Prologue
“Here’s the thing,” Liam Young blurted one evening a couple of years ago, agitation pushing just those words and no others to his lips. He shot his brother, Brad, a helpless look.
How do you get a woman to do more than glance in your direction? is what he was struggling to ask.
Because apparently it took more for a woman to fall in love than just a glance, though for Liam, that was all that was needed—out of the corner of his eye, he saw her sweeping her thick blond hair back from her face, and before he even turned to gawk, his brain was filled with a shrieking incoherence, too many signals coming in to separate into distinct threads.
Brad waited encouragingly. He was doing that thing Liam found so irritating: wearing a paternal expression, his dark eyebrows lifted. Their entire relationship in one facial expression. Brad, the older of the two, ready to head off some impulsive decision by Liam, and yes, of course it was impulsive; you can’t really fall in love with a woman without even having at least a conversation with her. But that’s how it felt.
“So,” Liam foundered as if he were making sense, “I’m not usually about blondes, but this woman…”
“Jennifer Burr was a blonde,” Brad reminded him brightly. “Jan Cowan was a blonde. Patty Pasternack was a blonde.”
“Shut up,” Liam corrected gently.
The brothers grinned at each other, sharing a comfortable moment. They were sitting in Brad’s downtown Denver “bachelor pad,” as Liam called it, takeout Mexican on the table, a few empty Pacifico bottles abandoned with practiced negligence next to the remains of the frijoles refritos.
“Just watching out for you,” Brad finally explained.
“As you always do. I’m taller, younger, much handsomer—”
“Ha!” Brad snorted.
“Yet you,” Liam persisted, “think you always have to watch out for me.” Liam’s grin gradually faded.
“You’re thinking about me going to Germany,” Brad concluded from Liam’s expression. “But that’s a process that could take another couple of years to pull off. Heck, it’s already taken half a decade. So you’re not getting rid of me just yet, brother.”
Truthfully, that wasn’t at all what Liam was thinking about.
His mind was back on the woman.
This was how it began for Liam. She walked past his jobsite nearly every day, so he had plenty of time to gaze at her. He didn’t know she lived a few blocks down from the school where she taught English. He just knew that reliably, first thing in the morning and then again in late afternoon, this woman would stride by and leave him with a feeling of having fallen from a great height. Every time she walked past, he caught his breath and didn’t release it for what seemed like hours.
Normally pretty confident around females—he’d certainly, as Brad tried to imply, had plenty of girlfriends in his nearly thirty years of existence—he was utterly flummoxed by this one. What do you say when it feels as if blowing this opportunity would wreck your life? She’d seen him staring enough, so she must know he wanted to speak to her. But the stakes were so high he was always strangled by them.
Finally, he approached her on the sidewalk and asked if she had any interest in seeing the kitchen he was remodeling.
She seemed baffled by the question. He didn’t know that she had been listening to The Talented Mr. Ripley in her earbuds and hadn’t really registered his approach until he was standing in front of her, grinning like the fool that he felt.
She snapped off her AirPods and asked him to repeat the question, which made him feel even worse.
“I’m a builder. We’re gutting the kitchen and adding a sunroom. I don’t know if you’re into that kind of thing…?” He trailed off miserably. What did he think he was doing? Her expression was filled with suspicion. Of course, here’s this man, he realized, inviting her into a vacant house where no one else was currently in attendance. It certainly seemed like a bad idea for her to follow him inside, so he shrugged, acknowledging her decision before she uttered it.
“I’ll take pictures and show you next time,” he promised her.
Well, that was ridiculous. Next time? What? What did he even mean? He almost rolled his eyes at himself, but restrained himself and tried another grin. Thankfully, she offered a small grin back. She possessed the sort of smile that lit up her whole face.
“Okay,” she agreed cautiously.
He saw her the next morning and ran out and fell into step next to her, agitatedly showing her his photographs on his phone. He had taken forty, which was probably a little excessive. He walked with her and swiped photos and then realized she was reacting with very little enthusiasm. What if she didn’t care? What if she hated kitchens?
Okay, who hated kitchens?
He ended the slideshow presentation and asked her about herself and gleaned important information. Her name was Sabrina. She was a schoolteacher. She was a few years younger than he was. She liked to walk to work and listen to audiobooks.
