Chapter 11
“S ir McCourt!”
Sir and I stood and walked sedately toward the front of the room to the sound of applause.
He’d been very, very opposed to the cap and gown, so I’d done a lovely bow instead and he looked extremely handsome.
Even better, he didn’t tug on the leash, not one time, and he also sat when I told him to.
I took his certificate and we both shook hands with Neal, his instructor.
Sir walked quietly to our seats, too, although I knew he was interested in one woman’s purse as we passed it.
I thought that she might have put some snacks in there and he wanted to share.
It was a lovely ceremony and Caleb had taken a lot of pictures as we’d accepted Sir’s completion certificate and as we walked back to him.
He also gave the dog a lot of scratches and whispered that he was very proud.
After everyone had taken a turn and had shaken hands, we gave another round of applause to the dogs and then let them all play together in the back of the room.
They liked that more than the other part.
Neal, Sir’s teacher, came over to say hello and that put a big frown on Caleb’s face.
He even put his arm around me, as if I was somehow threatened.
I didn’t mind that, though.
“Congratulations, y’all did great,” Neal said, smiling.
He didn’t seem to notice the wary expression directed at him from the man on my right.
“Sir had a good base of knowledge to begin with, so congratulations on that, too.”
“He came to me with that knowledge,” I explained.
“He hasn’t been my dog for too long. He’s a rescue.”
“Someone surrendered a Bouvier?”
“A what?” Caleb asked.
“Sir is a Bouvier des Flandres,” the trainer said.
“It’s an old Belgian breed. I heard that they were intelligent but I never got the chance to work with one before now. You don’t see too many.” He glanced at the throng of animals.
“We mostly get doodles.”
The class had been full of those.
“I didn’t know that Sir was a special kind of dog,” I admitted.
“I thought he was a mix.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s pure Bouvier,” Neal said.
“After the first class, I looked up the breed standards and Sir fits them to a T. Who gave up such a beautiful dog? He’s a sweet boy, too.” Then two of the doodles got in a little scrap, and he left to deal with them.
“I had wondered if he was a purebred,” Caleb said, bending to scratch Sir’s ears again.
“He’s so handsome. Specialty dogs like this are usually expensive.”
“Someone didn’t care about him,” I said firmly.
“Someone let him run away and I looked, but there was never anything online with people trying to get him back, and no one asked for him at the shelter, either. He’s mine, now. It’s official, he has the chip!” Sir and I gone to get that on Valentine’s, in fact, and it was the best present I’d ever received on that day.
“Uh, ok,” Caleb answered.
“I’m not saying he isn’t yours, but I wonder what his history is.”
Whatever it was, his future was with me because he was my dog.
I was done with the discussion and we had to hurry back to the house anyway.
The ceremony had started a little late due to another doodle making a mess on the floor and my parents and a few other guests would be arriving for what I had called “Sir’s Graduation Reception” when I’d texted invitations to everyone.
It was just my parents, Aunt Paula, Aria and Cain and their family, Marc and Taygen, and Cassidy and Jack.
Of course, the last two invitees wouldn’t actually be coming since they were in…
I’d lost track of exactly where they were, but somewhere on their tour.
A few weeks ago, they’d flown home, had her OB appointment, and left the same day, without anyone even getting to see them.
It was really just a rushed thing.
I ran around the living and dining rooms, rearranging the flowers I’d gotten and trying to make pretty displays like my cousin Prue always did at her house.
As I fretted, I also admired the furniture that Caleb had bought when we’d done some whirlwind shopping the weekend before.
“If we’re going to host people, we have to have a place for them to sit,” he’d told me.
“One couch and two chairs won’t be enough. This house is empty.”
There was Aunt Paula’s rug, of course, but he’d been correct about the lack of seating.
So we’d asked Marc if he wouldn’t mind hanging out with Sir, and we took the dog over to my cousin’s house while Caleb and I drove all around Chattanooga to shop.
It had been a fun day, although it made me a little anxious to see how much he was spending, and we’d managed to fill up a lot of the empty space in his house.
There were now several armchairs, a larger couch, a dining room table, and a new bed for him that was an appropriate size.
His feet no longer hung off the end.
