“How in the Sam Hill do you think a runner trains,” Coach bellowed, “if it’s not by going out and running?”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. About two weeks, then.”
Three mouths dropped open. The two boys shook their heads and turned away from me, shuffling off toward the locker room. Focus Guy shot me a dirty look over his shoulder.
Coach and I just stood a moment, staring at each other.
“Did those other guys not make the team?” I asked, hoping to understand what I had done to offend them.
“Those other guys have been on the team for more than a year,” he said. “You just beat my two best guys. On a couple of weeks of training.”
“Oh,” I said.
My dream of wriggling out of the commitment more or less abandoned me in that moment.
I ran back to the cabin the minute school let out, my stomach jangling from my track experience and lack of sleep, but more from the general awfulness of my morning. And the not knowing. The not knowing how awful things might have turned out to be while I was gone.
The dogs were lying on the porch, listless. They tapped their tails on the boards when they saw me but didn’t bother getting up.
The door was ajar. I could see about a three-inch gap, through which I could look in at the unmade bed on the other side of the single room.
I stepped up and knocked, just to be sure there was nobody there.
Nothing.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
I looked at the dogs and they looked back. Their eyes told me that my morning had been a damned picnic compared to theirs.
I wondered if they had eaten.
I walked around the property for a few minutes. Taking stock. There was an old-fashioned well that worked on a hand pump. A tiny building that I realized with a shudder must be an outhouse. A shed that I was hoping might contain dog food, but which—when I cautiously opened the door—only contained tools and such. There was an aluminum water bucket against the side of the doghouse, its handle secured on a hook so the dogs couldn’t upend it. It was less than half full. They each had a plastic food dish in front, but both bowls were dead empty.
I carried the bucket over to the well and hung the handle on the pump nozzle, and cranked until it filled up with water. It wasn’t easy. I was out of breath by the time I was done. I figured that middle-aged lady must have arms like a wrestler and the stamina of a mule.
I secured the bucket back into place and decided the dog food must be inside the cabin.
I rapped on the door again, just to be safe, then pushed the door partway open and peered in. It wasn’t much for a person to call home. A woodstove right in the middle for heat. An ancient cookstove, a porcelain sink standing free. Nothing much in the way of counters. A little half refrigerator like the kind people put in their travel trailers or fallout shelters.
There was a floor-to-ceiling cupboard that looked like a pantry, so I walked to it and opened the door. I found canned soup, and rice, and spaghetti, and tins of pork and beans. And a fifty-pound sack of dog kibble.
The dog food had a saucepan inside to be used as a scoop, so I figured that was more or less what each dog was supposed to eat. I filled the pan. Carried it out and poured it into a bowl. Repeated.
The dogs paid no attention to the food, and very little attention to me. They were caught up in full-on mourning. It was written all over their faces.
As I left, I tried to shut the door behind me. But its lock had been broken, and part of the doorframe molding that held it had been torn away. It gave me a little shiver, because I realized the sheriff’s guys had literally broken down the door to get the lady out of here.
I found a dish towel hanging over the oven handle of the cookstove. I folded it up and used it to wedge the door shut.
I looked at the dogs and their full bowls of food and realized I’d have to come back before sundown to see if they’d eaten. If not, I’d have to take up the food overnight. Otherwise it would attract raccoons and heaven only knows what other variety of wildlife, and the last thing I wanted was the dogs fighting it out with raccoons. They could be vicious little beggars.
The dogs looked back at me with eyes that said, “Can you believe how bad this is? Have you ever seen a day this awful in your life?”
“I’ll come back,” I said. “You won’t go hungry.”
They turned their eyes away and set their chins down on their paws, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were disappointed in me. Because they couldn’t seem to make me grasp that food was not the problem.
I walked home. I did not run.
When I got home, my mom was not there. She’d left a note on the table that said, “Gone grocery shopping. Eat cookies.”
Under the note was a small dessert plate with six chocolate chip cookies covered in plastic wrap. I shoved one into my mouth whole and dialed the sheriff’s office again while I chewed and swallowed.
“Taylor County Sheriff,” the same high voice said.
“Hi. It’s Lucas Painter. Can I please talk to Deputy Warren again?”
“Hold please,” she chirped in a singsong voice.
Then Warren was on the line. Just like that. With hardly any pause.
“What can I do for ya, son?”
“I just wondered how she was. Is she okay?”
“Not so okay,” he said. “No.”
“What happened to her?”
“Overdose. Prescription meds.”
“You mean,
