Saving Sunni (27 page)

Without thinking, I flinched away and hurt flashed across his features.

“
Scheisse
,” he growled, dropping his hand tiredly back to his side. He must have been really upset; he hardly ever slipped back into German.

“Did you really think I was going to hit you? I have never hit you in anger, and I never would.” He went to the window and stood, looking out.

He was right. He was nothing like Randy, who wouldn’t think twice about smacking me in the face after a couple beers. That was the main reason I’d left him. It never even occurred to me to worry about that with Sir. So why was I flinching?

When I thought about it, I knew why. I’d been behaving like I used to with Randy, doing things I knew I shouldn’t do, and then trying to hide it. Things like not going to the appointment for the permanent protection order without telling Sir or sage. The person I was back then was taking charge of me again. I was trying to dress like a teenager and acting like someone who had an abusive boyfriend instead of a mature, reciprocal relationship with a reasonable adult. Maybe that’s what Geri meant about growing up.

We heard the front door open, and sage walked in, home from her last class of the day. She took one look at our stiff postures. “What’s going on?”

I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Sir is chewing my ass.” Part of my brain recognized that I sounded like a sulky adolescent, but I wanted him to know that I wasn’t happy with the situation either. It was time to get this out in the open.

“Okay…why?” sage asked uncertainly.

“I dropped the protection order and Sir refuses to understand or even let me explain why.”

“What?” sage gasped. To her credit, she didn’t slink away into the kitchen like she would have in the past. Instead, she put down her book bag and looked between me and Sir. I half expected her to take out a notepad and jot down notes like a psychiatrist, but she simply waited.

Sir started to take a step in my direction. I braced myself but made an effort to keep calm. Sir saw my reaction and stopped. He took a deep breath before saying tightly, “Fine. Now that sage is also here, you will only have to go through the story once. Please explain.”

“Well, you don’t know him like I do. The protection order makes it so I can’t talk to him. If I could get him to understand that our relationship is over, he’ll leave. I know he will,” I said, thinking furiously of how I could put this so it would make sense to him.

Sir shook his head. “I can’t believe you could be that naïve.”

“I’m not naïve!” I protested. “I’ve known him since we were both twelve. There’s no point in trying to avoid him. Once he understands—”

Sir looked up at the ceiling and blew out a long breath. “I can see this is going nowhere. We are not going to agree on this but what is done is done. We will just have to live with the consequences and hope the situation doesn’t turn out as badly as I expect it will. We will find a way to protect you.”

“I don’t need protecting, damn it! He isn’t going to hurt me.”

sage turned to me, eyes flashing. “Right. Just like he didn’t hurt you when you were married to him.”

“You don’t—” I was cut off by the sharp snap of Sir’s voice.

“Enough!” he roared. From the look in his face it was not the time to challenge him.

“Yes, Sir,” we both replied.

“All right. There is nothing that can be done now. We will table any further discussion to a later date. Do you not have your puppy meeting tonight?”

“Shit!” I felt the blood drain out of my face. I had meant to stop and pick up snacks for the group, but of course I’d forgotten all about it in my rush.

The door buzzer went off and Sir stepped past me to go get it. sage gave me a malevolent look and stalked off into the kitchen.

I felt like I was having a meltdown. I had no idea how to deal with a roomful of human puppies. I should be doing something, but I had no energy whatsoever. I slumped down into a chair and considered curling up in a fetal position when Allen and Tim came in, followed by Kylie and a couple of other people.

I immediately started to feel better. It must have had to do with the puppy energy that they brought with them, or their air of anticipation. The atmosphere in the room lightened as if a fog had lifted. Sir stayed by the front door, letting people in, and soon we had a group of about ten or twelve sitting around the room in chairs or on the floor. I ran back and forth getting sodas and water, my energy restored. These were my kind of people. We had something in common that most people would never understand. We didn’t even really understand it ourselves, but just knowing that I was in a room filled with human puppies and their trainers transformed my whole outlook.

Everyone was chatting cheerfully when Toby came in and introduced himself to me. I almost laughed—if a Beagle turned into a man, this would have been him. He had a curious, happy expression, and his body quivered with repressed energy. If he’d had a tail, it would have been in perpetual motion. I returned his contagious smile. He tilted his head slightly, which nearly made me laugh out loud, and whispered, “Do you want to run the meeting or do you want me to?”

“Oh, you do it, please,” I said, glancing at Sir. He hadn’t moved to take it over, so I nodded emphatically at Toby, and he whistled to quiet the group down.

“Okay,” he said, vibrating with excitement. “Let’s get this ball rolling. We’re here because sunni has graciously volunteered to help us set up some local puppy events. Now, we can’t make her do this all by herself”—he tried to look sternly around the room but only succeeded in making everyone smile in amusement—“so I think we need to come up with a plan for what events we want to do and who is going to be responsible for them.”

Toby looked back at me, almost as if he expected to be patted on the head for his efforts so far. I refrained from reaching out and doing it.

Allen leaned forward, absentmindedly rubbing Tim’s ears in a way that made me long to move to the floor in front of Sir. “So what events do we want to have? What are our options?”

I got up and grabbed a notebook and pen, which nobody else seemed to have thought of. Their ideas ranged from once-a-week parties (which Sir firmly vetoed), to an annual “dog show,” similar to the one that Sir had originally suggested. I was so engrossed in the conversation that I was completely taken aback when sage walked in, carrying plates of the dog biscuit cookies she used to make for me. Looking at the treats, I overwhelmed by a sense of grief at how our lives and our family had been disintegrating. sage and I could go for days barely speaking, and Sir was so stressed out that I hardly dared say anything to him. The connection we had, between him and me as well as between the three of us, felt like it was down to a single thread that might break any second.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I stared down at the cookie in my hand. I’m not sure how long I was in my limbo state, but I gradually became aware of Toby saying, “So everybody is agreed?”