“I don’t know why I waited so long to do this,” he’d said as we’d billowed the new comforter over it after the furniture delivery.
It was habit, like anything.
Good or bad, they were hard to shake.
“I’m glad you did it now,” I’d told him.
Sir enjoyed that new bed a lot, because now there was space for him to be in it with Caleb.
He’d been alternating between our rooms and sometimes sleeping in both places in one night.
We’d taken to leaving our doors open so that he could wander.
Marc had told me that while we’d shopped, he and Sir had a fun day together, too.
“He’s a good boy,” he’d crooned, which had made Sir immediately flop over to offer his tummy.
It was scratched. “He was a good buffer.”
He meant that the dog was a buffer between himself and his fiancée, because Taygen had also gone to his house that Saturday to help make decisions about bathroom fixtures and flooring.
I had considered it to be a very, very bad idea.
Why would they have needed more things to fight about?
Their arguments hadn’t stopped and if anything, they were bickering more.
The wedding was a constant topic.
“It’s strategy,” my cousin had explained.
“If I start talking about napkin folding, then we fight over that instead of over her parents trying to control the whole damn thing. They try to control her whole damn life, like she’s a toddler instead of an adult.”
“My Lord, Marc,” I’d said, wincing, but he wasn’t yet ready to confront the big stuff and he wasn’t ready to do anything else—like break up.
So he’d had Sir as a cushion between him and Taygen and he was now talking about getting a dog of his own, since it had worked so well.
She loved Sir and everyone had gotten along as they’d all played together.
“Tay and I have been fighting so much, I forgot that we did have fun at one point,” he’d told me, which had made me wince again.
At least Taygen and I had made up.
She had texted to apologize for getting angry at me on my birthday, then she’d come to the office with flowers, too.
It wasn’t my fault at all, she’d said, and had almost started to cry.
Marc had looked very uncomfortable and I hadn’t felt much better.
No, their problems weren’t my fault, but I had introduced them and now they were both so unhappy.
But I was glad that she and I had resolved things and that they were still talking, which must have been true since they were coming together to Sir’s party.
I fixed his bow, because he still wouldn’t wear the cap and gown, and quickly checked myself in the powder room mirror.
I’d put a lot of work into my own hair and makeup, so I felt that I was equal to him.
Caleb had gone all out and had gotten a haircut and before the graduation ceremony, he’d come downstairs wearing a tie.
He looked…well, my jaw had dropped and I’d only been able to stare for a moment when I’d seen him.
“Handsome” wasn’t a strong enough word, which I’d told him and had made him blush.
He got a little flush now, too, because we were both running around the house completing the last minute party details.
He strongly believed that song selection was the most important thing so he’d been working on a playlist for at least a week, but he was experiencing last-minute trouble with his speakers.
“Why won’t they connect? They always connect!” he kept telling me, but I was busy plating the pimento cheese that was Aunt Amber’s specialty and would hopefully make Aria, her daughter, very happy.
We had several platters on the new dining room table (the chairs would be coming, but there was a delay) and Sir knew that he wasn’t supposed to get into them.
I was afraid, though, that the temptation would be too much, so I was also keeping a close eye on him.
Soon enough (and actually, too soon because I really should have washed the grapes for the fruit salad the day before), my parents showed up with Aunt Paula, and then the rest of the guests were knocking, too.
Caleb finally got the music working and he was very relieved, and everything was fine.
We showed off the house and Marc got excited about possible improvements and renovations.
“This kitchen’s a great size,” he noted.
“You could take a little space from the back entryway and make a bigger family room, too.”
“Marc, do you really need another project?” Taygen asked sharply.
“You’re always swamped as it is.”
My mom looked at her and at my cousin and said, “That’s great to hear that you have a lot of business, Marc. Come out onto the patio and tell me about it.”
Taygen followed and I heard her apologizing.
After a moment, most of us went along, too, because it was a beautiful day.
Caleb and I had done a lot of work in the back yard, weeding, trimming, and chopping.
It still had the air of a jungle but it was much improved, and my dad walked around talking about all the different plants that he thought we could return to a healthier state.
He got excited about that himself.
“I can come up next weekend,” he mentioned four or five times.
