Chapter 13
W e were going to run out of tissues.
I looked around, wondering what else we had in the office that could absorb tears.
There was paper in the printer—would it help if she rubbed that under her nose and over her eyes?
I figured that it would feel pretty rough.
It had been Marc’s turn to buy toilet paper but he had forgotten, so there was no solution there.
I hoped no one had to go to the powder room, because that printer paper would also feel rough when rubbed against other areas.
She took another tissue and that was it, we were out.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, but it wasn’t about the empty box.
“I think I made the worst mistake of my life. What am I going to do?” She put her head on my desk.
“Taygen, you have to calm down,” I said firmly.
“You’re going to make yourself sick and you’re really upsetting Sir.”
She sat up and breathed shakily.
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated to my dog, who whimpered.
Her bottom lip trembled hard in response.
“Poor Sir. I’m ruining lives wherever I go!”
“Sir will feel fine after I give him a piece of cheese,” I consoled, but she was already bawling again.
My Lord, I wished that cheese would work on her, too!
She’d been crying forever and I would have done just about anything at this point.
I’d already tried soothing phrases and positive affirmations.
I hadn’t yet brought up self-love in the shower, but that might have helped.
There was also the nuclear option.
I looked at my phone, considering what would happen if I texted Marc and told him that his ex-fiancée was in our office, crying so much that I thought she might damage something internally, like her uvula or spleen or something…
no. No, I couldn’t do that, because I already knew what he would do: he’d drive here as fast as he could and maybe get another ticket, run in and see her tears, and melt.
They would get back together even though nothing was resolved.
I knew that my cousin’s heart was just as pertinacious as the rest of him, and it hadn’t given up on his former fiancée.
Beneath my desk, where Taygen couldn’t see, I texted Aria for backup—but she was busy.
“I’m finally getting my hair done!!! Do you really need me?” she answered, and I said no.
My parents were working, Aunt Amber was taking care her own little boy, and everyone else I could think of was also busy with important activities.
I looked up from my list of contacts and found her watching me through her tears.
“I know you’re texting someone. Is it Marc?” Taygen asked, and she sounded hopeful.
That made me mad. “Did you come here to manipulate me into arranging a reunion?” I snapped.
“No!” she protested, but then her face crumpled and she sniffed so loud that I reached into the printer for a piece of paper so that she could blow her nose.
“Well, I did, kind of. I’m sorry.” She lost control of her voice and the next words came out more like a wail.
“I haven’t been able to eat or sleep. I can’t go to work. I can’t even be in my house because everything reminds me of him!”
“Where have you been, if not any of those places?” I wondered.
“My car,” she said, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
Both of those were already soaked.
“I’ve even been sleeping in it because my bed is so big and empty…”
The paper hadn’t worked to blot away her snot and tears.
I rummaged in my bag and passed over a tampon.
“It’s all I have,” I apologized, and she unwrapped it and dabbed at her eyes with the cotton end.
“I don’t appreciate that you were using me to reunite with him, but I understand.” I, of course, had been the girl who’d slept in her high school boyfriend’s front yard to try to convince him not to dump me.
It had been rough, both because I’d lain on their concrete pathway and it had scratched my face, and also because they’d had a lot of sprinklers.
It was a long walk home in wet clothes after he’d rejected me.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized again.
“It’s ok,” I told her.
“But Taygen, there’s really nothing that I can do. Y’all need to work it out amongst yourselves.”
“We can’t if he won’t talk to me!”
“He won’t talk to you because your father and brothers are threatening him!”
“They’re mad,” she mumbled.
“Then you have to tell them to stand down. Tell them that they’re part of the reason that you and Marc aren’t together anymore.”
“They’re my family!”
I sighed.
“Taygen, grow up. And I’m saying that as someone who acted a lot like an adolescent for most of my life, both before it was appropriate to be so advanced and well after the point that it was weird to be so immature. You have to grow up too, and you have to decide what you want and what’s important. Is it worth it to force Marc to wear a brown suit that he hates at his wedding, only because that’s the color your father wore at his? Are you really going to tell him that he can’t work up until a normal closing time because he needs to have dinner with your parents three times a week, and for some reason they eat at a quarter to five? Will you ever admit that shutters look stupid on his house?”
