Holding Hands (5 page)

“
What are you going to
do?”

“
Find a vet and bring him
there.”

“
That’s insane.”

“
And leaving him out on our
porch in a cloudburst isn’t? When the poor guy is injured?” She
shifted, presenting Scott with her shoulder and back. “If you don’t
want to help, don’t help. Go back to bed.”

He surprised her by nudging her aside,
leaning out into the rain and running his hands over the dog’s wet
fur. When he reached one of the dog’s rear paws, the dog emitted a
pained yelp. “It’s his foot,” he said.

“
Can you tell what’s
wrong?”

“
It’s dark. It’s wet. No.”
Scott leaned back on his haunches. The dog peered up at him through
pleading eyes. In the diffuse light, he looked as if he had some
retriever in him, maybe some cocker spaniel. He appeared well fed.
“Get dressed,” Scott said.

Clearly, he wasn’t pleased that they were
going to spend their night helping the dog. Clearly, he intended to
help the dog, anyway. Meredith knew better than to question him. If
she asked if he really wanted to do this, he’d say no.

She wiggled into her still soggy jeans. At
least her socks and sneakers were dry. Stumbling around the room,
she located her cell phone, tapped the browser icon and searched
for veterinarians in the West Dennis vicinity. She located a Dr.
Burnham with an emergency number. While she phoned, Scott abandoned
the dog and threw on some clothes.

Dr. Burnham did not sound too groggy. “The
dog has no ID?” she asked once Meredith had explained the
situation. “Bring him to the clinic. Maybe he has a chip implanted.
I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

Scott remained silent, but his body seemed to
radiate annoyance the way it had radiated a sleepy warmth when he’d
joined her at the door. He wrapped a towel from the bathroom around
the dog and hoisted him up, his motions gentle despite his
irritation.

How could Meredith consider ending her
marriage? she thought as she raced ahead of him through the rain to
unlock the car. He might not listen to her. He might not see her.
He might have a harem of undergrads visiting his office, eager to
serve fulfill his every whim. He might not even like dogs that
much; Skippy was her baby, not his. But on a rain-soaked night in a
strange town, he would carry an injured stray dog to a
veterinarian’s office. That alone was a reason to love him. Maybe
the only reason she could think of at the moment, but it was
something.

He sat in the back seat with the whimpering
dog while Meredith drove. The neighborhood where their cabin was
located remained dark, but once she reached Route 28, streetlights
lined the road and the few businesses still open—an all-night
supermarket, a drug store, the same bars they’d passed en route to
the pizza place—had lights glowing in their windows or brightening
their parking lots. She drove a mile west, surprised to have to
share the roadway with other cars at such a late hour, and glanced
at the address on her phone’s screen. She could have programmed it
into her GPS, but the clinic was right on the main road.

There it was, a white lamp glaring above the
entrance. Two other cars were parked in the lot. Meredith steered
into the spot between them. “Let me make sure the door is open
before you pick him up,” she said.

Five minutes later, the dog was in an
examining room with Dr. Burnham, a petite woman in scrubs, her
ash-blond hair frizzy from the humidity and her eyes framed by
thick glasses. “Let’s have a look at this fellow,” she said as
Scott carried lowered the dog onto the examining table. “You say
you found him outside your door? Was he out in the street?”

“
We’re just visitors,”
Meredith explained. “We rented a cabin for the weekend.”

“
I’m wondering if he was hit
by a car.” The dog didn’t complain as she peeled back the towel and
prodded his neck gently. “I don’t feel a chip,” she said. “I’ll run
a scan, but I don’t think he’s been tagged. Lucy!” she hollered,
then smiled at Meredith and Scott. “Lucy’s my assistant. She was
just doing a final bed check before closing up for the night.” A
slim, waif-like girl, her hair pulled into a pigtail, entered the
examining room. “Lucy, give the police a call and see if anyone’s
reported a missing pet. That’s where we’ll start,” the veterinarian
explained. “Then we’ll see what we can do for this pooch. How are
you doing?” she cooed to the dog, stroking him with the towel,
simultaneously soothing and drying him. “Why don’t you sit in the
waiting room?” she suggested to Meredith and Scott. “I’ll let you
know when we’ve figured things out.”

