The Dogs of Christmas (7 page)

“That’s terrible!” Kerri’s cheeks flushed and her eyes narrowed, as if it were happening to her. “What kind of people fire you with an e-mail?”

“It’s because I’m an independent contractor.”

“I don’t care what you are, people can’t just fire you like that. Did you do something?”

“I sent in a report that made the boss look like he’d made a mistake.”

“And they fired you. For that. It sounds like you were just doing your job, they can’t fire you for doing your job. Is there someone you can complain to?”

Josh realized he was enjoying how angry she was on his behalf. He told her that this was the way it worked, in his world. “It started with the dog, in fact. Lucy went into labor while we were in the middle of a conference,” he informed her, maybe bragging a little.

“Do they know that?”

“They wouldn’t care.”

“That’s terrible. So you’re out of work.”

“Looks like.”

“Will you be able to find a job? I mean, Christmas is like two months away, I can’t imagine people do much hiring during the holidays,” Kerri asked, going from furious to concerned.

“Sure. Yes. Maybe not immediately, but I’ll be okay.”

Her gaze lingered on him long enough for him to feel himself flush again. Maybe he should ask her to stay for dinner. He probably could thaw something appealing.

Kerri abruptly turned away. “I need to get going.” She walked to the door and opened it herself before he could do so. “Did you tell the vet about the puppies?”

“Yes, I called and he kind of said what you did, which is that everything sounded like it was working out.”

“Right, then,” she replied. He followed her down the steps and up to her car.

“Maybe we could…,” he started to say. Kerri slipped into her car, shutting the door, and then sliding her window down when her engine was running.

“You know where the shelter is, right?”

“Sure, I’ve seen it.”

“Great! Bye.” Kerri backed around and then bounced down the rutted driveway. He watched her go, his hand up in a wave for if she looked back, but she didn’t.

You know where the shelter is, right?
That sounded like she wanted him to visit her.
You already have the number for the shelter. You called, remember?
That sounded like she wasn’t interested in having him call her personally, but only as part of a business transaction.

Interested or not? Which was it?

Kerri had put the photograph of Amanda in the wrong place and Josh slid it back to where it belonged. It was taken the day he realized he was in love with Amanda. She was sitting on a rock in the sun by Bear Creek, her blond hair turning almost white in the sunlight.

“You’re such a man-child,” Amanda had teased him before she posed for the picture. Her laugh was gentle and warm. He had just explained to her how, when he threw away socks, he always tied them together in a knot.

“They’ve been mated all that time, so I tie them so they’ll never be apart. I’d hate to think of them lying there at the dump, each one wondering where the other one was.”

“Man-child” sounded so loving coming out of her mouth, then. Later, though, it somehow changed, became more of a complaint. How could something she initially thought adorable turn bad, like a piece of fruit gone sour?

Josh sighed. Kerri stirred something long dormant within him, and it felt good, alive. So yeah, he should have explained about Amanda. He had just been caught off guard.

Lucy was giving him an appraising look.

“What? I had to let her leave,” he protested defensively.

Lucy glanced out the window, then back at him, communicating what Josh felt was clear disappointment. “Of course, sure,” he agreed. If he’d thought about it, he would have had a lunch or something ready, would have asked her out to coffee, but to be fair he hadn’t expected her and, well, he hadn’t expected
her,
hadn’t expected that the voice on the other end of the telephone call would be attached to someone so pretty.

He had Kerri in mind when he built the box, thinking he would impress her with how handy he was with his carpenter skills. He even considered a tongue and groove design, though in the end decided not to do that because he really didn’t know how. When he was through with the project, he had a large, flat box with eight-inch sides that was separated into two chambers by an eight-inch-high partition that could be partially removed. The smaller chamber he filled with a soft quilt from the attic, the larger one he lined with newspapers. He smiled, envisioning removing the central partition and letting the puppies run out and play in the larger area, though at this point they weren’t doing any running or playing or even moving.