He asked her if she would like to meet him for a cup of coffee after school. She smiled and said that she didn’t own her own house, it was a rental, thus she was a poor prospect for a remodeling job. So, okay, he was coming across as a salesman. That was bad. How could he do or be anything but totally, completely wrong with this particular woman in front of him? He was intoxicated to the point of absolute thought extinction. Then he surprised himself by suggesting that they go for a hike the next day up in Evergreen, around the lake.
He explained, “Just a walk. Unless, of course, you’re tired of walking from going back and forth to work.”
Well, as it turned out, she was the kind of woman who liked hiking. Liked it a lot. The next several times they met, it was to hike together. They hiked in the canyon. They walked along the paved path in Cherry Creek. They went farther into the mountains up into Summit County and strolled the streets of Frisco, and hiked the Mount Royal trail.
“The thing in Germany looks like it’s not going to happen for a while,” Brad mournfully reported to him one day on the phone.
“Sabrina likes hiking. I bought new boots,” Liam replied.
Clearly, they were not having the same conversation.
Sabrina liked his new boots. Even better, she liked his dogs. Riggs, the miniature Australian shepherd, was a bit cool at first—that was just Riggs, being his alpha self. But Luna, Liam’s Jack Russell, greeted Sabrina as if jetting on a caffeine overdose, dashing around and wagging and crying and licking every single time. Sabrina’s laughter at Luna’s antics left Liam a little speechless, awed by his own reaction to the way a simple chuckle from this woman could make him feel.
When he bought her lunch on these hiking excursions, it didn’t seem like a date, it seemed like a natural extension of what they were doing, which was good—no pressure—but frustrating. He wanted to be more than just a hiking buddy!
When he finally asked her to dinner at her favorite restaurant, he wore a suit but didn’t put on a tie, because he’d been unable to remember how to do one, and the video he’d watched made him realize his tie was more than a decade old.
His dogs seemed offended they weren’t invited along. Hadn’t it been established they were key to the enjoyment of any meal? Lying loyally at the human feet at outdoor tables, the pair of canines was satisfied they were the whole reason Sabrina and Liam kept laughing happily.
The first dinner was a remarkable success. The next day, Sabrina introduced him to a friend of hers. When the friend asked how long they had been dating, he was shocked to hear Sabrina say, “Four weeks.” He thought they’d just had their first date, but apparently, all those hikes added up to something else.
“Good dog, Luna,” he later told his bright-eyed little terrier. This caused Riggs to thrust his nose forward so he could be petted—obviously, if Luna was a good dog, Riggs must be as well.
It didn’t really matter if it was the dogs or the forced marches in the mountains or the lunches at Bagalis in Frisco—Liam, almost despite his desperate efforts, had gotten into a romantic relationship with the most beautiful, amazing, intelligent, funny, kind woman he had ever met.
What Liam had been trying to tell his brother was that Sabrina was the one. His relationship with her was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He was determined that no matter what, nothing would go wrong, not this time.
And for a couple of years, nothing did.
1
The morning air brought Archie the scent of freshly cut wood, a peculiar odor with which he had become very familiar over the past several weeks. Barely out of the puppy stage, the six-month-old Labradoodle was too young to really remember the snow from earlier in the year. For him, the strong Colorado sun had always warmed his brown fur and of late had even become a little uncomfortable. A thin tree nearby was struggling to fully leaf out and provided scant shade. He contemplated scratching at the dirt to try to excavate down to cooler soils, but felt too lethargic in that moment to move.
Archie didn’t like being alone and wished anyone or anything would come along to relieve the tedium, but today was much like the day before and the day before that. Sharp percussions punctured the stillness, but the dog was accustomed to the noise and didn’t so much as flick an ear. The man with a name that sounded to Archie like “Face” was doing something inside a structure several yards away. Other men were there, too, and handed long pieces of wood to each other and carried heavy tools and would sit and eat at least once in the middle of the day. They spoke to each other continuously, but rarely to Archie.
Archie was connected to a short chain that drew furrows in the soil when he dragged it over to his water bowl. Sometimes he drank without thirst as a way to relieve his boredom.
Archie yawned and stood up, shaking his curly fur. A fragment of memory came back to him. He’d been dreaming. His dream concerned the first man he had lived with, a man named Norton.
Norton was very friendly and played with Archie every day. Archie could still remember, though, the time when all the play ended. Norton had come and knelt and held Archie’s head in his hands, staring into his eyes. Something about that occasion had stilled Archie, and he ceased his puppylike capering and gazed back at Norton.
