An Unexpected Grace (17 page)

As she pranced around, smiling, her limp seemed less severe than before, and her leg was hardly wobbling. If she'd had an audience, she'd have been kicking her cancan skirt and winking at men in the front row.
Wahooo!
proclaimed each swish of her tail.

Grace's prancing announced that all she wanted in the world, besides Adam and Lila, was to shed her afflictions. And since Betsy's treatment must have brought new relief from stiffness and pain, Grace now seemed sure that robust health was just over the next hill, and the Great Spirit would never let her down.

Standing on her hind legs, she rested her front paws on the treatment table and encouraged Lila out from under the blanket into the glorious afternoon. The world champion of thinking with her heart, Grace acted like being bereft was ancient history, and she zoomed toward exuberance.

Lila guessed Grace wanted her to be exuberant too. She said, “Okay, I'm getting up.”

 

Lila snapped Grace's leash on her collar and led her out of Betsy's office. On the street, Lila looked around for armed maniacs and for the brute she imagined Marshall was. Ahead of her and Grace, an elderly couple held hands and licked ice cream cones, and a Japanese tourist aimed his camera at a woman who was sitting on a curb, studying a map. Outside the Bus Depot Café, a street fiddler sawed away beside his violin case, open for coins. His bluegrass drifted across the town square.

Lila hurried Grace across the street and headed down a narrow road, where she doubted Marshall would go. Four boys were building a cardboard fort on the creek bank while a cocker spaniel splashed around them. Grace paused to watch, then to sniff a path; she whimpered like she expected Bambi to bound out of the woods. Lila slowly led her up a flight of stairs through the trees. Since Grace had run off the raccoon on the deck two weeks before, Lila felt safe. Grace was her fierce protector.

Halfway up the stairs, they came to an iron gate flanked by two stone ducks embedded in concrete and wearing bandanas, floppy hats, and tacky rhinestone-studded sunglasses. Lila laughed at the whimsy. “Look, Grace!”

The warm afternoon must have brought out her itches. She seemed interested only in nibbling her paw.

“I'm going to do a painting of this gate.”

Focused only on scratching, Grace raked her hind paw's nails through her fur as if she intended to claw off her side. The miserable expression on her face shouted that she wished she could wriggle out of her skin and rush to Pet Stop for flea shampoo and a back scratcher.

Lila could not deny Grace a bath for another minute. No matter how leery Lila was of Adam Spencer, she had to iron out the wrinkles between them and ask for his help. She had to act on her love for Grace and think with her heart.

Lila bent down, hugged Grace, and lightly ran her hand along Grace's side to show that a gentle scratch could be as good as a fierce one. Lila promised her, “We'll get you right.”

“R
eady for your morning ablutions, girl?” Adam asked.

Grace wagged her tail with an ecstatic swish that could have blasted off the floor the imaginary sultan she fanned with her plume.

“Hello to you, too,” Adam said to Lila. He stepped into the entry in jeans and a navy sweatshirt. Slung over his shoulder was an olive-green duffel bag.

He looked at the doorways leading to other parts of the house. “So where do you want to bathe Grace?”

“The master bath,” Lila said.

“Fine.” He took long strides into the kitchen, then stopped in front of Lila's last four paintings, lined up against the wainscoting. “Cristina told me you were a painter.”

“I'm doing a series of gates and doors.”

He bent down and studied Lila's painting of a garden gate with a decoupage print of Our Lady of Guadalupe tacked to the wood. Then he quickly passed by the apoplectic-desperado granary door and the door with the dolphin knocker, and stopped to examine a door Lila had just finished. It had a curved wrought-iron handle, as graceful as a swan's neck, below a brass handprint, palm forward like a policeman telling you to stop.

“The hand's supposed to keep away evil spirits,” Lila said.

“If you opened the door and showed what's inside, the painting would be more interesting.”

Adam's criticism smarted.

He stooped down for a closer look at the three other paintings. “Same goes for these. People want to know what's going on behind the door.”

Who asked your opinion?
“I want the barrier, not the opening.”

“That's a shame.”

 

Lila led Adam down the hall to the master bath, which had a shining marble floor. A camel could have hosed down in Greg's giant shower, and hamsters could have nested in Cristina's monogrammed towels' thick pile.

Adam opened the glass door, removed the showerhead from its hook, and extended the flexible hose. “This'll do,” he said.

He set down his bag as if it were a briefcase and he and Lila were about to discuss a business plan. But as Grace sniffed his loafers, he unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped his fly.

Lila blanched, then froze. Adam must have noticed, but he ignored her. He kicked off his shoes, pulled off his brown socks, and with one quick motion, slid out of his jeans. Black Watch plaid swimming trunks flapped against his thighs.