“They eat then because my dad’s shift starts so early in the morning,” she said sullenly, and then I definitely heard her mutter, “He was right about the shutters.”
“I have no doubt that Marc shares some blame. He admitted to me that he kept fighting over stupid stuff when he should have quit. I’m aware that he wasn’t texting you when he was going to be late, and I hate the guy he wanted as his best man just as much as you do.”
She perked up a little.
“He’s an ass, right?”
I nodded.
“But you have to be able to talk to each other, not just to me, and not to your parents because they’ll agree with you no matter what and then they’ll hate him more. If you love Marc, you have to grow up. I’m not saying any of this to hurt your feelings and Lord knows, I’m not saying it to make you cry more. Please don’t cry more,” I begged.
She stood up and from her expression, I could tell that I’d offended her.
“I’m not an adolescent. Unlike others, I went through the normal stages of development and I’m now a fully functioning adult!” she informed me, but she was dabbing at her eyes with another tampon as she spoke and that detracted from her words.
Also, she reached out to hug me, and she sobbed onto my shoulder that she knew that she was an idiot and she didn’t deserve Marc, anyway.
Sir took to howling.
“I’m over relationships,” I texted when Taygen was gone, taking more of my feminine products with her.
I’d watched her walk to her car to make sure that she was steady and I’d watched her back up and drive away, ready to run out and stop her if she wasn’t steady with that, either.
I didn’t get a response but after a few minutes, Sir picked up his head and barked.
I’d given him a piece of cheese that had calmed him, but this happy sound was due to the arrival of the old truck in our parking lot.
The driver got out and was looking concerned as he strode up to the door.
“Hi,” I said, and the dog practically fell over in happiness.
“I didn’t expect to see you until tonight.”
“I got your text,” Caleb announced.
“About Taygen and Marc,” I said, nodding.
“She was over here crying for about an hour. By the way, do you have any napkins in your glovebox?”
“No. We cleared out all that junk of my mother’s, but it was mostly maps. Why?”
I kind of had to go to the bathroom, that was why.
“No reason. Do you have time to run to the Greet ‘n Gobble? I need to get some tissues and toilet paper, and also more supplies for my next you-know day.”
“Your what day?”
The three of us went to the truck as I explained Aunt Amber’s unusual terminology for the menstrual cycle and why I was out of tampons. “I was nice at first, and trying to sympathize,” I explained as we rode toward the grocery store.
With the windows down, you could smell the engine a lot more strongly, but I liked it.
“I said that I understood that her family was putting pressure on her, and how it was hard that Marc was busy. I got nowhere. I ended up telling her that she was acting like a child.”
“So is Marc. He told me that he nearly fought with her brother over where he was allowed to leave his truck in their driveway,” Caleb said.
“I asked him, ‘You want to throw hands over a parking space? What in the hell are you really fighting about?’ He may not be much better.”
“We’re very old compared to them.”
“I think I have a few good years left in me. Hell, Sir, please don’t.”
“Why is he licking your pants like that?” I snapped my fingers and the dog gave me a hurt look, but he stopped.
“I went to the taco truck for lunch and I must have spilled something. I also went by my mother’s bank.”
“You did? What was in the safety deposit box?”
“The woman who handles them was taking lunch too, so I said I’d come back. Do you want to go there after we get toilet paper and tampons for your you-know day?”
I really did, so after I made my purchases at the Greet ‘n Gobble, we headed to the bank. Sir wasn’t happy about waiting in the car but we promised him that we’d be fast. We parked in the shade and left the windows down, and Caleb tied his leash to the save-me-Jesus handle above the door.
“Don’t get your hopes up about finding crown jewels, or even ersatz ones,” he warned me as we walked in from the parking lot.
“They’re not up.” I didn’t have expectations about finding any kind of jewels, but I didn’t mention what I was actually hoping for.
I’d already decided that the best thing would have been a letter from Lara-Lee to her son, one that was heartfelt and full of apologies for her treatment of him and expressions of love and pride over how he’d turned out.
