I backed out the door and shut it, then slid with my back to Lucy down to the floor. I stayed there until I heard Sandra calling my name.
“I’m down here,” I called back.
Sandra’s wagon was empty as she rolled it down to where I sat. Instead of asking what I was doing, she sank down to the floor and sat with me. We were both quiet.
“Something spook you?” she said at last.
“The little dog—” I pointed behind me.
“Lucy. She’s a cutie, isn’t she?”
“Cutie,” I echoed. “But what’s wrong with her?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think someone should look at her, the vet here or someone,” I said shakily. “She’s panting a lot.”
Sandra turned around to see Lucy, still looking at us, waiting patiently.
“Jess, all dogs pant. She’s happy to see us, that’s all. Maybe needs more water. Maybe she got a little warm in this weather. There’s nothing wrong, aside from her being in this kennel, which is the last place she wants to be.”
“Where does she want to be?”
“Home.” Sandra said simply. “She wants to be home.”
Lucy wasn’t shy around children, I thought. She had just been waiting for a family with older kids that wouldn’t pull her tail or pick her up and drop her.
I think she had been waiting for us.
And we were waiting for her.
It took just one day to adopt Lucy. Ian and Madd went with me to pick her up, arguing over who got to hold her in the car.
She’d had all her shots, but I took her to the vet the next day. I asked him to listen to her heart three times.
“She’s fine,” the vet assured me. “Take her home.”
86
My work situation was improving. Wes was finally on medication and didn’t fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. But some things never change. Beef Jerky still barked at the birds outside. Talk of the Spring Fling Festival, gossip about who was dating whom (all unconfirmed) and nonsensical discussions about weather took up most of the day for Joe and his cronies.
Everyone had their own interpretation of the fair weather.
“Farmer’s Almanac predicted it,” said Sal.
“El Niño is bringing crazy climate changes,” argued Wes.
“It’s not spring, it’s just a warm spell,” said Paulie. “It’ll snow again before the month ends.”
Turned out, he was wrong.
In my back garden, purple and pink tulips and yellow daffodils nosed their way up through the hard soil and I was able to lay down a dark, earthy mulch earlier than usual. The kids and I went to the garden shop and picked out a beautiful cherry tree sapling that would burst into bloom with cascading pink flowers each spring. We found a place in the sun and took turns digging a deep hole to plant the roots that already looked strong and healthy.
Then I got down on my knees and carefully placed the tiny mahogany box with Penny’s ashes into the soil. On top of the little box, I set her favorite chew toy, the green squeaky alligator.
We stood in silence for a moment and I knew we were all talking to Pen, and to the universe. I held the tree and the kids filled in the hole until the sapling stood straight upright. Ian attached a small rope to make sure it didn’t bend in the wind. But I knew it would grow to be the strongest tree in my yard, the most resilient. The most precious, because it came from Penny.
We had been her whole life. Start to finish. Our home was her home. It was a life cut far too short and that would always be very difficult to accept. But we had loved her, all of us, we would love her forever, and wherever she was, in the wind, or the grass or the sky, she would also love us forever, all of us imprinted permanently on each other’s hearts.
“This is for you Mom,” Ian said, holding out a small jewelry box. Inside was a silver locket with simple filigree around the edges.
“Open it,” Maddy said.
I pried it open with my fingernails. Inside, tucked behind a bit of glass, was a tiny lock of brown hair, unmistakably Penny’s.
Madison helped me put it on and then we all cried some more, this time not completely overwhelmed with sorrow—this time with memories, this time with love.
87
“Postcard from Dad,” Ian announced a few weeks later as I was having tea. “You may want to read this one.”
On the cover was a photo of an old-fashioned airplane. Adam was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright brothers were first in flight.
It wasn’t a place I’d have had any interest at all in visiting. I was glad he was there himself. Or with someone else by now, I thought, realizing I’d let go of the raging resentment plaguing me for months after he’d left.
It was addressed to Ian.
“Read the message,” Ian said.
“Please tell your mom it was a shock to hear about Penny, and I can only imagine how awful it must be for her. Penny had a personality all her own, feisty, loving, intuitive, and smart, very much like your mother. Take care of her, Ian, and tell Madison to do the same. I will always remember Pen as the little fluffball who never left Mom’s side, her constant companion.”
Ian put his arms around me as I wiped away tears.
We put the postcard on the fridge for Madison to see.
April marked the one-year anniversary of Bryan’s move south. He and Sarah were living together, and he was working for a chain of retail stores, designing their sets and window displays, traveling from store to store which gave him a good sense of freedom. His Jack-o’-lantern business was booming; he had enough orders to be busy all the way through till Halloween.
They took Ben to the ocean every Saturday and Sunday; Bry was teaching him to body surf, even though he was