Aunt Paula had stayed inside and soon she was at the door, asking if we were going to eat any of the food that she was sure it had taken us so long to prepare.
“I recognize my cheese straws,” she said with satisfaction.
“Caleb, they turned out beautifully.” He’d been over at her house for hours and had come home with a sheaf of recipes, some that she had picked up herself and some that had been passed down in the McCourt family for generations.
She’d texted me several times since that day to say that he was a good man and she liked him, and I had to agree.
Also, the cheese straws were amazing.
They’d taken him a long time but everyone agreed that they were delicious, especially Aria’s son.
His father caught him sharing one with Sir, the two of them alternating bites—but it was a party, and things happened.
We also had the party punch, a big bowl of it with matching cups (Aunt Paula had come through with that, too).
I made a point to offer some to my mama, so that everyone would be aware that there was absolutely no booze at all, none, not in this house.
It was going very, very well.
Then the bell rang again, and Caleb looked at me.
“Do you want to get that?”
“Ok,” I agreed, and went across the wide foyer to open the front door.
“Cassidy?” I said when I saw the two people waiting on the porch.
“Surprise!” she told me, and then we were mostly laughing but also crying a little as we hugged.
She and Jack had flown in for the weekend, but they’d be around more soon, anyway.
The tour was finally winding down and I was so glad for her.
She seemed pretty tired and now she could sit in one of the new chairs as my dad fixed her a plate.
“You made all this? I’m so impressed, KayKay!” she told me.
“It was mostly Caleb. He’s been cooking with Aunt Paula,” I explained, and she was shocked.
Cass, Aria, and I ate and talked just like we used to, laughing and completing each other’s sentences, nodding before someone spoke because she didn’t even have to say it—we already knew what was going to come out of her mouth, and we already agreed.
They enjoyed everything and especially the cake, which I had made by following my mother’s recipe.
The “Congrats Sir” I’d piped on the top had come out mostly legible, and it did taste very good.
Sir got his own, non-cake treat and we all settled back in the living room to talk more.
Marc and Caleb discussed construction again while Cassidy’s husband Jack tried to seem like he was interested.
“JT told me that he’s just about done here with the electrical work,” Marc noted, looking at the ceiling where all the fixtures were properly illuminated.
“His last day here should be Monday,” Caleb agreed.
He looked over at me.
“I gave him a check,” he mentioned casually.
“I was going to do that,” I protested, but he shook his head.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Marc, you aren’t really going to start working on this house too, are you?” Taygen asked.
She sounded nervous.
“We still have a lot to do for the wedding. Tomorrow afternoon, we’re meeting with my parents to figure out what’s left on the list.”
He glanced over at her and frowned.
“I’m not involved in that,” he said.
“Y’all don’t listen to a word I say, anyway. Why should I bother to come?”
“Weddings are stressful,” Aria said before his fiancée could respond.
“Remember when Aubree married Clayton? I thought we were going to have to medicate her.”
She’d made a good effort to stop their argument, but it didn’t work.
“There’s not enough time in the day,” Taygen continued.
“You told me that you’ll be renovating that farmhouse, too, but you never asked me if—”
“I’m supposed to ask you how to run my business?” Marc interrupted.
“I guess that makes sense, since you don’t even trust me to choose the right color for the gutters on my house.”
“Let’s not talk about this now,” I said.
“Ok? Can y’all just table it until the party is over?”
“I’m sorry,” Marc said, and Taygen was red in the face but she apologized, too.
She went to the kitchen, and in a moment she came out and said that she needed to leave, and a car was going to pick her up.
“Thank you so much,” she told me and Caleb.
“Congratulations, Sir.” She smiled as they shook hands but she looked like she was holding back tears.
“Honey, wait,” Marc said, and followed her out the front door.
We all looked at each other when it closed behind him.
“They’re very young,” I commented, and Aria laughed.
“KayKay, they’re both older than you are!”
“I feel like I’m their big sister, though,” I tried to explain.
“You’re more mature,” she agreed, and I looked at her in shock.
No one, ever, had said that about me.
“Do you really think so?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she said, serious now.
“Both of us did a lot of growing up in the last few years. Maybe Taygen needs that, too, and maybe Marc as well.”