Lila felt like someone trying to keep eye contact in a nudist camp. As she leaned against the sink, her Horny Guttersnipe, the cousin of her Pleaser and Crazy Aunt, could not help but notice Adam's manly, naked legs. When he took off his sweatshirt and tossed it on the wicker table next to Lila, her Horny Guttersnipe also couldn't help but note the strength of his arms and the patch of brown hair on his beautiful chest. She cried,
Tee-hee! We're talking “hunk” here!

Lila forced her eyes to Adam's face. She told herself that, after Yuri and Reed, she might not trust men, but she had not gone blind, and she could not expect herself to clump through life without finding a man like Adam attractive. Nevertheless, she promised herself that being physically drawn to him did not mean she was vulnerable, and, after all, he was there only to help Grace—and at most he and Lila would be casual acquaintances. She repeated these things to herself as Adam opened his duffel bag and pulled out a hair dryer, a bottle of dog shampoo, a brush with steel bristles, and, finally, four towels, each of which was neatly folded into thirds.

“Did Martha Stewart do your laundry?” Lila asked.

He gave her an odd look. “What?”

“Your towels. How a person folds towels says a lot about him.”

“Oh, that.” He bent forward and turned on the shower's faucet. “My dad taught me to fold them that way. He learned it from his grandmother.”

“I thought maybe you'd grown up in a five-star hotel.”

“Nope. A Pennsylvania fruit farm. No stars, just apples.”

Hauling crates must have built up his muscles!
Lila's Horny Guttersnipe winked at Lila and chortled.

Adam ran water over his hand to test the temperature. “Are you always sarcastic like that? Towels, hotels?”

“Are you always judgmental?”

“Not always.” Smiling, Adam rested his fists, akimbo, at his waist. He glanced around the bathroom and said, “We can't wash a dog who isn't here.”

Only then did Lila notice that Grace had sneaked away.

As Adam adjusted the water, Lila went to retrieve her from her hiding spot under the bed, where she never went anymore. When Lila lifted the bed skirt, Grace peered out at her with a wary expression, which informed her that whatever she and Adam had planned, Grace wanted none of it. At the same time, though, she thumped her tail on the floor.

“Come on, Grace. You may as well give in without a fight.”

She averted her eyes as if she did not understand what Lila was asking, and, further, she believed Lila was addressing some other dog under the bed.

Lila did not want to tug Grace's collar even though her neck had healed. So Lila wheedled and hinted of a future chicken-skin reward until Grace finally wriggled out and allowed herself to be led to the bathroom. As Lila unbuckled Grace's collar and set it on the counter, Lila's Horny Guttersnipe again noted Adam's bare chest.

“Let's do it.” Flinch. “Um, let's give Grace a bath,” Lila said.

“You ready, girl?” Adam asked Grace as she panted and looked wary again.

When he bent down and nudged her into the shower, her toenails clicked on the tile. He stepped in with her, and Lila rolled up her jeans to her knees and stepped in too. She and Adam crowded together.

As he ran the showerhead over Grace's chest, Lila patted Grace's light auburn haunch. Once her front half was soaked, Adam and Lila changed places. He wetted‘ down her back end while Lila comforted her from the shoulders up. He poured shampoo into his hand and gently worked it into her fur, and Lila lathered her up the best she could with her good hand. When Grace looked like a vanilla-frosted cake, Adam rinsed her; dingy gray foam gurgled down the drain. So he and Lila soaped and rinsed again—and Grace stood there, law abiding, but anyone could see from her face that she wasn't thrilled.

While Adam and Lila worked together, they were quiet. At first the silence seemed slightly hostile, but then it grew companionable, as if they'd long bathed dogs together. Lila didn't mind sloshing around with him. After they finished hosing down Grace for the second time, Lila liked how solicitous he was, gently helping Grace out of the shower.

Immediately, she shook the water from her fur and splattered the cabinets and walls. “Way to go, Grace,” Adam joked and threw a towel over her back so she looked like a small jousting pony.

He handed Lila another towel, and, together, they rubbed Grace down. Then, side by side, he dried her with his hair dryer, and Lila swiped at her fur with his grooming brush. When they finished, the Argonauts would have turned their ship around to collect Grace's fleece. She practically sparkled.

“Thanks for coming over,” Lila said.
You're not as bad as I expected.

Adam smiled as he put the cap back on the shampoo. “I appreciate your help. I hadn't counted on it.”

After his kindness toward Grace that morning, something needed to be said about his fence. Lila told him, “I was wrong not to let you know sooner I was keeping Grace. I'm sorry. I know I put you out.”

“You did,” he said without giving Lila an inch of slack, and tossed the shampoo into his duffel bag. “But I was going to build a fence eventually.”

 

While Lila swabbed water off the walls and cabinets and picked fur out of the shower drain, Adam dried himself off with his last clean towel, pulled his jeans up over his bathing suit, and shrugged into his sweatshirt.

“If your arm hasn't healed in a couple of weeks, we need to bathe Grace again,” he said.

