Chapter 42
Chapter 42
A fter the party, I slipped off by myself because I admitted to myself that I’d grown worried about Gunner. He was not at the party tonight, which was unlike him. As I thought about it, I realized he’d been keeping to himself a lot and was not so animated. I couldn’t figure it out. I still owed him a steak as he’d refused the one in DC, so I poured charcoal in the Big Green Egg and lit it, knowing the smell would draw him out of hiding, which it did. When the charcoal was hot, I grilled a ginormous piece of meat while he watched. Four minutes in and he was drooling, which I took as a good sign. Somewhere between medium rare and medium, I pulled it and set it on a plate at about eye level with Gunner while it cooled. He sat ramrod straight, tail occasionally moving left to right. It was not so much a wag as an indication that he was watching me. Alert. After six excruciating minutes, I sat on the floor and cut the steak into small pieces. He slid into something of a sphinx position and then crawled toward me, finally bringing his muzzle within inches of my hands. I set the plate on my lap and stared at him. He stared at the plate, me, then the plate, then rubbed his muzzle with his front paw and looked back up at me. “Last time I did this you didn’t want it.”
He whined quietly.
“Hundred-dollar steak down the drain.”
He made no response.
“I think this one might be cooked a little better, but I’m pretty much a steak snob and particular to my own cooking.”
He licked the saliva off his muzzle, which at this point was pouring out of his mouth like someone had turned on a spigot inside his throat.
I lifted a piece and held it between index finger and thumb. “Now I need to tell you something.”
He inched forward.
“I know I’ve been a little out of it lately. Not myself. ‘Distant’ is probably a better word. But I just want you to know that it’s not your fault. I’ve just got some stuff I’m trying to work out... and I don’t really know how to work it out.”
He sniffed the meat, then licked his face again.
“See, it’s . . .”
He whined.
I touched the meat to the front of his nose. He opened his mouth and inhaled it. Then swallowed. Didn’t chew once.
I held up a second bite and did the same. Same response. Then a third. No change. Evidently he was feeling better.
After I fed the steak to him, I let him lick the plate, then he lay on his back and turned his stomach toward me, paws in the air. Which was Gunner-speak for “Here, scratch my belly while you’re jabbering on.” A minute later, he was snoring.
“Glad we had this talk.”
As I said that, a warm hand touched my shoulder and Summer sat alongside me, wrapping a fleece blanket around my shoulders. “Me too,” she said.
“You heard all that?”
She nodded. Then turned toward me, sitting cross-legged. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“How about I take a shot?”
I waited.
“You have a problem.”
I didn’t see this coming. “I do?”
“Yes. Stop interrupting.” She sat up straight, bringing her eye level with me. “You don’t know how to be... who you need to be... because you don’t know who you are... now.”
I tried to process this, waiting for the pieces to align. When they did, I realized she was spot-on. Arguing with her would get me nowhere, nor did I have the bandwidth. “Pretty much.”
She continued, “So the question is, what do we do about it?”
“I don’t have an answer for that.”
“I wasn’t expecting one. It was rhetorical. I know you well enough to know that if you could have done something, you would have.”
I tried to follow her logic but could not. “I’m not quite sure where this is going or how to engage in this.”
She scooted closer. Slipped her shoulder under mine. Partially sitting on my lap, placing her palm flat across my heart. “One of the reasons I fell in love with you was your ability to love deeply when others could not or would not. The thing that drove you then and drives you now... is your love.” She waved her hand across Freetown below us. “Ask anyone. It’s the thing that sets you apart.”
I still wasn’t quite sure what to do with this. “Okay.”
“But you have a problem.”
This I agreed with. “Yes.”
“Your heart is broken.”
I didn’t see that coming either. And I’d never considered it. “What?”
“You watched your best friend and mentor get shot and die in front of you, and you could do nothing about it. Shattering your heart. So now you’re trying to do what you’ve always done, including carrying all of us and all of our pain, but you have a problem.” I waited. “Your heart lies in pieces and it’s struggling to beat.”
Her words made sense.
“I can’t help you find Miriam, Ruth, and Sadie. And I can’t bring Bones back.”
I was lost again. But I knew better than to admit that, so I didn’t speak.
She turned my face toward hers, where I noticed, for the first time, tears. “So, my love... you face a decision.”