“What in the world?” Charley mumbled as she bumped into something on her pitch-black porch.
Fishing her new apartment key out of her purse, she opened her front door. Stepping into the small foyer, she switched on the porch light. Setting her purse on the wingback chair in the living room, she backtracked to the door. On the porch, she had knocked over a vase of flowers. Picking up the broken vase and stepping around the spilled water, she gathered up the flowers. Closing and locking the door, she slid the chain into place too. Then she set the pieces of the broken vase on the countertop between the living room and kitchen. She placed the flowers beside the broken glass and noticed the florist’s card among the multicolored blooms.
Charley ignored the card and, rubbing her forehead, meandered across the living room. Having taken off her wet beagle cap but still clad in her costume, she dropped onto the sofa. As rain pelted the window, she sat staring blankly at the curtains over the glass.
At Triple C Ranch-West, she’d had the shock of her life. Sully had a girlfriend. He was handsome and charming. He had a hugeranch and a successful business. He’d no doubt had a bunch of women chasing after him and a lot of girlfriends over the years.
Charley wished he would have given her a fair warning about the one named Trish.
Following the trauma of the attempted assault and her mother’s murder, Charley had been profoundly comforted by Sully’s strong, protective influence. She had fallen hard for him. He had helped her to get past the assault so completely she’d given herself to him. With no promises, no protection, no nothing—she had given Sully her all.
To find out he was going to have a baby with another woman was an enormous emotional blow. She wasn’t sure she could handle the situation on her own. But she had no one to turn to. No one to confide in. Not true. She had the Coopers. But, Sully had known them long before she came along. As for her, she’d only known Sully for a short time. She’d been an utter fool.
Charley curled into a fetal position on the sofa, and her thoughts raced.
After Trish had told her to vamoose, Charley glanced around for Sully. He’d been nowhere in sight. Trish had already said he’d ditched her, and that appeared to be true. To head off any awkwardness for the Coopers, Charley had quietly left the house and hurried across the driveway to her car. She’d driven straight to her cabin. How happy she’d been there with Sully. He had seemed so genuine and happy too.
Planning to get out and go into the cabin, she’d opened the car door and then stopped. With the rain pouring so hard, she’d closed the door and sat in the dark car as her thoughts swirled. Should she call Sully? Weren’t there two sides to every story? She’d heard Trish’s side. Shouldn’t Sully have the chance to tell his side? Well, if he had been interested in telling his side, he would have made the effort to do so. But no, her cell phone hadremained silent. No calls from Sully. No texts. Maybe there was nothing left for him to say. Trish had said it all.
How was Sully supposed to get home? Starting her car, Charley had turned it around in order to go find him and ask for an explanation. Surely, she deserved that much from him. She’d had to stop at the end of the gravel road where it met the highway as a car came zooming in her direction. When it passed, Charley had clearly seen Sully in the passenger’s seat. Trish was driving, and Sully had looked right at her. They’d kept going. And still, he’d not contacted her.
Charley couldn’t hold the tears back another minute. And once she’d started crying, she couldn’t stop. As she lay on her sofa, her hair grew soaked with tears, her nose ran, and her entire body ached from the sobs racking her.
When she opened her eyes, it wasn’t because of the late morning sun filtering in through the curtains at the living room window, but due to a noise at her front door. She immediately stiffened. She was back in the Old Colorado City neighborhood where gruesome murders remained unsolved. She’d promised Sully she wouldn’t come back here alone. Oh well. Any deals with Sully were off the table now. She sat up on the sofa and listened. Nothing. She noticed the broken vase and wilted flowers on the countertop. She walked across the room and opened the card.
Please give me another chance. Rod.
If only she could hear those words from Sully. But to what end? To no end. He was going to be a father to his and Trish’s baby.
Charley heard the noise again. A shuffling sound. A brush against the door. She cautiously padded to the window and peeked out the curtains. Though her heart was shattered andbleeding, somehow cheery sunlight filled the front yard. She saw no vehicle in the parking area other than hers. She turned, and seeing Rod’s card again made her feel even more alone. If Sully were here, he’d roll his eyes and probably pitch the flowers out. She walked to the door. Keeping the chain in its place, she slowly turned the knob and carefully looked across her porch.
“Hello?” Charley said, seeing no one. “Hello?” She was about to close the door when a flash of black appeared on the doormat. Then a little black nose poked into the opening. Charley looked down into two brown eyes. “Who are you?”
