CHAPTER 21
JASON
Camila drove aggressively and irritably, all the way to her destination. I was bracing for the worst— a ballet class where I couldn’t enter without wearing a pink tutu, or a full day of meaningless shopping, and I was ready for all of it.
But the moment I read the sign outside the humble one-storey building, Happy Hopes Animal Shelter, I was suddenly happy, and definitely hopeful.
Of course it was an animal shelter. A full circle. Of all the places Camila could have taken me, she brought me to an animal shelter on a Saturday morning. I should have known.
I thought: there is justice in this universe after all.
“Don’t look so happy about it,” Camila said, getting out of the car without looking at me. “You’re not here to play with puppies.”
“Whatever you need me to do,” I said. “Just tell me.”
She looked at me for a moment with absolute irritability, puffed her cheeks and let out a breath— and then turned and walked through the gate.
I followed.
Twenty minutes later I was on my knees in the kitten enclosure with rubber gloves and a scrubbing brush, cleaning with focused dedication.
The kittens were not making it easy. Three of them had appointed themselves supervisors and were conducting their oversight from various points on my back and shoulders.
Across the room, Camila was at the front desk with a family.
A small girl of about five in a pink dress was holding her mother’s hand while her dad looked around the enclosures.
Camila was leaning forward slightly, talking to the little girl directly rather than her parents, pointing at something on the paperwork and then gesturing toward the back of the shelter.
The little girl nodded with great gravity.
Then Camila took her hand and walked her to the dog enclosures, the parents following behind.
I stopped scrubbing for a moment.
I had seen Camila with animals a hundred times.
But watching her now with this child — the way she crouched to the little girl’s level, the way she lifted the cocker spaniel puppy with such practiced gentleness and placed it in waiting arms — I felt something close to regret.
Regret at never seriously acknowledging Camila’s desire to have a baby.
She asked me many times, using different words, and in many ways, and each time I’d given her some or the other form of the lamest excuse — I don’t think I’m ready yet. I had always found reasons to defer the conversation, and Camila would never push. She’d smile a sad smile and say: I understand.
I had been such a coward. It had always been about a call I had been expecting for seven years, the one where someone said Mateo in a voice that meant they had found me.
And when that call really came, when Scarlett really did know my identity, I finally told myself I had done the right thing by not agreeing to having a baby.
But I never told Camila the real reason.
She would have understood. We could have taken help from Agent Briggs, we could have started a new life, somewhere far, far away from Scarlett.
She had wanted to be a mother.
A kitten bit my thumb, firmly and without apology.
“Fair,” I told it, and went back to scrubbing.
An hour later, Jess, the older volunteer who I had met at the entrance came running to Camila. She was unapologetically loud and I could hear the conversation from across the room. “Cam, the new dog at the shelter is refusing to eat, and is getting too aggressive. I’ve tried everything.”
Camila checked the bulletin board. “When is the professional trainer coming in?”
Jess looked flustered. “Not until next week. She’s out of town.”
“I can try,” I said.
“No,” Camila said, without looking at me. “Clean the enclosures.”
“Camila, if she’s not eating—”
“He might be useful, Cam. We have to do something, and we have to do it now.” Jess said.
Camila looked at the ceiling briefly. “Fine.”
I had been expecting a large, aggressive dog.
What I found in the enclosure was a cute pug. Small, barrel-shaped, ears slightly too big for her head, sitting in the far corner of a space that dwarfed her completely. A whiteboard on the door said Sparkles in marker, the previous name only half erased underneath.
Sparkles looked at me with enormous, suspicious eyes, and gave out a consistent, low growl.
I loved her immediately.
I could do this.
I opened the enclosure door. Sparkles’s growls got louder, and she came right at me — fully committed, and completely territorial. I stepped back out and closed the door and sat down in front of Sparkles.
She growled at me through the wire.
I sat. The growling slowed. Then stopped. She put her nose close to the wire, still watching me with those sad, big eyes.
I stayed on the floor.
Jess stepped closer to me. “She was abused for two years. Someone found her in the woods behind the beaches, and brought her in yesterday. Poor thing, she hasn’t eaten anything since she came in.”
I inched closer to the enclosure. Sparkles’s ears shot up, but within seconds, came down again. She was still eyeing me with suspicion.
I sat there. I didn’t say a word.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Camila watching everything. I heard her footsteps come closer, but I turned only when I felt her standing right behind me. She nodded her head. “Just give up, Jason.”
“She hasn’t eaten anything, Camila. She’s not aggressive because she wants to be.
I cannot even fathom what horrors she endured to become like this.
She’s scared, she’s hurt and she doesn’t want to trust again.
I will do anything to make her want to trust again, Camila.
” I looked into Camila’s eyes, and for the first time since I arrived, saw a faint streak of emotion. Sadness replacing anger.
She quickly turned her face away. “I think someone’s waiting at the reception.” She walked away, without once looking back at me.
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By late afternoon, my fingers were through the wire and Sparkles was allowing them to rest against her nose without pulling away.
By the time Camila came to tell me she was leaving, Sparkles was eating two small treats from my palm, her whole body trembling slightly with the effort of deciding to trust something.
Camila stood behind me and looked at Sparkles eating.
She tried very hard to look like this wasn’t important to her. I knew her well enough to see through it completely.
“I’m leaving,” she said finally. “And you’re not coming with me.”
“But I have to, Camila. You know that.”
“No, you don’t have to. Now, hurry up. I have to close this part of the shelter. And I’m going alone.”
She paused.
“I am meeting my boyfriend.”