10. Madison
10
MADISON
The door swings open, and two enormous dogs charging into my living room nearly bowl me over. These aren’t just any dogs—they’re giants. They’re golden doodles, but they’re bigger than any golden doodles I’ve ever seen, like they might have some great Dane in their lineage or something.
The owner, a frazzled-looking woman, hands over a bag of things, which is surprisingly small for dogs so large. “Please just…keep them inside. Take them out just to use the bathroom, but don’t ever leave them outside by themselves. They’re escape artists, and…” She shakes her head like she can’t believe the kinds of things her dogs have done.
“So, should I take them one at a time?” I ask.
She nods. “Both at the same time is too much. They’re huge, and if they decide to dart in opposite directions at the same time, you’re out of luck. You’ll lose one if not both. They usually come back for treats, though. Good luck. They’re sweethearts, but they can be a handful.”
Then, she turns to the dogs. “Bella! Bigfoot! Come give Mommy a goodbye hug! ”
The dogs bound over and lick her face.
Then, the woman turns serious. “Okay, put them in another room when you open the front door or get a good hold on their collars.”
I follow her instructions and grab both of their collars. The woman opens the door only wide enough to slip through before closing it again. Bigfoot leaps forward, barking, yanking my hand from his collar. But the door is already closed.
From experience, I won’t feel safe until it’s locked, so I turn the lock too.
Then, I turn back to them. “Not this time!” I tell them. “Now, let’s get you settled.”
As the dogs rush around, knocking into things but at least not barking, I remind myself of what I have to remind myself of every time a new dog comes. The first hour or two are the worst. They don’t feel comfortable, and sometimes, they’re excited. They act like… Well, like wild animals.
I get their kennels set up in the back corner of the living room. They are so massive that they take up almost the entire wall. I spread their towels into the kennels and then put their leashes on the coffee table. I’ll miss Scout and Barney, but these two look like they’ll keep me busy.
I know that their owner said they should stay inside as much as possible, but I look at the limitless energy in them. Maybe if I use the long twenty-foot leash I bought just for my dog-sitting business, they can run some energy off and relax a little.
I reach for the nearest one, not sure if I have Bella or Bigfoot. I snap the long leash onto the dog’s collar, and the other dog, clearly Bigfoot I see now, bounds over, not wanting to be left out.
“No! No!” I tell him. But Bigfoot doesn’t respond to me. It’s like he’s telling me that he doesn’t speak English. “You’ll get your turn,” I tell him.
Sighing, I get Bigfoot into his kennel with a treat, and he stares mournfully as Samson and Bella trot outside with me.
As soon as Bella is in the backyard, she bolts. I’m holding the leash tightly, but she nearly yanks my arm out of the socket with how strong she is. She seems to realize that she’s on a leash of some sort and comes back, slowly sniffing everything along the way. Then, she and Samson start wrestling. They’re playing on the ground, rolling, and having a great time.
I smile as I watch them. Bella may be huge but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have the chance to play, just like any dog. I look around my backyard. I really should get a fence. I need it in this business, but I just can’t see myself investing in something like that when what I really want is to start my surf school.
“Okay, you guys are doing great. Samson, you know to stay in the yard,” I tell him, like it’s my words that persuade him to stay, not the electric fence.
I tie Bella’s leash to a tree, making sure the knot is super tight. Then, I head back inside to get Bigfoot. He is now howling like he is having a mental breakdown from being left alone for five seconds.
“Hold on. No one has forgotten about you. Now, look. I only have one long leash, so you’re going to have to behave on this one, got it?”
Bigfoot bounds up to me as soon as I open his kennel door. He licks at me excitedly, then runs in a circle around me before I can put his leash on.
Suddenly, I hear Samson barking from outside. That’s strange. He almost never barks, and this bark sounds different from his excited, let’s play bark .
I run to the back door and peer out the glass.
Where the hell is Bella? I can see the twenty-foot leash in the yard, but there’s no dog at the end of it.
“No, no, no!” I shout. I squeeze through the door, not leaving enough room for Bigfoot to get out. I run over to the leash like Bella might still be on the end of it.