Or maybe there would be something that she’d saved for him, an important family heirloom for her only child.
I just hoped for a tangible memento that would acknowledge him in the way that he deserved, and maybe I was wrong but I had the feeling that he was also hoping…
no, I was probably wrong.
We got the safety deposit box without much trouble and went into a special little room, like I’d done with my mom when we’d opened my nana’s box at a different bank.
That had been hard, because even though it had been a few months after the funeral, my mother had been on the verge of crying and I’d been trying to support her and also not give her any reason to think that I was going to do something crazy out of grief.
I’d talked about good memories of Nana while we’d driven together and while we’d opened it, and that had made things a little easier.
“What’s your happiest memory of your mom?” I had asked Caleb after we’d left the grocery store, and he’d had to think for a long time before he’d finally answered.
“Uh, she was happy once when we had a bad storm but it didn’t damage her trees. She said we could stop sandbagging and covering them and I got to go inside and sleep for a while,” he reminisced.
My Lord, the happiest thing was her allowing him to get out of the rain?
I gave up on trying to evoke pleasant memories, but I still had hope about what we’d find at the bank.
That was dashed when he flipped back the lid of the long, narrow box and looked at what was stuffed in its interior.
It was exactly like the former contents of her desk.
“Oh,” I said. “She saved more old papers.”
“Sorry,” Caleb answered.
“I was afraid that you’d be disappointed.”
“I don’t care for myself,” I assured him.
“What is all this? More bills from the gas company?”
He took out the top few pages and spread them on the table, pressing out the wrinkles with his palms. “This is a United States patent,” he said after a moment.
“She was granted a patent.”
Of course I knew what that was, but just to be sure…
“She made up something and got the government to protect it, so that no one else could copy it,” I stated, and he didn’t disagree.
He was reading down the pages.
“What is it for?”
“ Prunus persica .” He pointed to the words.
“That’s the scientific name for a peach tree.”
“You can claim a tree?” I asked incredulously.
“You can, if it’s an original variety that was previously unknown. It could be a lucky genetic mutation or you could develop it yourself.” He removed what remained in the box, but it was only more official-looking documents.
“Apparently, she successfully bred a brand-new peach.”
“Why did she wad up her patent like this?” I asked, frowning.
I tried to flatten the papers, too.
“My guess would be that she thought it was important enough to necessitate a safer place than the barn, but she also didn’t want to pay for a larger box at the bank. That sounds about right to me.” He tried to put the sheets back in order.
“Ready to go? I’ll come back later and close her account for good. Sir’s probably wondering where we’ve gone off to.”
We walked out together, the crumpled papers in his right hand and my fingers held in his left.
Since Sir’s party, he’d been doing this a lot, almost like he was still worried about me.
It felt different from having the eyes of my family on me, though, because Caleb wasn’t watching to make sure I wouldn’t use.
It was like he was concerned about my feelings rather than the consequences of them.
“I’m not disappointed,” I offered, in case he was also concerned about that.
“Are you, though? Because even if you tell yourself not to expect something or to hope for it, sometimes you do, anyway. At least, I do.”
“I’m surprised, actually,” he answered.
“I want to know more about this patent, because they’re not easy to get. What…” He stared across the asphalt.
“Who is that?”
A man stood next to his truck, right at the open window where Sir’s head stuck out.
He seemed to be talking to my dog.
Of course I didn’t blame him for being attracted to Sir’s natural charm and beauty, but I didn’t much like the way he was putting his arm through the opening.
Caleb didn’t, either.
“What the hell are you doing?” he called.
The man pulled out his arm, but he didn’t run like he would have if he were a thief.
He stared back at us angrily and pointed at Sir.
“That’s my dog! That’s Magnum.”
“No, that’s Sir McCourt,” I answered.
“Get away from him!”
“Kayleigh, it’s all right.” Caleb stepped in front of me as the other man started ranting about us stealing.
Sir was his, he kept saying, because he’d won him, fair and square.
“I got his papers! He’s mine.”
“What do you mean, you ‘won’ him?” Caleb asked.
