“There was this rescue dog I knew about; she was a real scrapper. And I know a guy who sets up fights sometimes. He has a couple pit bulls. It wasn’t, like, an organized thing.”
“It was organized if this guy sets up fights. There are laws against that. It’s cruel.”
“This dog liked to fight.”
“Don’t say that,” said Imogen. “Just don’t. If someone adopted her and was kind with her, she would have—”
“You didn’t meet this dog,” said Scott, petulant. “Anyway, we had the fight, and she lost, all right? I stopped it before she got hurt too bad, because you can if you’re the owner of a dog, because she was— The fight wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
Jule held still, protected by the wall of the outdoor shower. She didn’t dare move.
“That meant I lost money for all these guys who bet on her,” Scott went on. “They said I should have let her play it to the death. I said the rules say an owner can stop the fight. They said yeah, but no one does that because you shaft all the people who bet on your dog.” He was crying now. “And they want their bet money back. The guy who organized the fight wants his investment back, too. He says people complained, that I ruined his business by fighting a dog when I was…I’m scared, Imogen. I don’t know how to fix this without your help.”
“Let me explain the situation to you,” Imogen said slowly. “You are my yard boy, my pool boy, my cleaner. You work here. You have done a decent job, and you’ve been a good guy to hang around with now and again. That does not put me under any obligation to help you when you have done an illegal and immoral thing to a poor, defenseless dog.”
Jule began to sweat.
The way Imogen saidyard boy, pool boy, cleaner.It was so cold. Jule hadn’t seen Immie face to face with anyone she disdained until now.
“You won’t help me, then?” Scott asked.
“We hardly know each other.”
“Come on, you’ve come over to my house every day, some weeks.”
“I never knew you liked to watch dogs tear each other to shreds until they die. I never knew you were a gambler. I never knew you were anything like so stupid and cruel as you are, because you are nothing more to me than the guy who cleans my house. I think you should go now,” Imogen told Scott. “I can find someone else to scrub the floors.”
Immie had been lying to Forrest. And to Jule. Immie had purposefully made up stories about where she went in the afternoons. She’d lied about why she’d come home with wet hair, about why she was tired, about where she’d bought her groceries. She’d lied about playing tennis with Brooke.
Brooke. Brooke must have known about Scott. She and Imogen had often come home together with rackets and water bottles, talking about their tennis games, when they had probably never played tennis at all.
Scott left without another word. A minute later, Immie banged on the shower door. “I can see your feet, Jule.”
Jule gasped.
“Why do you listen to other people’s conversations like that?” Immie barked.
Jule pulled the towel tighter around herself and opened the shower door. “I was drying off. You came outside. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You’re always lurking around. Spying. No one likesit.”
“I got it. Now can I please put my clothes on?”
Imogen walked away.
Jule wanted to follow and slap Immie’s false, beautiful face.
She wanted to feel righteous and strong instead of embarrassed and betrayed.
But she’d have to burn off that anger another way.
She grabbed her swimsuit and goggles from a hook in the shower. In the pool, she swam a mile, freestyle.
A second mile. She swam until her arms were shaking.
Finally, she threw herself onto a towel on the wooden deck. She turned her face to the sun and felt nothing besidestired.
Imogen came out a little while later. She was carrying a bowl of warm chocolate chip muffins. “I baked these,” she said. “To say sorry.”