“I am going to be leaving you now, Archie. I’m so sorry,” Norton had intoned solemnly. “I may not be coming back for a long time. You’ll be living with my brother, Damien. He’ll take good care of you. Okay, Archie?”
Archie had heard a question associated with his name, but had understood nothing else other than the odd, vague sense that something weighty and grave was happening. He wagged when Norton stood and embraced the man people called Face. “Take care,” Face said. And then Norton left, and Archie never saw him again. Instead, Archie went to live with Face.
Face was not much like Norton, though they carried similar odors. Human skin gave off a distinctive smell when frequently baked in the sun, and both men had darkly tanned faces and arms. But where Norton had laughed a lot and was very amused when Archie would pounce on tossed balls or thrown sticks, Face didn’t seem to have time or inclination for any games like that. He rarely spoke to Archie, but he did bring him every day to this place of banging wood and buzzing machines. When it rained, Archie lay in the resulting mud, and it clung to his snarled fur. When it was hot, like today, he sprawled out in the sun and panted.
With Norton, Archie had slept inside on a bed. With Face, Archie went home and was led into the backyard, where a chain very similar to the one he was wearing would be affixed to his collar, and then he would remain there overnight. This was the life of a dog, and Archie just accepted it.
Archie felt abandoned on the end of his chain. He could smell his own feces nearby. Norton always scooped up his leavings, but Face just left them lying there in the dirt. This was something else Archie had to accept.
He had gone back to lying down, yawning, not so much sleepy as just exhausted by the sheer inactivity, when his ears picked up the sound of a vehicle bumping its way up the short, rutted driveway to where all the other trucks were parked. Archie raised his head, curious. The vehicle stopped, and a cloud of dust pursued it and then overcame it, settling on the gleaming finish.
There was a creak, and a man stood up out of the truck, a man Archie had never smelled before. He took a couple of steps forward, his hands on his hips, watching Face and Face’s friends working. Then the new man turned and looked at Archie.
* * *
Riggs watched in irritation as Luna attacked yet another dog toy, a stuffed lamb with a missing ear. Luna went after the thing as if in a fight for her life. A five-year-old, quick-moving Jack Russell, she more than outmatched Riggs’s own energy. Australian shepherds are far from lazy dogs, but after six years of living with Liam, Riggs had become accustomed to a simple life of patiently waiting for their person to come home before going berserk. Luna, it seemed, simply couldn’t suppress the need to move.
Most days, after lying in her dog bed for a little bit, Luna would suddenly go at her toys, growling, jumping on them, even throwing them across the room and then racing after them as if the animals had assumed actual life and run away from her predatory pursuit.
Riggs was not sure why it bothered him that Luna played like this. There was a disorder to the whole thing, something that offended Riggs’s basic sensibilities. The toys were now scattered around on the rug as Luna gave up on the lamb and suddenly went after a small, brown, monkey-faced animal that had long ago lost its shape to dog teeth.
Luna kept glancing at Riggs as if trying to entice him into helping her with her assault. Riggs just watched, feeling his irritation grow. He knew that when Liam came home, he would patiently round up the scattered dog toys and put them all back in the basket. Why didn’t Luna understand that the basket was where the stuffed animals belonged?
Just as abruptly as she had pounced, Luna decided to put an end to the mayhem. Abandoning the monkey, she ran and nimbly jumped on the sofa, ignoring Riggs’s glare.
Dogs were not supposed to be on the couch. This had been made very clear by both Liam and Sabrina. Though Sabrina had only been around for a few winter-summer cycles, she was as in charge as Liam as far as Riggs was concerned. If she didn’t want Luna on the couch, Luna should obey her. That was just good dog behavior.
From her raised position, Luna triumphantly surveyed the room. Her gaze managed to avoid meeting Riggs’s eyes. Then her attention became riveted on a stuffed cow that was lying like a corpse on a throw rug. Riggs knew what she was going to do before she did, watching the excitement spread through her muscular little body like an electric current. She tensed, lowering herself, and then, with a quick burst of speed, Luna dove off the couch and charged at the cow, her nails scrambling across the hardwood floor as she built momentum. When she pounced, her forward motion pushed both the rug and the stuffed cow under an easy chair. She turned and stared at Riggs in disbelief. What had just happened?
Riggs wasn’t sure why the stuffed cow was now under the chair, nor did he have much interest in what Luna proposed to do about it. It was her fault.
Copyright © 2024 by W. Bruce Cameron
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