I jumped, looking down to see what notes I had. The last thing I had written was something about a possible event in the spring. I had no idea what Toby was talking about at the moment. I looked guiltily around and saw Sir watching me thoughtfully.

“I’ll contact Mary,” one of the trainers said, and everybody nodded solemnly at him.

Toby turned to me. “So, if you could start that list and research, probably by the time we are ready to start publicizing our event, we’ll know what works and what doesn’t.”

I smiled, trying to look like I wasn’t hopelessly lost.

He turned back to the room. “I’ll start an email group and we can communicate about what days we can all get together. Will that be okay?”

They all got up and prepared to leave. I hoped they hadn’t noticed how distracted I was. The meeting started out so nicely, too, and it had felt so good having other puppies there. But when I was at odds with Sir, nothing else really seemed right. There was a cold heaviness in the pit of my stomach. The only thing that sounded appealing was getting in bed and sliding down until I was completely under the covers where I could sleep until everything was better. Hiding wouldn’t fix anything, but I had no idea what would.

“sunni, we need to talk,” Sir said, returning to the room after seeing the last of the group to the door. He sat in his recliner and looked at me. I was curled up on the couch, staring at my notes and wondering what I’d missed, panicking. What had I agreed to do? What list and research had Toby been talking about? My mind whirled through ways of getting out of this conversation long enough to contact somebody else from the group and ask subtly what I was supposed to work on.

One look at Sir’s face told me he knew exactly what had happened and how lost I was. He didn’t look angry, exactly, but a serious discussion was coming.

“So, tell me what happened at the meeting.” He leaned back and steepled his fingers, resting his chin on them, expecting me to give him a full report.

I stared at the pad of paper in my hand, opening my mouth but not finding any words.

“I think,” I started, trying desperately to pull my scattered thoughts together, “I think they are going to set up some play parties.” It seemed like a reasonable guess, but he wasn’t fooled.

“sunni,” he said sternly, “you have no idea what you agreed to do, do you?”

I shook my head miserably. I couldn’t bluff my way out of it. Why did I even care? Everything in my life looked bleak and uninteresting. I half hoped Sir would order me to call Toby and back out of whatever plans they thought I was helping with.

“I know this is a tough time, sunni, but that’s no excuse to shirk your responsibilities,” Sir said.

I continued to stare at my lap. “No, Sir,” I whispered, horrified that tears were welling up and threatening to escape. I struggled desperately for control, but they spilled down my cheeks.

Suddenly Sir was beside me on the couch, pulling me into him. I resisted, feeling the urge to run into the bedroom and hide, but his arms were wrapped around me, and I knew I wasn’t going anyplace. I sighed. Misery overwhelmed me, and I turned my face into his chest and let go of my resistance.

He held me there, stroking my hair and back while I cried for what seemed like hours. It was deliciously self-indulgent to give myself completely over to my frustrations, and luxurious to lean against his large, strong body without worrying about the problems in our relationship. I hated the emotions that welled up, but the release was painful and wonderful and being held by him reminded me of the better times when just his touch or a look could send me into a euphoria of submissiveness. When my sobs subsided into hiccups, he pushed me back and looked into my face.

“Tell me what is bothering you,” he said, wiping a tear with his thumb.

I gaped at him. “What’s bothering me?” I repeated, incredulous. “Everything! Everything is going wrong and it’s all my fault and you’re going to leave and—” The tears began flowing again. I hated myself for it, even though it felt so good to just let go.

He sighed and let me cry against his chest some more, waiting for me to calm down enough to talk.

“To begin with,” he said when I was quiet again, “none of this is your fault. True, it is your ex-husband that started it, but you could not help that. Second, I know it seems like our lives are falling apart, but things can still turn out well. I may need to go back to Austria for a while, but I will find another job and come back. Once my citizenship is established I can work wherever I want, not just as a chemist. We can decide where we want to live and we’ll all get jobs that we enjoy. If we work together as a team we can make it through this situation very well.”

“Really?” It came out in a squeak, like a blubbering three-year-old, but I couldn’t help it.

“Yes, really.” He held me in silence again for a few minutes, resting his head on mine and waiting for my residual sobs to die away.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, feeling foolish.

“But for now,” he continued, “you need to work with the situation, not try to hide from it. You have responsibilities and you need to fulfill those, even if there are other distracting problems. sage, please come in and sit down.”

I didn’t look up, but was very aware of sage coming in and hesitantly taking a seat at the end of the couch. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her, but I couldn’t think of any real reason to be angry. We had to figure out how we were going to deal with things, and that wasn’t going to be accomplished by fighting or ignoring each other.

Sir got up and paced up and down the room. “There have got to be some changes made,” he said, sounding like a teacher with a group of unruly students. “And now is as good a time as any for us to come to an understanding.”

Chapter 27

sage and I both stared at him. He looked back gravely, holding our gaze for a few seconds each. “There has been too much of this bullshit. I thought if I left you alone, you would deal with it in your own way, but nothing is happening. I was wrong to think this would resolve itself. I am the master of this household, and I am going to regain control of it.”

No one said anything for a while, and Sir went to sit in his recliner, watching us.

“sage,” he said. “Tell us how you feel about the relationship lately.”

I thought for a second she might jump up and run out of the apartment. Sir simply sat and looked at her until she gulped and decided she had no choice.