“I was going to call you, when I heard about . . . Matthew. I’m sorry for your loss,” Ethan said.
“Thank you,” Hannah replied. “That was fifteen years ago, Ethan. Long time.”
“I didn’t realize it had been so long.”
“Yes.”
“So are you visiting, for the baby?”
“Oh no, I live here now.”
“You do?” Ethan seemed startled by something, but, as I looked around, I saw nothing surprising except that a squirrel had come down out of the trees and was digging around in the grass a few houses down. Carly was looking the wrong way, I noted with disgust.
“I moved back two years ago next month. Rachel and her husband are staying with me while they finish adding a room to their place for the baby.”
“Oh.”
“They’d better hurry,” Hannah said with a laugh. “She’s . . . big.”
They both laughed. This time, when the laughter stopped, something like sadness came off of Hannah. Ethan’s fear bled away, and he, too, seemed overtaken with an odd gloom.
“Well, it was nice to see you, Ethan.”
“It was great to see you, too, Hannah.”
“Okay. Bye.”
She turned to go back into her house. Ethan came around the front of the car. His mood was angry and scared and sad and conflicted. Carly still didn’t see the squirrel. The girl was on the top step. Ethan opened the car door. “Hannah!” he called.
She turned. Ethan took a deep, shuddering breath. “I wonder if you’d like to come over for dinner sometime. Might be fun for you; you haven’t been to the Farm in a long time. I, uh, put in a garden. Tomatoes . . .” His voice trailed off.
“You cook now, Ethan?”
“Well. I heat things up, pretty well.”
They both laughed, and the sadness lifted from them as if it had never been there.
{ THIRTY-TWO }
After that day, I saw Hannah and Carly a lot. They came to the Farm to play more and more frequently, which was fine by me. Carly understood that the Farm was my territory, something she could hardly fail to recognize, since I’d lifted my leg on every tree on the place. I was the Top Dog, and she didn’t try to challenge me, though she was irritatingly oblivious to the benefits that the natural order bestowed upon our admittedly small pack. Mostly, she just acted like we were playmates and nothing more.
She was, I concluded, just not very bright. Carly seemed to think that she could catch the ducks if she just crept up on them slowly enough, which was an exercise in pure stupidity. I would watch in utter disgust as she would slink through the grass, her belly in the dirt, moving just inches at a time, while all the while the mother duck watched her with an unblinking eye. Then a quick lunge, a huge splash, and the ducks would be airborne for a few feet, landing just ahead of Carly in the pond. She’d swim for about fifteen minutes, working so hard her body would nearly be lifted out of the water, and would bark in frustration whenever she felt she was within biting distance and the ducks flapped their wings and jumped through the air a few feet out ahead. When Carly finally gave up, the ducks would determinedly swim after her, quacking, and sometimes Carly would spin around and head back out, thinking she had the ducks fooled. I had no patience with any of it.
Ethan and I occasionally went to Carly’s house, too, but this wasn’t as fun, as all there was to do was play in the backyard.
The next summer, dozens of people assembled at the Farm, sitting in folding chairs to watch me perform a trick I’d first perfected with Maya and Al, which was to walk between the chairs at a slow, dignified pace, this time up to where Ethan had built some raised wooden steps so everyone could see me. He untied something from my back, and he and Hannah talked and kissed and everyone laughed and applauded at me.
After that, Hannah lived with us on the Farm. The place was transformed so that it was almost like Maya’s mama’s house, with people arriving for visits all the time. Ethan brought home a couple more horses to join Troy in the yard, smaller ones, and the children who came to visit loved to ride them, even though, in my opinion, horses are unreliable creatures who will leave you stranded in the forest at the first sign of a snake.
Carly’s owner, Rachel, soon showed up with a tiny baby named Chase, a little boy who loved to climb on me and grab my fur and giggle. I lay still when this happened, just as I had when Maya and I did school. I was a good dog; everyone said so.
Hannah had three daughters, and each of them had children, too, so that at any given time I might have more playmates than I could count.
When there were no visitors, Ethan and Hannah often sat out on the front porch, holding hands while the evening air turned cool. I lay at their feet, sighing with contentment. The pain in my boy was gone, replaced by a serene, uplifting happiness. The children who came to visit called him Granddaddy, and each one made his heart soar when they did so. Hannah called him “my love” and darling as well as just plain Ethan.
About the only thing involved with the new arrangement that was less than perfect was the fact that when Hannah started sleeping with Ethan I was summarily dismissed from the bed. At first I assumed this was a mistake—there was, after all, plenty of room for me between them, which was where I preferred to lie. But Ethan ordered me off onto the floor, even though there was nothing wrong with the bed upstairs and the girl could just as easily sleep there. In fact, after I performed my trick in the yard for all the people to see, Ethan had beds put in all the upstairs rooms, even Grandma’s sewing room, but apparently none of them were good enough for Hannah.
Just to test it, though, every single night I put my paws on the bed and slowly raised myself up like Carly
