She doesn’t know that he has made up the story about his friend to test her. To gauge her response in order to protect himself from being hurt any further than he’s already suffered.
The line falls mute.
“Jack?”
He hangs up the phone and tells himself he has the answers he needs. But this time it is not his one good eye and blind one leaking tears. It’s his heart. Opening like a raw wound, weeping inside his chest.
CHAPTER 48
SINCE HE LEFTSANANTONIO AND HIS DOCTORS ATBROOKEArmy Medical, Jack had developed a weakness for broken things. Over time, he’d come to learn that there were two types of people in the world: those who threw things away once they stopped working, and those who tried to salvage them. Jack belonged to the latter group. His friend, Tom Golden, did as well. That was one of the many things that bound the two men together, adding another layer of meaning to their work at the Golden Hours. How often had Tom relayed how a customer had come into the store heartbroken that her great-uncle’s pocket watch no longer ran or that wristwatch, gifted from a parent at graduation, had stopped keeping the proper time. Tom would hold the timepiece in his hand and show it to Jack. “We need to fix this one,” he’d announce firmly. Being able to breathe new life into these heirlooms had made Jack still feel useful and gave him a sense of purpose after his injury.
He had felt a similar sense of calling when he worked at Foxton Elementary School. Despite having abandoned any dreams of marriage or having children of his own, the close proximity of hope and possibility that were nurtured in the classrooms had breathed a quiet optimism in him. When the door on classroom 8 changed from paper autumn leaves to jagged cut snowflakes, his heart lifted, and he felt the parts of him that had hardened from his injury soften and thaw.
Hendrix had also helped with Jack’s healing. He’d gotten the black Labrador shortly after he moved above the store. He was told that the dog had been abused by its last owner and had arrived at the shelteremaciated, and with an injury to his hind leg. He was on the list to be euthanized when Jack noticed him in the cage, his sad eyes searching Jack’s for kindness.
Hendrix had been overlooked by all the families, who peered into the metal cages with their children in tow, falling in love with the animals that didn’t carry their scars up front. The ones that didn’t have open wounds on their coat or who shrunk to the corner of their cages.
Jack felt an immediate kinship with Hendrix. He saw his neglect as an invitation for love. He saw past the unsightly open sore on his leg and the carriage that had no meat on its bones. Jack brought Hendrix home and the animal, wounded and scared, kept his distance, always walking toward the farthest corner of the small apartment and curling into a ball, as if trying to take up as little space as possible. Even when Jack placed a bowl of food and fresh water down, the dog wouldn’t approach them until Jack had left the room. With only a small galley kitchen and a one-room living space, it meant Jack having to retreat to his bed or the small sofa that was positioned across from the television whenever Hendrix ate.
The two would finally get to know each other better once Jack started taking the dog out on his nightly walks. They would set out around 10:00 p.m. for their long walks in the wooded acreage that bordered the reservoir. For Jack, those outings were meditative. As he walked beneath the canopy of trees, he heard the sound of his drill instructors “calling cadence” back in Parris Island, chanting, “Left. Right. Left. Right. Left,easy day, second platoon,easy day…” He experienced something cathartic as his body moved on and his mind surrendered to the task.
Hendrix, it seemed, also enjoyed these long treks and soon learned to trot along Jack’s side. He filled out, and where there had once been only a rack of ribs, thinly veiled by a dry black coat of fur, muscle and even a little fat now appeared.
“Come on, boy,” Jack would whisper after they would close up and lock the shop door behind them. He’d attach the long red leash and start walking toward the Ace Hardware Shopping Center. They’d pass the now empty lot, free of cars and pedestrians at this late hour, and navigate the area behind the hardware store where huge empty cartons were piled on top of dumpsters. When the concrete curb soon merged with the soft, dry earth, they would begin to forge ahead.
Left. Right. Left.