The answer was, “Why the fuck do you care?” But with more calm questioning, the stranger said that he had gotten a dog in a poker game in Nashville.
Afterwards, he’d brought his prize home to a place not too far from where I’d come upon Sir wandering in the road.
“He got away from me and then today I find the goddamn criminals who stole him!” the man finished.
“I didn’t steal him!” I retorted.
“He has a chip that says he’s mine.”
“You know what this animal is worth? You’re not taking him!”
“Taking him? You let him wander alone, cold and scared!” I shot back.
“He could have been hit by a car. He almost was! You don’t deserve to have Sir.”
“We all need to calm down,” Caleb said, and he sent a look in my direction to let me know that he meant me.
“Give me your number and I’ll give you mine,” he told the other man.
“I think we’ll be able to work this out.”
But it was like I could feel my heart literally sinking into my stomach under the weight of what he’d told us.
Sir—who he called “Magnum”—was a pureblood Bouvier brought all the way from the somewhere in the Midwest here to Tennessee.
He’d been lost in a hand of poker by a gambler who’d apparently loved him, but didn’t have anything left to pay his debt.
As much as I didn’t want to, I started to believe what the guy was saying.
How else would a dog like Sir have ended up out in the woods?
Why would someone make up a story like this?
“I have the paperwork proving how much he cost as a puppy and you can breed these dogs and make a mint. I’m out a lot of money now,” the man told us.
“Somebody owes me for those litters.”
“He’s not—”
“Kayleigh,” Caleb said quietly, and I stopped.
The man kept blustering about lost income, breed registration paperwork, and a bill of sale which he had.
He only quit when Caleb calmly mentioned calling the police to help us manage the situation.
“I don’t want the cops involved in any of my shit,” he told us, and started to back away.
But then he stopped and held up his phone in front of each of our faces.
Caleb stared but I flinched away.
“Now I got your pictures,” he boasted.
“I got your license plate, too. You won’t get away with this.”
We watched him disappear into the bank before Caleb unlocked the truck and I jumped in.
I hugged Sir and he put his head on my shoulder, because he was also so upset.
“It’s ok,” I told him, but he whined deep in his chest like he knew it wasn’t.
“It is ok,” Caleb told both of us.
“No one’s going anywhere. He won’t take your dog.”
“I believe that story,” I said.
“I always wondered how Sir ended up way out in the country by himself.”
“It may be true, but we don’t know. I want to see the paperwork he’s talking about and go over our options. We’re going to have to face this and not try to run away.”
I looked over Sir’s head, wondering how Caleb had known what was in my mind.
“I’m going to pick up my laptop so I can work out of your office this afternoon,” he continued.
“I don’t want him to figure out who you are and come over there. This is a small town and someone’s going to recognize you if he shows your picture around. He’s not going to take Sir,” he reiterated.
“If we see him again, we’ll call the sheriff and you heard him say that he doesn’t want to get the police involved. I don’t think he’s going away, though.”
Caleb did work in the construction office for the rest of the afternoon, which made me feel calmer—as calm as I could have been after someone had just threatened to take my dog.
“Do you remember how matted his coat was?” I remarked as I hugged Sir for the fiftieth or so time.
“Remember his nails? At the animal shelter, they told us that he’d been on his own for a while. Remember?”
“I remember that day very well,” Caleb answered.
“That was when I scared you by showing up at your house.”
“Because you were worried about him and you didn’t know what a sweet boy he is.” I hugged my dog again.
“You’re the best boy. No one will ever make you live out in the woods like you used to, with bears and who knows what else. We know there’s no cheese there.” He’d gotten a lot of extra treats this afternoon.
“Remember how he had been trained?” I continued to Caleb.
“Someone had put in work to teach him, that was what Neal said at the dog class.”
Caleb frowned, because he had never liked the trainer.
“That Neal didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“But Sir listened to you right away. Remember? He understood when you told him things because he’s so smart and because someone had worked with him before. It could have been the gambler who lost him playing cards. That story makes sense.”
I couldn’t get it out of my head.