Lucy was completely unimpressed with the box, but seemed to comprehend what was intended when Josh carried the puppies back there and put them on the quilt. “This is where you feed them now, Lucy. They can’t get out until they’re a lot bigger.”

Josh took a picture of the box to show Kerri.

It felt strangely dislocating to be off Blascoe’s project. He found himself thinking about it often, of items on his task list left unchecked, pondering solutions to problems that were no longer his to solve.

Will you be able to find a job? I mean, Christmas is like two months away,
Kerri had asked. More like two and a half months, but she did have a point. He needed to get work before the high-tech world put on silly hats and started spending every day at holiday parties. Josh opened his address book and plugged himself into his social media contacts and began launching inquiries. Anyone hiring? Starting a new project? Need a new web- or PC-based interface?

The answer seemed a dismal no, but he kept trying. He updated his résumé and it looked good. Something would come up soon.

Two days later, Josh was sitting in his pickup truck, gazing at the front entrance of the rescue shelter. In the mountains, towns tended to crowd into the narrow valleys cut by rivers fighting their way down to the flatlands, and Evergreen was no exception, its main street shouldered with buildings on either side that backed up into the rock face on the left and the creek on the right. Away from the downtown, though, the hills were more friendly and round. This gave the shelter room in the back for dog runs, and the storefront window had been decorated with hand-painted cartoon dogs and cats.
Coming,
a banner proclaimed,
The Dogs of Christmas.

He pictured himself entering the shelter and asking for Kerri. He’d tell her he wanted to get her approval on the construction of the box. He’d show her the photograph on his cell phone and she’d like how handily he’d built it. Then he’d somehow steer the conversation toward buying her lunch. Maybe as thanks for designing the box—that could be the excuse. Or maybe he’d look at his watch and be surprised that it was lunch time and ask her if she’d join him. He could tell her he had more questions about the puppies and ask her if they could discuss them over a meal, maybe. He’d better come up with some questions, in that case. Or he could say, “It’s such a nice day, want to grab lunch at the golf club?”

A bell rang when Josh opened the front door. “Hey there!” Kerri greeted, coming from somewhere in the back. She wore a red fleece jacket unzipped over a light gray wool sweater and her thick hair was pulled back in what Josh thought was probably still called a ponytail. He normally didn’t like ponytails but was willing not to take offense to this one.

Josh wore clean jeans and a pressed collared shirt that he’d picked after trying on everything he owned.

“Hi, Kerri.”

“You here to take me to lunch?” Her blue eyes sparkled at him playfully.

He almost groaned at how easy it was. “Yeah. Exactly.”

They walked out to his truck. He cleared his throat. “It’s such a nice day, want to grab lunch at the golf club?”

“Sure.”

They sat on the balcony at the club, which was open to the public. He ordered a burger and so did she, which made him feel that they had a lot in common. The aspens had fought back against the ice storm and were gradually paling yellow, so it was back to looking like a normal autumn day, warm and glorious.

“Supposed to be like this all week,” Kerri said, reading his mind. He liked how she could do that. “So, you still fired? No appeal?”

“Yeah. Yes. But I’ll get another job soon,” Josh stated firmly. He didn’t want to come across as some jobless guy who wouldn’t be able to pay for their food.

“You’re just so calm about it. Not an emotional guy,” Kerri observed.

“No, I…” Josh didn’t like the idea that she would think he was some robot without feelings. “That isn’t true, at all. I have lots of feelings about stuff.”

“Really? Like what kind of stuff?”

“You know,” he replied uncomfortably. “Emotional stuff.”

Kerri laughed, her teeth flashing at him. “Fine, name one.”

“Name one what?”

“Time you were emotional. Like when … no, you tell me.”

He wondered what she’d been about to say. “So, like…” She waited while he tried to force something to come out of his mouth. Did he want to tell her that Lucy nursing the puppies warmed his heart and that he was spending hours of his days sitting and watching it like a TV show? Well, but that wasn’t a feeling, really. Anger was a feeling, but even he was smart enough to know that women didn’t exactly treasure anger in a man. Sad was a feeling—he’d bet that was the kind of emotional stuff she was looking for.

