“Betsey is the sweetest thing,” the woman, little older than a teenager, had assured her. “We love her and it will break our hearts to lose her. It’s just that now the ski season is over, we have new jobs on the Big Island and it’s a real pain to take a dog over there.”
“Plus, you know, we’re really not pet people,” the young man had said in an apologetic voice, his eyes sorrowful beneath his dreadlocks.
Sam had fought the overpowering urge to tell him that since they had taken on the responsibility for a dog that made them pet people.
Before she could find herself channeling her mother, Sam had taken one look at that cute little furry face, with its big brown eyes and floppy ears, and had felt a sharp tug in the vicinity of her heart.
You could take her, a seductive voice had whispered. What’s stopping you?
Her mother was gone. She was alone in the house. She was an adult running her own boutique. Surely she could have a dog now. What was the harm?
“Betsey is totally house-trained and hardly ever barks,” the woman had pushed, obviously sensing blood in the water. “We’ll throw in her crate, her toys, a bag of her favorite treats and a whole container of food. All we’re asking is two hundred dollars to help us out with gas money.”
Sam had been such a sucker. Looking back, she could see exactly how stupid she had been. She might as well have had Soft Touch tattooed on her forehead. For one thing, how would gas money help them get to the Big Island? For another, they had been entirely too eager to get rid of the dog, especially if she was as perfect as they claimed. Sam had been blinded by her own long-buried childhood desire for a pet and hadn’t for a moment pondered why they were selling this cute pup outside the supermarket.
She wasn’t sure if she had been lured more by their words, by the dog’s extraordinary cuteness or her dread at returning to this empty house night after night. Whatever the reason, she had handed over all the cash in her wallet down to her last dollar, scooped up the little dog and her small assortment of supplies and headed home with a feeling of deep exhilaration.
Samantha didn’t have to try hard to imagine how her mother would have rolled her eyes with a chorus of I told you so’s the next day, after she took the dog to her friend, veterinarian Dr. Dani Morales, to have her checked out and learned the little dog wasn’t simply chubby, she was expecting puppies.
That was six weeks ago. Now, instead of living out her grandiose image of having one sweet-natured, quiet little lapdog who would sit at her feet while she sewed, she had one exhausted, stressed-out mama dog and three very active, very demanding, month-old puppies.
She sighed, turning her attention away from the puppies and back to the children on her dock. Where were the parents? She couldn’t see a single adult in sight.
She was scanning the area when she suddenly heard a splash and then a scream. When she jerked her gaze back to the dock, she saw the boy in the water and the older girl, likely his sister, belly down on the dock, frantically trying to pull him back up.
It wasn’t deep there, only about four feet or so, but would still be over a little boy’s head. Sam yanked open the door of her sunroom and raced to the dock. At her arrival, the girl looked at her with mingled terror and relief.
“My brother’s fallen in,” she exclaimed in what Sam noticed was a British accent. “Please. Can you help him? Don’t let him drown!”
Sam was already shucking her shoes and taking off her baggy sweater. She wore yoga pants and a workout tank underneath, her favorite sewing clothes.
The boy hadn’t resurfaced, she realized as panic now washed over her, thick and greasy. Where were his blasted parents?
She didn’t want to go in the water. If she could, she tried to avoid it at all costs. She could swim, she just didn’t like to. It all traced back to a time when she had nearly drowned herself when she was four or five at this very same dock, trying to follow her father, who was getting into a fishing boat and hadn’t noticed when she wandered out of the house to join him.
Inky water closing over her head, the instinctive gasping for air, the cold fear. It was probably her earliest memory.
She had overcome it, for the most part. She lived on the lake, after all, and loved it most of the time. Once in a great while, the old phobias came back.
None of that mattered right now. A child needed her.
Without giving herself time to think further about it, she jumped off the dock near the area where she thought she had seen the boy go into the water.
Though it was early June, the lake was icy with runoff from the mountains surrounding Haven Point. In her opinion, it should be against the law for anyone to swim in Lake Haven until at least August. By then, the summer sun had time to warm the water a little, at least in the shallows.
She ignored the cold, focusing only on trying to feel around for the child. The boy resurfaced finally about three feet away, slapping his arms wildly and gasping for air.
She pushed from the muddy floor and grabbed hold of him.
“Calm down. You’re okay. I’ve got you now. We’ll get you out.”
“Cold. S-s-so cold.”
He had a British accent, as well, she heard through his chattering teeth.
“I
