I whimpered, wanting to comfort her even though I couldn’t see her.
“It’s okay, Max,” CJ told me. I wagged at my name. “I’m not crying because I’m sad. It’s just, I’m so happy to have seen them, and yet to know I missed so much, and that I could have missed so much more…”
“It’s overwhelming,” Trent said quietly.
“God, yes.” She sighed.
I curled up in a ball. Clearly, whatever was going on, they were not going to invite me out to be a part of it.
After driving for many hours, I sat up in my cage, because for the second time on the car ride the smells were familiar. Eventually the car stopped and I waited patiently in my crate to be let out, but CJ and Trent just sat in their seats.
“Okay?” Trent said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to see her.”
“Okay.”
“No,” CJ said. “I mean, whenever I see her I just wind up feeling bad about myself. Is that terrible? She’s my mother.”
“You get to feel however you feel.”
“I don’t think I can do it.”
“Okay then,” Trent said.
Well, I’d had as much of this as I could stand. I yipped in frustration.
“Be a good dog, Max,” CJ said. I wagged at being a good dog.
“So, you’re sure? You want us to leave?” Trent asked.
“Yes. No! No, I should go in; I mean, we’re right here,” CJ said. “You wait, okay? I’ll run up and see which kind of mood she’s in.”
“Sure. Max and I will sit tight.”
I wagged. The car door opened and I could hear CJ getting out. I waited expectantly when the door shut, but she didn’t come around to let me out.
“It’s okay, Max,” Trent said. I whimpered. Where was my girl? Trent leaned over and stuck his fingers through the bars and I licked them.
The door opened and the car rocked as CJ jumped back in. I wagged, hoping she would let me out and pet me to celebrate her return, but she just shut her door. “You won’t believe this.”
“What?”
“She moved. The woman who answered the door has lived there for a year, and she bought it from some old man.”
“You’re kidding. I thought that boyfriend of hers, the one whose father was a senator, paid off the mortgage so she’d always have a home,” Trent said.
“That’s right, but she apparently sold it anyway.”
“Well … you want to call her? Her cell phone is probably the same.”
“No, you know what? I’m going to take this as a sign. It’s like the joke where your parents move and don’t tell you their forwarding address—well, that’s what Gloria has done to me. Let’s just go.”
We started driving again. With a sigh, I settled down.
“Do you want to drive past your old place?” CJ asked.
“No, that’s okay. This trip was for you. I have a lot of good memories about that house, but after my parents retired and sold it—I’d rather keep it as it was in my memory than see all the changes, you know?”
We drove for a long time without anyone making any sounds. I was sleepy, but I woke up when I heard CJ’s voice, because there was a little bit of fear in it.
“Trent?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s true, isn’t it. This trip was all for me. Everything you’ve done since I went into the hospital has been for me.”
“No, I had fun, too.”
“The whole thing. Tracking down my relatives. Making the detour so I could see Gloria even though we both knew that at the last minute I’d probably turn chicken.”
I cocked my head. Chicken?
“Ever since we were kids growing up, you’ve been there for me. You know that? You’re my rock.”
I turned around in my box and lay down.
“But that’s not why I love you, Trent. I love you because you’re the best man in the world.”
Trent was quiet for a moment. “I love you, too, CJ,” he said. Then I felt the car turn and slow to a stop. I stood up in my crate and shook myself.
“I think maybe I need to stop driving for a minute,” Trent said.
I waited patiently to be let out, but all I could hear was rustling around in the front seat, plus what sounded like eating noises. Could they be having chicken? I didn’t smell any, but the thought made me agitated anyway. I finally barked.
CJ laughed. “Max! We forgot all about you.”
I wagged.
As it would turn out, that was not the last time we saw Hannah and her whole family. Not long after we returned home, I was taken to a big room full of people sitting in rows of chairs, as if we were going to play the game that Andi had taught me when I was Molly. Trent held me tightly, but I squirmed out of his arms when I smelled Cindy and Rachel and Hannah. Rachel laughed and scooped me up and held me to Hannah and I licked her face. I was careful and gentle in my behavior, though, not at all like Duke would have been, because Hannah seemed frail and there was always someone holding her by the arm. Trent’s sister, Carolina, and his mother and father were there, too, which was a surprise to me because I never smelled them on Trent and so had assumed they were no longer alive.
I was so happy to see all of them! CJ was happy, too, as happy as I could ever remember her being. There was so much joy and love in the air, flowing through the people in the chairs and between CJ and Trent, that I couldn’t help but bark. CJ picked me up and cuddled me. “Shhh, Max,” she whispered, kissing my nose.
I wore something soft on my back and walked with CJ between the people to where Trent was standing, and I sat there with them while they talked and then they kissed and everyone in the room yelled and I barked again.
It was such a wonderful day. Every table was draped with cloth so that there were little rooms under each one, rooms with people’s legs and morsels of me
at and fish. Flowers and plants everywhere made the whole place smell as wonderful as a dog park. I played with laughing children who chased me, and when Trent picked me up to take me outside to do my business I couldn’t wait to get back in.
CJ wore large folds of cloth so that there was a little room under there, too, though no food—just her legs. When I crawled under there my girl always giggled and reached in to pull me out. “Oh, Max, are you having fun?” CJ asked me after one such incident. She scooped me up and kissed me on the top of my head.
“He’s been running around like a maniac the whole time,” Trent said. “He’ll sleep like a log tonight.”
“Well … that’s good,” CJ said, and they both laughed.
“It’s a perfect day. I love you, CJ.”
“I love you, too, Trent.”
“You’re the most beautiful bride in the history of weddings.”
“You’re not so bad yourself. I can’t believe I get to be married to you.”
“For as long as you want. Forever. You’re my wife forever.”
They kissed, which they had been doing a lot, lately. I wagged.
“I got a message from Gloria,” CJ said finally, setting me down.
“Oh? Did she unleash the curse of the seven demons upon us and our lands?”
CJ laughed. “No, actually, for her it was pretty nice. She said she was sorry she had to boycott the wedding, but she knew I’d understand why.”
“I don’t understand,” Trent replied.
“It’s okay. She told me she was proud of me and that you’re a good catch and to have a wonderful wedding even though she’s not here. She also said her biggest regret was that she’d always thought she’d sing at my wedding.”
“Well, that’s not my biggest regret,” Trent said.
By the end of the day I was so full and so exhausted it was all I could do to wag my tail as people bent to kiss me and talk to me. I was held up to Hannah and I kissed her face, licking something sweet off her lips, my heart full of love for her.
“Good-bye, Max, you are such a sweet doggy,” Hannah said to me. “Such a good, good dog.”
I loved hearing those words come from Hannah’s mouth.