She was watching him and he felt a rising panic. Lots of stuff made him sad, like … like … “The tree,” he blurted.

She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe you should tell me just a little more,” she encouraged.

He told her about the proud old ponderosa pine that had been felled by the ice storm. How he always wound blue lights around it for Christmas. How cutting that tree into pieces had moved him deeply. He didn’t say he cried, but he confessed to feeling really sad. That was emotional, right? “I just remember that tree from when I was a kid. And now it’s gone.”

“So, wait, that’s the house you grew up in?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you like, inherit it from your parents?”

“No, both of my parents are still alive. My dad lives in England and has a whole new family. His son, my step-brother, is twelve years younger than I am—just turned sixteen. Then there’s a ten-year-old and eight-year-old twins, all girls. I don’t see them very often. Like, it’s been since just after the twins were born. England is a long way.”
And it’s not my family, not really,
Josh didn’t add.

“Wow.” Kerri glanced up, smiling, as the waitress set their plates down in front of them. Josh could look at that smile all day long.

“My mom lives in Florida and it’s the opposite,” Josh continued. “Her husband is retired, and his son, who is also my stepbrother, is in his forties, almost twice my age. They don’t budge from their condo, so if I want to visit I have to go there.”

“So how did you wind up with the house?”

“At first my dad hung on to it—there was always this idea that he’d come back to visit all the time, back to see his kids, I mean. But London’s so far, you know, it was harder to make it work than he’d thought it would be. Then we put most of our stuff in storage and tried to rent it, but that was pretty hit-or-miss. I was supposed to look after the place for a percentage of the rent, though I was away at school, so that plan didn’t go so well, either. Then after college I got a programming job in Golden.”

“Right down the hill,” Kerrie observed.

“Exactly. Property values had dropped, and Dad said if I took over the payments, I could have the place, so…” Josh shrugged.

“How long ago was this?”

“That we did the paperwork? I guess maybe four years ago.”

“And your sister is…”

“Janice, yeah. Portland, Maine. Husband, two kids, boys. When I talk to her she’s always going to soccer or hockey or something. I get up there even less. We weren’t close growing up.”

“It’s just really interesting that you bought the house you grew up in. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has done that.”

“Yeah…” Josh shrugged, feeling like he ought to explain himself to her even though he couldn’t really explain himself to himself. Instead he changed the subject. “And how about you, did you grow up here?”

“Here, in the mountains? No, but down in Denver. I always wanted to live here and then one day I just moved. My mom’s in rehab right now, which is a good thing that we all hope works this time. I was a little surprise that came along during a time when she
wasn’t
in rehab, so she sort of lost track of who the dad might be.” Kerri regarded him archly, as if challenging him to judge her for her background. But he just couldn’t stop gazing at those blue eyes of hers, and gradually a bit of pink burned its way onto her cheeks.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’m sorry about your mom. I mean, it must be hard.”

“Sure. But life is hard, right? I mean, we’ve all had to endure stuff at some point. You can’t escape it, it’s part of being human.”

“Exactly.”

“Speaking of that,” Kerri continued slowly. She swirled her spoon in her iced tea, focused on the tinkling ice, then raised her eyes to his.

“Yeah?”

“Amanda,” she said softly. Kerri’s eyes were warm with sympathy.

Okay, here it comes.
Josh nodded, ready to talk about it.

“How did she die?”

EIGHT

Having Kerri ask how Amanda died was oddly as if Josh had just heard that Amanda
did
die. His stomach gave a kick and turned cold.

And why did she even wind up with that impression? He tried to think of what he might have said to imply such a thing. Could his expression really have been so mournful when Kerri had asked him about the blonde in the photograph that Kerri could only conclude Amanda was dead?

He flashed back to the awkward and insufferable night at the Little Bear Saloon, when he’d given Ryan his phone number. Did
Ryan
think Amanda was dead? Was that why he said that Josh was “lucky”?

Kerri was watching him intently, and he had the sense that she was close to reaching out to touch his hand. “Uh, she’s not.”