“I'll be strong enough to do it myself.”

He leaned against the sink and put on his socks and shoes. “You don't like to be alone in the house with me, do you?”

“Oh . . .” Gulp. “I don't know . . .”

“Are you afraid of me or something?”

“Some.”

“I'm not Charles Manson.”

“You're a man. Men shoot people.”

“So do women. If I wanted, I could be scared of you.”

“I'd never hurt anybody.”

“Neither would I,” Adam said. “You afraid of getting shot again?”

“Wouldn't you be if someone had tried to kill you?”

“Maybe.” Adam stuffed his dog-grooming tools and soggy towels into his bag. “You know your chances of two unrelated men trying to kill you in one lifetime?”

“No.” Lila shook her head.

“Okay. Take nine left-handed Peruvian nuns. They're rustling hippos across Siberia. You with me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your chances of another man shooting you again are less than those nuns running you down in your living room at 9:07 tomorrow night.”

Lila pictured nuns in wimples and habits, prodding hippos whose hooves were sinking into snow. She laughed. Hard. Something in her chest cracked open to the sun. Adam laughed too. Grace, who was sitting at Lila's feet, looked up, startled.

“I don't think Grace has ever seen me laugh before,” Lila said.

“It's time she did.” Adam hoisted his bag onto his shoulder.

 

When Lila and Adam headed toward the kitchen, Grace followed close on his heels and made clear she didn't want him to go. At the end of the hall he turned around. “If you come with me, I'll show you the dog park.”

Lila cleared her throat. Adam as hunk-at-a-distance was one thing; Adam as trustworthy man was another. “I don't take Grace downtown,” she lied.

Adam frowned. “You have to take her to the park. She needs exercise.”

“We could run into Marshall.”

“He hates dogs. He'd never be at the park. Besides, he works Saturdays. Today he's miles from Mill Valley.”

“I don't want to risk it.”

The outside edges of Adam's eyes scrunched down. Obviously, he suspected Grace's safety wasn't what he and Lila were talking about. “We could leave her here and go by ourselves.”

“I've got work to do.”

“And she's got a leg to strengthen.”

“I'll strengthen it.”

Adam patted Grace good-bye and opened the front door. “You can't stay scared forever.”

 

Lila rewarded Grace for her cooperation in the bath by feeding her cheddar cheese and chicken skin on a slice of wheat bread. She downed it in two bites and looked up at Lila with moist eyes to beg for more.

“Maybe later.” Lila ran her fingers through Grace's fluffy gold fur.

Lila made herself a cup of lemon-ginger tea, sat down to paint, decided she didn't really want to paint, went to the refrigerator for an apple, changed her mind, took the apple back to the refrigerator, returned to the table. She rested her chin in her hands and stared out the window at an airplane crossing the sky like a trout who'd lost her stream. Lila got up and turned on NPR but concluded that she didn't want to think about rising interest rates, so she clicked off the radio.

“I can't let some man stir me up like this, Grace.”

 

Twenty minutes later Adam was back at the front door. He had changed into dry jeans and an oxford shirt, which was open at the top—and any woman in her right mind would have rejoiced at his alabaster-pillar neck. He was holding a brown grocery bag, which Grace gave a thorough sniffing.

“I've solved your problem with Grace,” he said, stepping into the entry before Lila invited him in. “Turn around and close your eyes.”

She couldn't do that. Not for a man who stole dogs, and Grace was by the front door. “Why should I turn around?”

“I have a surprise. Trust me. You'll like it.”

I don't trust you. That's the point.
But Lila was curious enough to go ahead and turn around. She could always grab Grace if she heard Adam lead her outside.

Adam's grocery bag rustled, and Grace squeaked. More crinkles of paper. Shuffles of paws.

The wait started to feel like Lila was standing in line for the last hot fudge sundae to be served in America. “What are you doing?”

“Something great. You'll see.”

Lila sighed an impatient sigh.

Finally, Adam said, “Okay, now you can look.”

When Lila turned around, Grace was wearing shaggy black-and-white-splotched fabric, anchored to her back by elastic around her belly and neck. Stuffed white-felt horns, attached with a chinstrap, stuck out above her ears. Hanging down her front legs were white strips of material with black hooves printed on the bottom, held in place by strings tied above her paws.

Grace did not know that she was now a Holstein, but she must have sensed Lila's delight at the outfit. She straightened to her very best posture and tossed back her head, like a model on the cover of
Vogue
.

“Grace can go downtown now. Marshall won't recognize her,” Adam said.

“Yes, he would. Even if you covered her up with a sheet, he'd be suspicious of any dog you were with.”

“Maybe, but I told you he's nowhere near Mill Valley today.”

“Then why the cow disguise?”

“To humor you.”

Lila smiled. “Where'd you get it?”

“At a thrift store. I bought it for my niece's dog for Halloween.”