Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
I’m enjoying a late afternoon snooze when I hear Miguel scrambling around downstairs. I swear he’s speaking to someone, and he’s making a terrible racket. Then I remember that Amelia Mae and Fiona are here, in our town. Maybe they’ve stopped by our house for a visit!
But when I make it to the kitchen, Miguel’s alone, scooping food into my bowl.
“Eat up, and then we’re going out,” he tells me.
I eye him with equal parts suspicion and incredulity.
Does “out” mean back to the bookstore? He is dressed in clean clothes, even if his freakishly long toes are poking out of his sandals—that’s one feature about humans I’ll never warm to.
I bet we’re heading around the block, since he’d tell me if we were seeing our new friends.
Well, I suppose anything’s better than sitting here.
I tend to my bowl but don’t finish my kibble; it’s too much effort for too little pleasure.
Then I walk to the door, where Miguel clips the leash to my harness.
But rather than heading down the driveway, he directs me to the car.
“You’ve got to be on your best behavior,” he commands as he points at the space behind the front seat.
“Best behavior” means we’re not going to the bookstore, since I don’t need to be told how to act there. Where to, then? It’d better not be the vet.
Darn it, it’s probably the vet.
And after my squirrel mauling and great escape, who could blame him? Dread seeps from my head to my heart to my gut. I try to pace in the place where feet go but there’s not enough room. So, I do what I’m not supposed to and hop up on the seat and press my face against the glass.
I’m still waiting for Miguel to yell for me to stop licking the window when he pulls into Lakeside’s parking lot.
Not the vet—we’re back at the store! Have Fiona and Amelia Mae returned?
Oh, I hope so. This must be why Miguel’s been extra quiet.
He’s excited, too, and it’s been so long since he’s felt that way that he doesn’t know what to do about it.
But once we park, Miguel grabs my leash and leads me away from the store, toward…
the café? Listen, I like Spoon. After all, they allow dogs inside, which is more than I can say for most of the shops around here.
I’ve never misbehaved there, though, so it’s weird that he felt the need to instruct me.
Then it suddenly clicks, and I bound through the door so fast that Miguel nearly trips on his way in.
“Easy, dog! Easy!” he says, but being old does have its advantages, because he’s not yanking on my leash hard enough to deter me. Dragging him behind me, I hightail it to the corner where Amelia Mae has already stooped down to hug me.
“Harry!” she cries.
Amelia Mae! I think, sticking my nose into her soft, scented hair. It’s not the same as being embraced by my Amelia. But in this moment, in her warm arms, it’s enough.
Fiona, who’s still seated at the table, clears her throat.
“Sheesh, Mom!” Amelia Mae chides without letting go of me. “Pretend he’s a cat or something!”
“I didn’t say a word, dear heart,” she says. To Miguel, she adds warmly, “Well, hello there. I’m happy to see you.”
“Hello,” he says stiffly.
Miguel, it seems like you’re the one who needs to be reminded to be on his best behavior. But I can’t be too mad at him—not when he’s making an effort to be with the person I’ve selected for him.
“I didn’t realize you were bringing the dog,” she says, casting a glance at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, frowning. “I just thought…”
Fiona’s gaze shifts from me to Amelia Mae, who’s still kneeling. “Okay, I’m being silly. I know you said he doesn’t like to be alone.”
“I was thinking of your girl,” he says gruffly. “She seems to like him.”
“Harry doesn’t say I talk too much,” Amelia Mae says in a quiet voice. “And I can tell he likes me, too.”
He looks at her with surprise. “Harold loves when people talk to him. And he definitely likes you.” To Fiona, he adds, “I promise, he’s harmless—he’s too old to hurt a fly.”
I’ll have you know that I ate a fly just yesterday, I think, narrowing my eyes.
“How old is he, exactly?” asks Fiona. Her expression looks calm—serene, some might even say.
But I can smell lingering anxiety on her skin.
It may take some work to persuade her that I’m nothing like the mangy mutt that charged me and Amelia when we were out walking one winter night.
I don’t know what triggered him—dogs and humans aren’t that different, in that our emotions sometimes come rushing out for no apparent reason—but I’ll never forget his enormous, frothing jaw snapping mere inches from my neck, and how Amelia managed to get us both behind a fence before he could hurt us.
“Almost fourteen, we think,” Miguel tells her.
He doesn’t realize that he’s speaking like our Amelia’s still here. I close my eyes for a minute, just to see if I can pretend like she is.