Charley removed the chain across the door and took a quick, visual sweep of the porch. No one was there except for a skinny black puppy staring up at her. When Charley stepped forward, the puppy scampered backward but with a limp. She crouched down and reached out her hand. On three paws, the puppy cautiously hobbled toward her.
“Are you hurt? Where’s your owner?” Charley asked, with another glance around. “As much as I might somewhat look the part, wearing this costume, I’m not a dog.” She saw no other dogs or puppies anywhere in the vicinity. This one had no collar. “Are you a stray? Like me?”
With the tiniest of barks, as if to confirm he had no owner and was indeed a stray, the puppy then sat down in front of Charley. He lifted his right paw into the air and panted. Charley noticed a couple of pieces of broken glass on the ground from the vase she’d knocked over the previous night. Ever so gently, she picked up the puppy and walked inside, making sure to lock the door behind her.
“You look like you might be a couple of months old. You are seriously underweight and really dirty,” she said. “But you’re very smart. I’m all by my lonesome up on this hill and you found me.”
Taking the little dog into the kitchen, she placed him in the sink and examined his paw. There was blood on it. He pulled his paw back, but she carefully took hold again and saw a broken piece of glass in the center pad. Holding the puppy in place with her left hand, she carefully pulled out the sliver of glass with her right. A bit of blood followed, and Charley dabbed it away with a wet paper towel. She soaped the puppy up with dollops of dish liquid, sometimes used to clean oil off birds or animals, and then thoroughly rinsed him. Wrapping him in a clean, terry cloth dish towel, she dried him as she returned to the living room. There, she released him and the puppy gingerly touched his paw to the floor. Taking a step, he was able to put weight on it. Charley found Bingo’s old bowls under the sink and filled one with water. The puppy eagerly lapped up the water as she went to her fridge and took out a carton of eggs.
“Bingo and I used to love scrambled eggs, so even though it’s past breakfast time, that’s what we’ll have,” Charley told him. She set the eggs on the counter, took a pan out of the cabinet, and broke several eggs into it. Once she had them cooking, she went into her bedroom, and the puppy followed her. She finally took off her beagle costume, and standing in her underwear, she dropped it onto the floor. “See I told you, I’m not a beagle. Sorry.”
When the eggs were scrambled, she gave half to the puppy. He ate while she sat at the table for two in the nook at the end of her kitchen. The puppy finished his eggs in a few gobbles. Charley could only swallow twice before tears threatened again. She gave the puppy the rest of her eggs and returned to her bedroom. Grabbing jeans, a sweatshirt, and underwear, she went into the bathroom. She turned on the shower and cried. She shampooed her hair and cried. She scrubbed her body and cried. She rinsed off and cried. She dried herself and cried. Backout of the shower, she saw the puppy had fallen asleep in the middle of her beagle costume.
Dressed, she went into the kitchen to clean it up, and glancing across the countertop, she noticed her purse in the living room chair. Not one sound from the cell phone inside the purse. What did she expect? Sully wasn’t giving her any thought. He was off on a new adventure. Finishing in the kitchen, Charley brushed her teeth and hair.
Could she have missed his call when she was in the shower? Doubtful. But she decided she finally had the strength to look at her phone knowing she’d be devastated not to have a call or text from Sully. With a sigh and steeling herself against shattering disappointment, she walked to the wingback chair in the living room. Picking up her purse, she opened it. Searching through her purse, she became frantic. Her cell phone was not there.
“Oh no,” she whispered in dread.
Where was her phone? She rushed out to her car and thoroughly searched it. Her phone was not there either. She’d not had such a sense of aloneness since the day of her mother’s funeral. The Coopers had yet to contact her at that time and she’d felt completely isolated. It was one of the reasons she’d accepted a date from Rod Vaughn. Ugh, Rod. That made her think of the broken glass on the porch. She locked her car and quickly cleaned up a few stray pieces of glass. Tossing the shards, along with the broken vase and wilted flowers into the kitchen trash can, she tried to recall where she could have left her phone.
Her costume had pockets! Charley remembered putting the car keys into her purse after Sully had given them to her. Then she had slid her phone into the pocket of her costume. She walked to the sleeping puppy, crouched down beside him, and felt under him for her phone. The puppy nuzzled her, but herphone was not there. With his tummy full, nice and clean, and the glass out of his paw, the exhausted puppy shut his eyes again.
As she paused on her knees beside the puppy, she concluded she had either lost her phone on Triple C-West or outside her cabin. Darn it. She had no choice but to drive back out to the country to see if she could find it. What to do with this little black puppy?
