“Mommy isn’t mad,” she says, even though, yes, Mommy is filled with an unspeakable rage so sharp she could slice a roast with it. She breathes in raggedly and says, “Should we go check on your sisters?”
Out on the patio, Mae buckles Leo into his harness and goes over her supplies. Dog? Check. Treat pouch? Check. Poop bags? Check. Long leash? Check. Small hangover from too many small cups of wine? Check.
Plus-size heartache? Double check. She can’tbelieveher father is selling the house; she can’t believe this piece of her mother will soon be gone, poof, as quick as you can say “purchase and sale.” She can’t believe Jordan isn’t even upset about it. What treachery! And besides the emotional sting, Mae doesn’t know how she’s going to be able to pull herself out of her current hole with the disappearance of this, her last remaining safety net.
She can’t believe how stupid she was to fall into her current hole in the first place. You hear about people getting scammed all the time. And you think, I would never fall for that. A little piece of you thinks, They got what they deserved, for not knowing any better. For being vulnerable, scammable. Yet here she is.
Even amid all this, with all these different thoughts and emotions crisscrossing in her mind, a dog needs to get out in the morning. This is how dogs work. Mae and Leo make their way to the cool morningsand. She lets Leo sniff around a little before they begin their training session. She’s already impressed by the progress he’s made around Natalie’s kids and Cinnamon. Another few days of consistent training, and he’ll be acting like a real member of the family.
(“Consistency is key.” —Hal Miller.)
Mae scans the beach. She’ll go all the way to the left as she’s facing the water, toward the rocks that line the northernmost edge of the beach and divide it from Straw’s Point and Rye Harbor. This is the less populated section, where she’s more likely to have space for herself and Leo, whose strong reactions to others could be construed as... well, negative. Even frightening, especially given the pit bull part of his DNA. This is what she told Human Leo during the assessment, which took place in the backyard of Hal’s bungalow on Mapleton Hill.
Human Leo sucked in his breath. “Is he aggressive?”
Mae shook her head. “Reactivity is often misread as aggression. Usually a reactive dog is fearful, so when he’s lunging toward a person or barking at another dog, what he’s trying to do is drive the thing that’s scaring him away before a perceived harm can take place.” She was pleased with herself for this succinct explanation. She glanced at Hal to see how she’d done; Hal was beaming at her.
Human Leo nodded slowly, taking this in. “Okay. That makes sense. I really want this to work out. I really want to keep Leo.”
“I didn’t know you were considering not keeping him,” Mae said sternly. She hates when people give up too easily on dogs. What did they expect when they took home a rescue? That they were rescuing something perfect? No. Perfect things do not need to be rescued.
“Nonono,” Leo said, really fast. “I’m in it for the long haul. I want him to be my companion. I want to take him on road trips and everything.”
“Like Thelma and Louise!”
“Exactly,” said Leo. “With a happier ending.”
Mae found herself thinking wistfully of taking a road trip with the Leos, then she immediately chastised herself. “I can help him,” she said. “I know I can. Your fee will not go to waste.” Hal frowned slightly at this; later he told Mae that he’d prefer the fee not be discussed during an assessment. Hal is a purist.
She held out her hand, and they shook to seal the deal. She saw Leo looking at the tattoos on the back of the hand, at the way they traveled all the way up her arm, disappearing into her tank top.
“I like what you have going on there,” he said. “All the ink.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I apprenticed at Ink It.” She considered her arm. Her favorite tattoo is the first one she got from Tony, the shooting star, an approximation of the one she saw the night Theresa died.
Now, on her own stretch of beach, she clips the long leash onto Leo and takes him through some warm-up exercises to focus him: some fist bumps (Leo’s nose to her fist), some eye contact practice, a few sits and downs. Leo is smart and a quick learner, and his attention stays on Mae. He wants to do a good job, she can tell. He has a good heart. And if you have a good heart, Mae believes, everything else can be trained.
She gives Leo lots of leash—the long leash is fifty feet long—and steps back, her foot on the end, so she can call Leo toward her. They do this three times, and each time Leo performs perfectly. She rewards him plentifully. She takes a video. She’ll send it to Hal so he can see her progress.
Then she sees an unleashed dog, a German shepherd, running along the edge of the water. The shepherd clocks Leo and Mae and heads directly toward them. The owner, a man in board shorts and a T-shirt, had been walking behind the dog, talking on a cell phone, paying no attention. Mae grabs the end of Leo’s leash, but she’s not in time to reel in the whole length of it. Leo pulls all theway out, straining toward the other dog. The shepherd stops and stands stock-still. She can almost see his dog brain working, trying to make a decision.
“Excuse me!” she calls to the man in board shorts. “Will you please call your dog?”
He can’t hear her. She’s yelling now. Leo is whining, and the whining turns to growling. “Call your dog! Excuse me!Call your dog!”
The man looks up, assesses the situation, calls the dog. He’s too far away for her to hear what the name is. The dog looks back toward the man, ignores him, puts his attention back on Leo. The man calls again, then finally the dog makes the right decision, running toward his owner, who clips a leash on him. It takes all Mae’s strength to hold Leo back as he strains against his own leash, barking, until the dog is farther away. It takes Leo several minutes to calm, and he’s still breathing hard when he looks imploringly at Mae, as if to say,I did a bad job, didn’t I?
“It wasn’t our finest moment,” she admits. “But we’ll get there. Remember, we’re all about progress, not perfection.” Her heart is beating so fast.
Her phone pings, a text from Tony.You owe me for last month’s rent. Can you Venmo me 1200?
It’s not even five in the morning in Boulder—what is Tony doing up already? She sits down next to Leo in the sand, and he puts his big goofy head in her lap. He’s spent. She looks back at her phone. Of course. Tony isn’t upalready—Tony is upstill. Drinking, vaping weed, basically being Tony. She looks out at the water, finding the humps of the Isles of Shoals. Momentarily, they anchor her.
I didn’t live with you last month, she texts back.Did you forget?
Her heart is beating almost as fast as Leo’s, thinking of the credit card fees Venmo will hit her with if she pays Tony, in addition to the fees already accruing on the credit card itself. But she doesn’t have the cash in her account.
You left with no warning. You still owe me.