It doesn’t work. But at least the other Amelia still has her arm around me.
“He does seem harmless,” says Fiona, widening her smile to try to prove she’s not afraid. Which tells me she absolutely is. “If you ask my daughter, I’m prone to overreacting. Please, sit,” she says, gesturing to the chair across from her.
Miguel slides into the chair. “You said you had a bad experience as a child. Did you get bit?” he asks, resting his elbows on the table.
“Don’t expect to get anything out of her,” Amelia Mae tells him as she finally leaves my side to sit down. “I know she seems chatty, but Fiona’s actually a vault with no combination.”
“Now, sweetheart, that’s not true at all,” Fiona chides cheerfully. “Your uncle is very private, and I simply try to respect that.”
Amelia Mae raises her eyebrows at me. “My uncle,” she says in an exaggerated whisper. “Riiight.”
Fiona sighs without breaking her smile. “I did get bit, in fact. Neighbor’s dog, the one everyone said was so gentle. I still have a scar,” she says, instinctively touching a spot on her forehead where the skin rises slightly.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” says Miguel. “I promise, Harold won’t do that to you.”
“I’m sure he won’t,” she says, but there’s a hint of a question in her voice.
“Do you know what you’d like to eat? I can go order,” he asks her.
Good boy! I take back everything I thought about his behavior.
“A caprese salad, if you don’t mind,” she says.
“White wine?”
“If you’re having some, sure.”
“Oh, I definitely am,” he says, nodding his head, and she laughs. “And you?” he says to the other Amelia.
“Grilled cheese, please!” she says.
“On it. I’ll be right back.”
“Isn’t this great, Harry?” Amelia Mae says to me, watching Miguel at the counter. “I didn’t think he’d call today, but he came through. I want us to spend as much time as possible together while we’re here.”
“Love, I can hear you. And as a reminder, we’re only here to deal with your uncle’s mistake,” Fiona tells her. “You need to get back to camp, remember?”
“Drama camp,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Now that’s an oxymoron. It’s as dramatic as watching paint dry.”
“All the same, you are going when we return. I paid for it.”
She sticks her bottom lip out. “You offered to write an eight-thousand-dollar check to make up for Uncle Jon’s Houdini routine-y. Something tells me we can afford for me to miss camp.”
“Goodness, Amelia Mae,” says Fiona in a low voice. She glances around the café. It’s nearly full, but save for a stinky French bulldog a few tables away, no one’s paying attention to us. “For the record, your uncle would be covering that—not us. But can we please not discuss this in public?”
“All good?” Miguel’s just reappeared and is somehow holding two glasses of wine and a cup of water—oh, to have opposable digits. “These are pretty full, so be careful. I’ll be right back with our plates.”
“Thank you. That was kind of you,” says Fiona when he returns. She smooths out her skirt before she lifts the glass he’s set in front of her. “Though shouldn’t I be the one treating you?”
“No,” he says simply, and I wonder if he notices that she’s smiling into her wine.
“So,” says Miguel.
“So,” she says, looking back up at him. “I read that profile you wrote about my brother for the Michigan Quarterly Review.”
His eyes widen. “You did? That was what, four years ago? I thought no one saw that.”
“It was very good,” says Fiona, nodding, “though I would have taken the opportunity to dig deeper about why Jon feels so confident writing female characters the way he does.”
“Touché,” replies Miguel, but he’s clearly pleased. “I’m no expert.”
“From what I read, you know more about my brother’s work than a closet full of English professors.”
“I’m not sure how many English professors you can fit in a closet, exactly.”
“Believe me, plenty. Their egos, on the other hand—those require an additional storage unit.”
The corner of Miguel’s mouth ticks up. I’m pleased, too; I can’t remember the last time he was this engaged in something other than bills and staffing schedules. “I can’t disagree. But how’d you find that article, anyway?”
“I spend a fair amount of time online and know where to search. I was a journalist in another life.”
“Another life? Do tell.”
She waves at the air, but their eyes are locked. “It’s really not interesting.”
“Maybe not to you,” he says, leaning forward. “How’d you get into journalism?”
“Curiosity, I suppose.” Amelia Mae’s seated beside her, finishing off the last of her sandwich, and Fiona reaches across to touch her head. “I wanted to learn about lots of things, and journalism offered an opportunity to get paid to find out about them.”
“That’s smart. What kinds of things?”
“Mostly environmental stuff,” she murmurs.
“Mom could have been famous,” says Amelia Mae, nodding.
Miguel arches an eyebrow.