“I also would love to go to a yoga class,” I informed her.“I used to go to one once a week.And I’ve never tried tai chi but always wanted to.And I’ve heard meditation is super good for you.”
The grin that got me was blinding.“Me too!”
“So let’s check it all out,” I suggested.
Her brown eyes warmed, and she said, “I’d really love that, Mabel.”
Oh yes.
She wanted to be my friend.
I needed a friend.
It was time to stop healing.
And time to start living.
I hoped my hazel eyes warmed when I replied, “I would too, Abigail.I would too.”
SIX
Mr.Grouch
Mabel
Iwas back up at the cabin, groceries in, brownies baking, sitting at my writer’s desk, staring out the window, willing a bearded dude to show his face so I could call the sheriff and tell him stuff was no longer alleged.
Then perhaps, with Rus Lazurus’s connections, maybe they could get the FBI involved (but perhaps not the ATF), go in with an army of law enforcement to make a point, and they’d leave me alone.
Wishful thinking.
I glanced down at my laptop in front of me.
On my screen, it had the photo array of dogs currently available at Stony Bluff Animal Rescue and Wildlife Sanctuary, an organization that was only about seven miles from my house, south down CR 10.
I’d already decided, because I’d fallen in love from afar with a red husky named Tonks.
The name didn’t thrill me, but to my shock, the dog looked like a purebred.
She was gorgeous, with those blue, blue eyes in a white face, with white inside her ears and coppery red over her forehead and down her back.
The site said she was a year old, and they listed no other breed but “red Siberian husky.”
I wondered why someone would surrender such a gorgeous dog.
Then I looked around her to the other pups on the array and knew I could wonder about each and every one of them too.
I couldn’t think on it.
To me, unless you were an old lady who was suffering from dementia and couldn’t remember to feed your pet, and you had no other family, so it had been surrendered for you, I wasn’t sure there was a single excuse someone could give that was acceptable to surrender a dog.
I wasn’t so judgy I didn’t know that some animals didn’t like babies, and if you suddenly had one (a baby, that was), you had to make tough choices.Or you got a new pet, and it didn’t get along with your other animals, so again, a tough choice had to be made.Ditto with say, you lost your job, and were worried about how to feed yourself, much less your animal.
In those cases, though, you did the legwork to find them safe and happy homes.
You didn’t put them in a cage.
So…yeah.