“I still think they’re good for each other,” I said.
“We can all help them figure it out.”
“Jill, you did a good job with this girl,” Aunt Paula told my mama, who lit up like my birthday cake with the million and two candles burning on it.
“We’re very proud,” she answered, and her lips trembled.
So did mine, because I couldn’t really remember giving them a reason to feel that way before.
I decided that I was going to have a party every week.
“After everything that happened in the past, I was so afraid,” Aunt Paula continued.
She also sounded choked up.
“But Kayleigh, you got yourself together. That bastard is dead now and that chapter of your life is over.”
“Paula,” Aria’s husband said, but she kept going.
“He’ll never hurt another little girl.”
There was dead silence in the room.
“Aunt Paula, we’re not going to discuss that today,” my father told her, and she said no, of course not, and she was sorry.
“It’s been on my mind and I…I’m sorry,” she repeated.
She looked stricken, and so did Aria.
Cain, her husband, put his arm around her and she put her face down on her baby’s auburn curls.
“I’ll go get…” My mind blanked, but I walked out of the room, my feet moving automatically.
Then I stood in the kitchen and rubbed my eyes.
I could still hear Aunt Paula apologizing in the living room.
Everyone out there knew what she was talking about, because Cassidy must have related the story to her new husband, and Aria had told Cain before they’d gotten married.
I’d let my parents know just before I went to rehab for the first time, but they had been in the dark about it for years.
The news had spread like lightning to Aunt Paula and the rest of the family once it was out.
The only person in this house who hadn’t been aware of all that ugliness was Caleb.
Why did he have to know about it?
Why couldn’t it have just stayed buried?
“Kayleigh, are you all right?” my mother asked me from the doorway.
I watched her eyes skate around the room, and I was aware of what she was searching for.
“I’m not in here drinking,” I said.
My voice was too loud, but I didn’t care.
“I’m not in here pouring liquor down my throat as fast as I can. You don’t need to monitor me.”
“I wasn’t,” she said, but she had been.
They all were, always, and I knew why: because they loved me and they cared about my welfare and my future.
I should have felt grateful for that.
At the moment, it made me furious.
“Everyone’s always watching, waiting for me to slip up. You’re all doing a mental countdown until I relapse.”
My dad had joined her, and Cassidy followed him.
Aria came right behind and so did their husbands, and then Aunt Paula, too.
And Caleb. All their eyes were on me now.
“I know you were watching me at your wedding,” I said to Cass.
“Every time I picked up a glass, I expected someone to come over and taste test it. Your wonderful time in Hawaii had that stress because I was there.”
“I wanted you there,” Cassidy answered.
“It wouldn’t have been anything for me if you hadn’t been.”
“But you were watching,” I repeated, and she didn’t deny it.
“I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired of being a specimen in a science class. I love y’all so much and I get it, but it wears me out. Can we let the past be over? Please?” No, because it wouldn’t end for them, and it certainly wouldn’t for me.
I turned to my aunt.
“That man is part of the past, and I don’t ever want to talk about him again. Do you hear me, Aunt Paula? Never. He’s dead and all that died with him.”
I looked at Caleb, expecting to see confusion on his face but—
My Lord.
He knew?
“I’m going to clear the dishes,” I heard myself say, and they parted, Red Sea-style, to allow me to leave the kitchen.
Instead of walking into the dining room, though, I went to the stairs.
“Sir,” I called when I got to the top, and he jingled his collar and trotted after me.
We went into my bedroom and I locked the door, like I was a child or a stupid teenager.
Except, when I’d been in my teens, my parents had taken off the door to my bedroom to keep a better eye on me, so I wouldn’t be able to smoke, drink, or sneak out.
I’d still done all of those things.
Sir and I lay down on the bed and I hugged him and closed my eyes, and after a while, I heard cars start to leave the driveway.
I hadn’t meant to ruin the party, but there it was.
“I’m sorry,” I told my dog, and he licked my cheek.
He didn’t mind too much.
“We can go for a run,” I suggested.
“Would you like that?”
He seemed amenable, so I changed out of the dress I’d worn and into my running clothes.
We didn’t see Caleb downstairs before we left, but honestly, we were sneaking.
I didn’t want to see him just yet.
