“And here I thought Harold was a strange thing to call a dog,” Amelia Mae whispers to me. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to refer to him as Wally.”
Oh, thank goodness. She really is on my team.
“I…it’s interesting to see you like this,” Miguel says, tilting his head to one side as he regards her.
“Sorry,” says Fiona with a sleepy smile.
“Don’t be,” he says.
In spite of his guilt and pain and hesitation, he’s enamored of her. Amelia Mae, who gives me a triumphant grin, has sensed it, too.
If only I could say the same of myself and this ridiculously named puppy, who plays possum and pretends to be asleep until the moment Miguel drives Fiona and Amelia Mae back to the bed-and-breakfast. Then he cries and cries from the big plastic car crate Miguel dragged up from the basement, which I could not once be convinced to get into.
When Miguel returns, he relents and holds him. Walter finally falls asleep again, and Miguel returns him to the crate, which he’s filled with old towels. He puts the crate in his bedroom, and the beast proceeds to keep us up half the night. In fact, his whining and constant needing to go out remind me exactly of what Amelia’s friend Carly once said about having a newborn; it almost makes me glad I can’t remember the first early months of my life. He exhausts himself just as the sun begins to poke over the horizon, and Miguel and I oversleep until the dog’s whimpering rouses us yet again.
A few hours later, we meet Fiona and Amelia Mae at a smallplaza downtown. Miguel lies and says the puppy wasn’t much trouble at all while Fiona coaxes the thing—ahem,Walter—into a harness, and I try not to gloat when he pulls this way and that, futilely trying to regain his freedom. Then they pick up lunch from Spoon and eat back at home on the deck while I introduce Walter to one of life’s true pleasures, which is dozing in the sun on a not-too-hot day. We’re just finishing up when Riley appears at the back gate. “Hello, all! Amelia Mae, you ready to go?”
“Go? Go where, exactly?” says Fiona.
“To the vet! I called Riley to see if she’d take me and Walter,” Amelia Mae tells her mother.
“I’m going to have to lock up my phone,” says Fiona, but she doesn’t seem upset. “And why, exactly, did you want Riley to do my dirty work?”
“We wanted to give you two a chance to spend time together. Duh.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” says Riley. “We had so many dogs when I was growing up that people thought we ran a kennel. This is routine for me.”
“Are we being set up?” Fiona says with amusement to Miguel.
“It appears so.”
“Don’t worry, Harry will chaperone,” Amelia Mae assures them, winking atme.
Fiona sighs, then rises and goes inside, shaking her head. When she returns, she hands Riley a small plastic rectangle, the oversized car crate, and Walter’s tiny harness and leash.
“I suppose there are worse things than being the target of other people’s plans,” Miguel tells her as she watches them get into Riley’s car. “You want to go for a walk?”
“I’d love to.”
They leave me at home, and I’m so pooped from last night that I don’t even complain. They’re holding hands when they return, and I think I’d be less shocked to see snow falling from the summer sky—not because they’re touching on purpose in a prolonged way, as it’s clear that’s what they’ve been wanting to do all along, but because…I guess I thought Miguel would be worried about what Raina or the other neighbors might think about him. He must be so focused on Fiona right now that it either hasn’t occurred to him or doesn’t matter. Either way, I’m winning.
“Do you want to read for a while before they get back?” he says after serving her a glass of ice water.
“That sounds great,” she tells him. “I actually have a book in my bag.”
They return to the sofa, stretching out so that their legs are on either side of each other. But instead of disappearing into their stories, she sets her paperback on her stomach. He never even cracked his open and is already looking at her when she looks at him. They both smile. Then she says, “So…what’s it like to have a dog?”
He regards me momentarily. “Where to even start? It’s incredibly mundane.”
What?! How dare he, after all I’ve done for him?
“There are so many routines you have to follow every single day, and they get upset if you don’t do things at the same time. You have to plan all your vacations around them, and basically all of your outings, as you’ve probably gathered. Really, your whole life revolves around this creature who may or may not realize it.”
I realize it! How can he not see that? I’m starting to getupset when he smiles at me and says, “And it’s one of the best things that will ever happen to you, because that animal will justloveyou, even when you don’t deserve it.”
Oh, Miguel. How kind of you to notice.
“Sounds a lot like parenthood,” she says, and unless I’m imagining it, her eyes are just a bit misty.