Her collar has broken, the plastic clip snapped, and it looks like Bella is taking full advantage of it.
“Bella!” I shout, making whistling noises.
Samson continues to bark, and he’s facing Ethan’s large fence.
Samson noses at a tiny gap under the bottom of the fence, a gap that I haven’t even noticed before. It’s clear by the freshly turned dirt, though, that the gap has been recently widened. Still, I’m not sure how Bella could have squeezed through it unless she literally made her bones liquid.
“Is she in there?” I ask Samson while Bigfoot howls from inside the house.
My life officially feels like a never-ending circus.
I try to jump up and peer over the fence, but it’s impossible to really see more than a glimpse of the perfectly arranged flowerbeds. I need to climb the fence. I did it before, but it’s easier without shoes.
I kick my boots off and grab the top of the fence. When I see what Bella is doing, though, it makes me lose my grip, and I fall.
Bella is digging furiously at the frozen grass like there’s a treasure trove of buried treats.
Treats!
The thought hits my head, and I thank it. I run back to my house and manage to get some treats without letting Bigfoot escape. I come back to my side of the fence, hoping I can get Bella to squeeze back through the hole.
“Bella!” I offer, waving the treats on my side of the hole. But she acts as though she can’t hear me. She heads to the other side of the yard. All I can do is watch helplessly as she begins to go after a flowerbed.
How on earth did Bella even manage to squeeze through? Can I fit? I spend all of two minutes trying before I give up.
That’s not going to work. I have to climb the fence.
But for some reason, I can’t seem to get it today. My foot slips, and a thin slice of pain tells me I’ve just gotten a splinter.
“How did I do it with Scout? Maybe that spot in the fence was easier to climb.” It’s the only hope I have. I can only imagine how many flowerbeds Bella has already destroyed.
Cursing under my breath, I kneel and start trying to widen the gap under the fence. I don’t want to run across Ethan’s front yard and get his attention. What if he hates me enough to call the police on me for trespassing?
I pull my phone from my pocket with dirty fingers and call Wesley, my brother, who’s always been the more practical one. “Wes, I need help. One of the dogs I’m sitting got into my neighbor’s yard. Can you come over?”
“On my way,” he says without hesitation.
I hang up, shoving the phone back into my pocket. I’m not getting anywhere with the dirt, and my hands are freezing. The barking has stopped, which is somehow even more alarming than when it was echoing through the neighborhood. I can only imagine what kind of chaos Bella is creating.
Panic hits me as I wonder if she’s stopped barking because Ethan has come outside. If he’s inside, how could he have not heard her at this point?
I have no choice. I have to go to the other side of the fence and hope I’ll be able to climb that side. “Samson, stay.”
And he does. I dart across Ethan’s front yard, only daring one glance at the house as I pass it. No one yells at me or makes me stop.
Once I’m on the other side of the fence, I grab the top and try to climb again. But it’s not working. I’m getting frustrated at myself. I climbed it with Scout. Why can’t I do it again? My fingers are red and stiff with the cold, and my foot is telling me that I definitely have a splinter stuck in it.
These dogs are literally going to drive me to my death.
I grab a treat from my pocket, one of the smelly liver snacks that usually gets the dogs’ attention. “Come on, buddy,” I call. I shove the treat partway under the fence, hoping I can at least distract Bella from destroying everything until my brother gets here.
The dog, wherever she is, is ignoring me. My knees are damp and freezing, my hands raw from the cold, but I keep at it, hoping to lure him back before Ethan comes home and finds his yard destroyed.
And then, of course, because my luck is just that bad, I hear a car pull into the driveway. I freeze, still on my hands and knees, covered in mud, just as the driver’s side door opens. Ethan doesn’t pull all the way into the garage, and I feel awkwardly exposed.
Ethan steps out, looking every bit as put-together as ever, and his gaze locks onto me immediately. His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and for a moment, we just stare at each other, with him standing there looking polished and sophisticated, and me half-dirty and clearly desperate, crouched on the ground.
“What…are you doing?”