We ran for a long way, out of Old Town, on a lot of back roads that led us far enough that I didn’t know where we were.
I’d brought water and Sir’s collapsible bowl, and I finally stopped so we could both drink.
He lay down afterwards and then he wouldn’t move, and I didn’t blame him much.
I was tired, too.
“We have to get home,” I reminded him.
“We can’t live on the side of this street.” There were no houses around here but people owned this land, and they probably didn’t need a constantly hungry dog or mess of a woman in their lives.
I’d cried a little bit as I ran and I started again, sniffling as I sent a text message with our location.
“We went really far,” I wrote.
“I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing.” But now, my legs were shaking like they weren’t going to work correctly if I tried to use them again.
I sat in a heap next to Sir.
Caleb wrote back right away.
“You ran for six miles,” he replied, which meant he’d been watching our route.
“I was just leaving to come get you.” I watched the dot of his location get closer and closer and I told Sir not to worry.
“He’s on his way,” I said, and the dog did pick up his head well before I could hear the noises that the old truck made.
He woofed quietly, too, and his tail wagged.
“Did she tire you out?” Caleb asked when he pulled over onto the shoulder with us.
“Come here, I’ll help you.” He did help Sir, and then he turned to me.
“Did you tire yourself out, too?”
Yes, and he had to pull me to my feet because I was extremely wobbly now, and not just my legs.
“I went too far,” I explained, and that covered all of my actions for the day.
He did help me into the truck, which seemed to be higher than before, and offered water from a bottle he happened to be carrying.
I’d gotten some plants for his new office, so maybe he was prepping to care for them.
We were all quiet on the ride home and when we got there, I saw that someone—Caleb and my family—had cleaned up everything.
“My Lord,” I sighed.
“Are you worried about how you’ll get up the stairs?”
Yes, I was, but that wasn’t why I felt so ashamed.
“I ruined Sir’s party.”
“He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“I do. I mind a lot, for him and for everyone else. Especially for you. You put in so much work and you bought all this nice furniture.” I put my hand over my mouth and cleared my throat.
“Kayleigh, I don’t mind, either. We have a lot of leftovers for next week and we needed more places to sit, anyway.” He walked to me, hesitated, and then loosely looped his arms around me.
“No, I’m really gross,” I protested.
“I also don’t mind that.”
I did, but this felt very nice.
He was strong and I was very tired, so I needed to lean against him.
“Was everyone mad when they left?” I asked.
“No, nobody was.”
“Cassidy and Jack came all this way for my dumb party and then I ruined it.”
“Aunt Paula’s taking the blame on this one. She feels terrible, and she’s too ashamed to text or call you so she keeps telling me instead. She wants you to know how sorry she is and she hopes that one day you’ll talk to her again.”
I would talk to her later, when I wasn’t so mad.
I knew that she hadn’t done anything maliciously, but I wished that she hadn’t done anything at all.
We stood together for a few more moments before I gathered the courage to ask.
“Did you already know?”
“She explained what happened when I was over at her house,” Caleb answered quietly.
“She cried as she said it and I could hardly stand to hear it.”
“I wish she hadn’t done that, either.”
“She thought that I would understand you better if I knew,” he told me.
“She said it happened to you and to Aria and she’s furious at your uncle. She wants to dig him up and put a stake through his heart.”
“We called him ‘Uncle Terrance,’” I said, “but he wasn’t really one of our relations. He was a friend of my grandmother’s cousin, the woman we called Aunt Harlene. She didn’t have a family of our own and she was always included in everything we did, and she always brought him.”
“Paula said she never liked him.”
“That’s what everyone said after they found out. But for years, they just considered him to be a sad old man. Maybe kind of strange, but harmless.”
“You don’t have to tell me any more.”
“Aunt Paula probably got it wrong,” I said.
“I never told anybody the whole story. I never told my parents, not for years, not until I almost died of alcohol poisoning and I was in the hospital. I wasn’t sure whether I’d drunk that much on purpose or not and they wanted to know why. Why did I act that way, like I didn’t care about myself at all? It was because I didn’t,” I answered.
“That was when I admitted that Uncle Terrance had touched me when I was a little girl, but I didn’t tell them everything. It would kill them to know how far it went.”