The whole way up the winding road home, I thought about how the man had reached into the truck’s window to get at Sir.
He could do that again—he could reach right into our lives and take him away.
I thought about it when we went for a walk and as we ate dinner.
When we read together, I couldn’t focus at all and afterwards, I couldn’t go to sleep.
“Kayleigh,” Caleb called.
Sir had curled next to him on his bed, because he’d previously gotten annoyed at how I’d been moving around instead of resting quietly.
He had left my room in a huff.
“What do you need?” I asked as I walked in.
He put down a stack of papers, which I recognized as the documents we’d retrieved from the safety deposit box before all the other problems had started.
“You’ve already gone up and down the stairs a couple times. Come sit here,” he invited, and I crawled over him to join them.
“Are you upset about the tree stuff?” I asked.
“The patent? No. Are you upset about the dog stuff?”
“Yes,” I answered, and he held his arms open, a little hesitantly.
But I didn’t hesitate.
I lay down on his chest and hugged him.
“While y’all were in the back yard, I emailed a woman I knew from college,” he said.
“She’s a lawyer in Memphis and I think she’ll be able to help us with this situation.”
“You think we need a lawyer?”
“I think it wouldn’t hurt. She can draw up some documents so that ownership is totally clear.”
“Why would that guy accept that I’m keeping Sir? He kept saying that I stole him!”
“I think we’ll have to pay him, and then he’ll go away.”
I recalled how much I had in my savings and wondered if it would be enough, considering how the man had gone on about the value of a Bouvier and stud fees.
“I would be happy to help with that,” Caleb said.
“Thank you,” I said.
I would take his help because I would do anything for Sir, but I would pay him back.
“I’m so glad you were there today.”
“Me too.” He was playing with some pieces of my hair that had come out of the bun I’d made, and it was very soothing.
“I’m also glad that I’m here right now.”
“Me too,” I echoed.
He was holding me tightly.
“Did you find anything in that patent stuff?” Like, maybe the peach was named after him?
“Is it called something special?” I asked, my voice casual.
“ Prunus persica ‘Arthur’s Precious Gem.’ It’s resistant to leaf curl and borers, and the fruit is sweet with a long shelf-life.”
“Oh. That sounds good,” I said.
“Who’s Arthur?”
“She always liked stories about the knights of the Round Table. Those are the legends of King Arthur in medieval Britain,” he explained.
“She developed her own peach.She achieved her lifelong goal.”
I shifted slightly to put my head next to his, to see his face.
“Why didn’t she tell anyone? Why didn’t she try sell it or raise a big crop?”
“Not too long after she got the patent, she started to decline. Maybe that was why.”
“Or maybe, she wasn’t satisfied with it,” I suggested.
“She doesn’t sound like a person who would have been.”
“No, she wasn’t like that at all. She was very dissatisfied and she always expected disappointment.” His chest rose high up and slowly fell as he sighed.
“I don’t want you to feel that way.”
“Because of what happened today with Sir?” He brushed another piece of hair away from my face.
“I’m not worried about that and you don’t have to be, either. He’s not going anywhere.”
“I meant about the safety deposit box,” I corrected.
“I know that you were warning me not to get my hopes up, but I got the feeling that you had some hope, too. You were interested in what I found in her desk and when we went through her room, you kept an eye on everything. But you’d hesitated to sort through the mess by yourself, and I think I understand that.”
“What do you understand?” Now his hand cupped my cheek.
“I think you did want to find something but it’s hard to feel let down again and again. What were you looking for?”
I watched him start to frown and his hand came up to cover it, before he returned it to my cheek.
“I…” He stopped and looked at me for a few seconds longer before he continued.
“I’ve always wondered about my father,” he said.
“I thought that somewhere in her mess, my mother might have stashed information about him. I was also afraid to know.”
“Why?”
Caleb didn’t speak and the silence stretched.
“I believed that she got pregnant because she was assaulted,” he finally answered.
“I think that I’m the product of that.”
“You mean, sexually assaulted,” I said, and he nodded slowly.
It was horrible.
“That could have been why she was so angry all the time,” he continued.
“She isolated herself from the world.”