I push myself to my feet, brushing the dirt off my knees and feeling my face flush with embarrassment. “I just wanted to see if I could fit under your fence.” I roll my eyes. “One of the dogs I’m sitting got into your yard. I was trying to get her out.”
Ethan’s gaze flicks from me to the fence and back again. He takes a step closer, and I wonder if he’s going to mention my visit with Aurora. I don’t want him to. I’m desperately begging for him not to, but I don’t know how to prevent it. “Did you say a dog is in my yard?”
“Yes, she’s in there somewhere, digging up your grass, I think. I’m sorry—these dogs are escape artists. I didn’t expect her to get through the fence. There’s a small gap, and she just… I don’t know…”
Ethan looks at me for a long moment then sighs and pulls a set of keys from his pocket. He’s about to say something when another car pulls up and parks in the street.
Relief floods through me when I see my brother’s car. Wesley hops out and jogs over. “What’s the situation?” he asks, glancing between me and Ethan.
“The dog’s in Ethan’s yard. This is Ethan, my neighbor.”
“Wesley, Madison’s brother.” Wesley smiles and shakes Ethan’s hand. “Hey, you’re the same guy who used to live here, huh? Madison played with your daughter all the time.”
Ethan nods, finally extracting his hand from Wesley’s. “That’s me.”
Wesley comes over and gives me a hug. “Why aren’t you wearing any shoes?” he whispers in my ear.
I look down at my red feet. “I was trying to climb the fence. I think I got a splinter. ”
I feel embarrassingly close to tears, and I don’t want to cry in front of these men. I think that would be more embarrassing than almost anything I can think of.
“I’ve got the keys. Let’s get the gate unlocked and the dog grabbed,” Ethan suggests.
Wesley nods, and we follow Ethan to the gate. I hold my breath as Ethan unlocks the gate and pushes it open. We step inside, and immediately I spot Bella happily digging away at a patch of frozen grass near the back of the yard.
“Bella!” I call, stepping forward and holding out the treat. “Come here, girl!”
But Bella ignores me and keeps her attention focused entirely on whatever treasure she thinks she’s going to unearth.
Ethan watches this unfold with a look of mild exasperation. “You weren’t kidding about them being escape artists,” he mutters.
“Nope.” I march toward Bella, but as soon as she hears me coming, she darts to the other side of the yard, suddenly realizing some friends who want to play with her have arrived.
Wesley steps forward, crouching down and calling Bella’s name in a low, calm voice. He’s always had a way with animals. Bella pauses and begins trotting toward him, but before she can reach Wesley, Ethan lunges for her.
She spooks and darts off toward the gap that leads to my yard. “Block the gap!” I yell like a madwoman.
But I’m not fast enough. Bella squeezes through and out from under the fence. Anger at Ethan flares up.
Wesley swears under his breath, and a wave of panic rises in my chest. This is turning into a nightmare. “I’ll go around and try to catch him.” Wesley bounds out from the gate. I’m left following at a slower pace as each step pushes the splinter in deeper.
“You shouldn’t have—” I start to say to Ethan.
“I know. I don’t have a lot of practice with dogs. Sorry.”
We hurry through the fence to where Bella is happily playing in my backyard with Samson as if nothing happened. They bark and yip at each other as Bigfoot howls through the back window.
Ethan startles. “There’s another one!”
I laugh. “Yeah, someone is dumb enough to have two of these guys. Okay, I need to get a hand around her. She’s not wearing a collar.”
I sit on the ground near where the dogs are playing and try to look as unintimidating as possible.
“Here you go, girl,” I say, pulling a treat out of my pocket and setting it on my leg. “Wes, make a loop from that leash. Something I can put around her neck.”
He’s on it. Ethan grabs the treat from my leg and whistles. “Bella! Come on!”
Bella looks up from where she’s playing with Samson and trots over like she was just waiting for a treat.
She bends down and gobbles it up, and Wesley slips the loop of rope over her neck, tightening it. She doesn’t even fight it.
“She’s probably exhausted now,” Ethan points out as Wesley hands me the rope. Having Bella back in my hands is good, but I want her back in the confines of my house. I won’t breathe easily until she is.