Hendrix with his long, black snout sniffed the ground, eager to experience the rich scents of the forest. Patches of moist soil, fragrant with the smell of fungi and pine. His eyes lifted toward the branches where squirrels darted up and down the boughs with acorns clenched between their teeth.
It took them nearly forty minutes to reach the cusp where the tree line ended and the water shimmered in the reservoir.
Jack sat down and Hendrix kneeled beside him. He stroked the animal’s back, feeling the length of his spine, his hand falling to the tail that was now luxuriant and silky from an improved diet. He felt Hendrix soften at his touch, and the dog returned his affection by licking the edge of Jack’s hand. Jack felt a quiet perfection in these moments between the two of them. They had come a long way together since they first laid eyes on each other in the animal shelter nearly four years before. He was now his best friend.
CHAPTER 49
IT HAD BEEN A LONG AFTERNOON FORKATIE AT THE POOL ANDshe was counting the hours until her shift ended. Buddy had brought Clayton to the club as his guest and the two of them thought it would be a great idea to bring toy water pistols to the kiddie pool and start shooting them at the children. They knew they’d only have a few minutes to spray the kids until someone shut them down. Today, that job fell on Katie, who blew her whistle loud and clear, halting their ridiculous prank.
Buddy threw his gun on the ground and looked up at her in the tower. To him, she looked like a Valkyrie, a Norse goddess ready to choose who she’d let into her realm and who she’d throw out. Buddy was happy to be thrown out if it gave him even the slightest chance to look down her bathing suit.
“Next time, you’re banished from swimming here at all,” she said, squinting and pointing her finger at them. She enjoyed the power and would have liked nothing less to make sure neither of them ever showed their face again at the pool. Buddy was a pest, but Clayton looked at her in a way that made her blood grow cold.
“We’re sorry, Your Majesty,” Buddy mocked, trying to impress his friend. “Please don’t banish us from your kingdom.”
“Cut it out,” she answered back quickly. “Why are the two of you such jerks?”
Clayton made an obscene gesture to her, which she answered by giving him the finger. As soon as she had done it, she regretted itbecause she knew if one of the adults caught her behaving like that, she’d be fired.
So when Buddy hollered something back at her, she chose to ignore him this time. One thing was certain: neither of them was worth her losing her job over.
CHAPTER 50
JACK’S APARTMENT HAD NO PAINTINGS OR DECORATION.THEwhite walls were monastic. He maintained a telephone line, though almost no one except Tom ever called him. And he hardly ever went out, except for groceries, laundry, the occasional slice of pizza at Nino’s, and to the Sunday dinner invitation he accepted from Grace once a month.
He loved those dinners more than he cared to admit. The house smelled like warm biscuits and childhood. Aside from the scent of crackling meat and roasted potatoes in the kitchen, the family room smelled of pencils freshly sharpened for Monday morning, loose leaf paper and highlighter pens. It brought him back to his days at Foxton Elementary and also even further back to the Sunday meals his mother used to make on her day off. His mother wasn’t the cook Grace was. She’d never in her life made a standing roast seasoned with paprika and garlic powder, or maple-glazed carrots. But she had mastered the art of breaded chicken cutlets, and the two of them had been known to polish off a tray of Pillsbury crescent rolls, torn open and smeared with butter.
The first time he came for dinner at the Goldens’ he had spent most of that Sunday afternoon fraught with anxiety. How would the children be able to enjoy their supper with him sitting next to them at the table? He considered wearing a baseball cap to create a shadow across his face, but then thought it might be considered disrespectful to wear one at Grace’s dinner table.
“The girls would love to meet you,” Tom had told him with such kindness it was hard to refuse. Yes, even with the skin grafts finally behind him, he knew he’d be a scary sight for the children. His skin was red and bumpy. His left eyelid drooped over his bad eye. There was a patch of hair near his forehead that had never fully grown back. He remembered the first time he stroked Hendrix and saw the bare patches of white, scaly skin, it was as though his fingers were also touching a side of himself.