He didn’t ask me any questions, and we stood for a moment more as I pulled myself back together.
“If I had said something, he wouldn’t have done it to Aria. I was terrified of him because he promised that if I told, he would hurt her and Cassidy.”
“He was a son of a bitch.” Caleb’s voice sounded rough.
“No, that’s not strong enough for what he was.”
“I used to wonder why it happened,” I said.
“Because he was sick and terrible.”
“I mean, why us?” I asked.
“Why not any of the other girls in our family? Now I understand why he picked Ari. It was because her father had been killed in the line of duty and her mom was a mess afterwards, so she was vulnerable. I know why he picked me, too.”
“Why do you think so?”
“You know how some dogs just have it in them to bite? I told you about that doodle who got kicked out of Sir’s class after the first day,” I reminded him.
“As much as the owner tried, the dog wouldn’t stop nipping the other students. I think that Uncle Terrence could see what was in my character. He could see that I was weak and stupid, and that made me an easy target. I don’t know why I’m like that.”
“I don’t see it in you.”
“I was too weak to tell on him and I was dumb enough to believe that he would kill little girls if I did.”
“He was the kind of man who abused little girls,” Caleb stated.
“Why wouldn’t he have done even more?”
“He was weak, too, but I didn’t know it back then. He was like…he was like a monster under my bed, always there hiding and waiting to hurt me. I used to cry and beg him to stop.” My throat got so thick that I couldn’t even swallow so I waited for a moment, staying still and breathing through my nose like I’d taught myself.
A few years before, I would have tried to forget by reaching for a bottle, a handful of pills, or a guy who didn’t really care about me.
Now I just tried to breathe, because I knew it would pass.
It was over even if it didn’t always feel that way.
Sir bumped against the back of my legs and stayed there, warm and solid.
Then I could speak again.
“No one understood why I acted so crazy,” I continued.
“I didn’t have any boundaries or any limits on what I would do. You drank three shots? I’d have six. You wanted to jump from that window? I’d go a floor higher and try it, and I didn’t care if I could get hurt, not ever. I didn’t care at all.”
“Hell,” Caleb muttered.
He held me tighter. “I’m glad you don’t do that anymore.”
“I scared my parents to death and they don’t know even the smallest part of all the things I got up to. I’m so glad they don’t, but they know enough. Now I’m asking them to trust me and you can understand why that’s impossible.”
“I don’t think it’s impossible, but I can understand why it’s so hard. They love you so much.”
“I’ll tell them that I’m sorry about today. Maybe we can try it again some time, like a party for your birthday. I promise that I won’t ruin it.”
“Stop blaming yourself for this. For all of it,” he said, and he sounded angry.
“The man who hurt you is dead, and if what we hear in church is correct, then we know where his soul went and he deserves it. But you don’t. You didn’t deserve to have that happen and you don’t deserve to be unhappy now. I don’t want you to be.”
“I’m not, really I’m not,” I said.
I looked up at him. “Some days are harder than others, but I wake up and do those affirmations, and they usually turn out true. I think my hair has been looking a lot better, and I don’t have to wait until I can get home to cry. I’m doing ok.”
“Good,” he said, but his expression seemed the opposite of “good.” He looked worried and upset, and there I went again making people feel that way.
I hugged him more in order to reassure him, and that reassured me, too.
That night, after a long shower and some leftovers, Sir and I snuggled in bed.
I had texted everyone to apologize and they’d said there was no need and other things like that.
I’d sent a message to Aunt Paula as well.
“You told Caleb private information about me before I had a chance to tell him myself, or even to decide what I wanted him to know. You forced me to talk about the worst moments in my life before I was ready. Sir’s party was important to me and it was ruined. I accept your apology but I don’t want to talk to you for a while,” I told her.
I didn’t plan to go to church the next day so that I could take a break from everyone else, too.
They also might have needed one from me and the stress I added to their lives.
The extra-long run had exhausted my muscles but not my mind, and I couldn’t sleep until it got very late.
Even later, I woke slightly to Sir getting back into the bed.
“Go on,” I heard Caleb murmur.
“She needs you here.” I closed my eyes, glad I had both of them.