“Aunt Paula told me that she was like that as a teenager, too. She was never interested in boys or dating,” I remembered.
“So where did I come from, then? I can’t believe that a person like her would have purposely had a child. It could be the reason that she didn’t like me.”
“There’s no reason why someone wouldn’t like you. You’re wonderful.”
His expression, which had been so serious, brightened a little.
“That’s a nice thing to say.”
“Everyone thinks so. Everyone in my family loves you. Sir does, too, and he’s a very good judge of character.”
“He liked that guy Neal, the dog trainer,” Caleb pointed out, and I moved past that.
“Everybody deals with trauma differently. I ran around trying to forget, tempting fate until I’m sure it was sick of me bothering it so much. Maybe something did happen to your mother and she hung on to all the anger and hurt. But she shouldn’t have kept you both isolated. She shouldn’t have treated you badly no matter what had happened in her past, because you deserve so much love.” He deserved more than anyone could ever give him.
No one should have hurt him, not ever.
His thumb stroked my cheekbone.
“You don’t have to cry about it. If that happened to her, she’s not bothered anymore. And it was years ago for me, too.”
But things didn’t stay in the past like you wanted them to.
They returned over and over, sometimes just nibbling at the edges of your thoughts and sometimes ripping into them with jagged shark teeth.
Sir took this moment to shove me with his paw, making more room for himself.
It served to push me closer to Caleb, and that was ok.
“He’s not just mine.”
“What?” Caleb asked.
“I’m not following.”
“I mean, we keep saying that Sir is my dog, but he loves us both and we both love him. I think he’s ours, like we’re his. I’ll update the information on the chip.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said.
“Of course.”
“Thank you for that. I do love him and I’ll help keep him safe. We’ll do that together, so you don’t have to worry.”
“I don’t want you to worry about things, either,” I said.
“You definitely don’t have to worry about people caring about you. They do. I do.”
He leaned forward, and I knew that he was going to kiss me.
I wanted to comfort him, but I needed him, too.
Caleb’s lips gently touched mine.
“Is that ok?” he asked.
“You’re still crying.”
“I’m not,” I said, and reached to kiss him again.
This time, his hand slid from my cheek and into my hair and his other arm pulled me closer.
It was funny—not how he kissed, because that was wonderful.
The funny part was my reaction.
I got kind of breathless and kind of dizzy, and I felt a little like I was flying or maybe floating off the bed.
I held him closer to keep myself steady, but everything stayed gentle and easy.
There was no pressure for more.
The pressure came in another form and from another source.
Sir suddenly climbed across my body, stepping on me with what felt like ten or twenty paws.
“Ugh,” I grunted, pulling away from Caleb and trying to scramble out from under the dog’s weight.
It had to have been much more than a hundred pounds now.
“No, Sir. Not there—hell!” Caleb yelped, frantically pushing at the dog’s big body.
Sir had planted one of his lead-weighted feet directly onto Caleb’s crotch and I thought that maybe that area was extra sensitive at this moment.
Sir barked back and then Caleb rolled right off the bed.
“My Lord!” I leaned over the side to look at where he was curled on the ground in a semi-fetal position, his eyes closed.
“Are you all right?”
“Give me a minute,” he answered, his voice rough.
“I wasn’t ready for that.”
“Sir!” I scolded, but he had stretched out happily in the warm place that Caleb had recently occupied, and he didn’t bother to respond.
“I think he didn’t feel good about us…getting closer,” I said to the person on the floor.
Caleb’s eyes opened.
“Do you feel good about that?”
I swallowed.
I really was different from before, not the same woman at all.
Wasn’t that true? I wasn’t going to ruin this with him.
I would be careful and I wouldn’t hurt either of us.
“I feel good,” I answered slowly.
“Do you?”
His face was creased in pain, and his voice still sounded funny when he answered.
“I never felt better in my whole life.” Then he smiled and I smiled back, and we both started to laugh.
Sir grunted with annoyance at how we’d disturbed him with this new noise.
He stretched out and pushed me with his big paw.
We only laughed harder.
It turned out to be a wonderful night, after all.