Chapter Fifteen #3
“At any rate, I don’t need to know his motivations. I know the result of his actions.”
“Which is to piss you off.”
“That. Yes.” Sommer walked to her door. “Come on, I’m putting the pizza in the oven. It’s getting late,” she said as she passed into the hallway. “You should stay the night.”
“All right.” Abbie followed her down the stairs. “This is going to be a great video. I’ll have two different ones if you change your dress and sing that section for me again.”
“Maybe.” Sommer pulled the pizza from the freezer.
“I think you should angle the doorbell camera a little better. I can do that for you. If Goth-hound keeps showing up, we’ll keep putting the videos together.
It might take a little time for your reels to find their audience.
But the goal is to get you to the beach umbrella cocktail in the Bahamas.
Your bliss is your best revenge for any imagined wound the dog is causing. ”
“That sounds like a lot of work, Abbie,” Sommer said, turning the stove to preheat.
“It’s so easy; I do the edits and posts because that’s fun for me. You sing, and then the dog walks up with hot-guy—”
“Matter of opinion,” Sommer said, reaching into the fridge for salad fixings.
Abbie pulled out a cookie sheet. “Objectively, if behavior was not in the equation, hot guy.”
“Without seeing his face, I’ll concede the point.”
“You can’t keep singing death songs though.” Abbie pulled the paper tab on the box while Sommer reached for a bowl.
“I can if you use the name Marna made up. And that speaks to me. This project can be part of my mourning process.”
“What are you mourning?” Abbie asked. “You’re glad to be single.”
“I am. Absolutely. Not necessarily in the way I became single. But as an end result? Yes. It’s good.
” Sommer pressed her hips into the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have things to mourn, like my childhood image of my happily ever after, of finding the love of my life and growing old together, dancing in the kitchen while we cling to our walkers. ”
“That’s quite the image.” Abbie slid the pizza out of the plastic wrap onto the tray.
“It’s mine, and I loved it. And now I can’t have that.”
“With Michael, you can’t. He never danced with you anyway, with or without a walker. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have it with anyone ever again.”
“I don’t want it. I want to die alone with my cats, and I was thinking of getting some dancing Cockatoos.”
“That would be fun.” Abbie walked the trash to the bin. “The dancing part, not the idea of dying alone with a house full of cats and birds.” She caught Sommer’s gaze and tipped her head. “Do you think your cats would get along with the birds?”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought that through. Maybe not.” Sommer picked up Abbie’s phone and watched the end of the video when the man sat on the road and pulled the dog into his lap, looking out at the graveyard. “I wonder what’s going on with that?”
“What?” Abbie came to look over Sommer’s shoulder at the image.
“Bloodhounds,” Sommer said, turning to Abbie. “Different rocks mean different things to you, right?”
“Gemstones?” Abbie asked. “Yes.”
“What about dogs?”
“Animals? Like, ‘I saw a rabbit three times yesterday. There’s a message from the universe in that?’”
“Exactly, but dogs. I mean, I have Goth-hound howling in the graveyard and look at this.” Sommer looked up the news article again. “This is the dog that saved the kids.”
“You didn’t see the dog on the search, only in the paper. I don’t think that counts as the universe communicating with you.”
Sommer scrolled through the news article to find the photo.
“I’m seeing him now. Her. That’s a female dog.
I’m seeing her now. Whiskey. It says she was a State Police dog and that her officer, Daniel Atworth, recently died.
The rescue guy who handled her on the search has the same last name, Atworth. Maybe they’re kin.”
She held out her phone, and Abbie bent over to see.
“Oh, look at him. I wish I had seen that guy on the search. He’s handsome.”
“Handsome?” Sommer took the phone back to look at it more closely. “I don’t know that I’d go that far. He’s cute in a first responder, clean-cut, do-gooder kind of way.”
“Do we say cute when we’re referring to grown-assed men?” Abbie asked. “First responders end up on calendars with puppies on their shoulders for a reason. Fit and fine. Yes, this is a very tasty specimen of a man.”
“You should send him some fan mail,” Sommer said.
“Start by saying you were on the mountain searching, too. You’d have that in common.
You wouldn’t just be the crazy lady who saw his photo and pounced like Mewmew there attacking that dust bunny.
” Sommer said, pointing at her calico cat.
“The rescue guy’s name is Gabriel Atworth,” she said, tapping the phone off and putting it on the counter.
“Gabriel Atworth?” Abbie let that roll slowly around her mouth as if she were tasting the name. “Atworth is a suitable name for a hero figure.”