Scott’s lips moved, but he refrained from
cursing, for which Meredith was grateful. They exited the examining
room and settled on a vinyl-covered sofa in the small waiting room.
After the gloom of the cabin, she savored the bright fluorescent
lights illuminating the walls, which were decorated with paintings
of adorable, cartoonish animals. Unbearably cute puppies and
kittens, a vibrantly colored tropical bird, a sweet little bunny, a
snake that appeared to be smiling.

Behind the reception desk, Lucy busied
herself with the telephone. After a murmured conversation, she hung
up. “No missing dogs reported,” she told Meredith and Scott before
returning to the examining room.

Scott shot Meredith a look. “Don’t get any
ideas.”

‘
What ideas?” she asked
innocently.

“
We already have a
dog.”

“
I never said I wanted to
adopt this dog. But we couldn’t just leave him suffering in the
rain, could we?”

“
Apparently we couldn’t.”
Scott slouched on the sofa next to her, his knees spread and his
hands folded over his abdomen. He leaned his head against the wall
and closed his eyes.

She gazed at the face she’d fallen in love
with so many years ago. He was still unconscionably handsome, his
jaw line sharp, his cheeks hollow, his nose decisively straight,
the unruly waves of his hair glistening with raindrops. It didn’t
seem fair that in the twenty-five years they’d been married, his
face had gotten more interesting while hers had only gotten
old.

It also didn’t seem fair that he could fall
asleep sitting on a stiff couch in a brightly lit waiting room.

Her gaze journeyed down his
body, lean and supple despite the fact that he ate pizza whenever
he wanted, and came to rest on his hands. He had long, strong
fingers, and she felt the profound urge to take one of his hands
and fold those fingers around her own. When was the last time
they’d held hands? She wanted to be holding hands now.
Holding
his
hand.
Even if he was royally ticked off. Even if he was
dozing.

He wasn’t. Without opening his eyes, he said,
“Your mother is dating someone?”

At least he’d been listening to her tonight.
“Dating might be an exaggeration. They eat dinner together. They go
to events together.” She eyed Scott’s hands again. “They hold hands
at the movies.”

“
Not exactly the affair of
the century,” he said.

“
It makes her happy. She was
lonely.”
Like me
,
she almost added.

“
How can she be lonely?
She’s got all those neighbors, all those activities. And she phones
you every freaking night.”

Even when we’re on a
romantic getaway.
Meredith circled the
waiting room with her gaze. She inhaled the antiseptic scent
hovering in the air. All right, maybe
romantic
wasn’t quite
accurate.

His eyes still closed, he kept talking. “I’ve
got to warn you, if we still don’t have power tomorrow, I may have
to find a web café. I need to get some work done.”

“
This is a vacation,” she
reminded him.

“
Some vacation.” He sighed.
“It’s raining, we’re staying in a shack that has no power and I’m
buried in work. I was hoping to get the damn book finished over the
summer, but I didn’t. My editor’s breathing down my
neck.”

He was lucky he had an
editor. College faculty members were under enormous pressure to
keep publishing their research. She tried to recall what his book
was about but drew a blank. His previous two books were about
regional voting patterns or some such thing. Statistical analysis
combined with political theory. The last one had been reviewed
favorably in the
New York
Times
. The one before that had won him
tenure.

Editor or no, she didn’t want him working all
weekend. She wanted to be the one breathing down his neck, or
blowing in his ear, or nibbling on his lower lip. She was more
important than his damned editor, wasn’t she?

Dr. Burnham emerged from the examining room,
peeling blue latex gloves off her hands and smiling. “We’re dealing
with a simple fracture of his left rear leg,” she reported briskly.
“No other injuries. I’ve got his leg splinted and I’m dosing him
with antibiotics. He’s pretty hungry, too, for a dog in pain. I’m
sure he’s got an owner somewhere, given that he’s wearing a collar,
but I’m guessing he hasn’t eaten in a couple of days. You’d think
if he’d been lost for more than a day or two, his owner would have
contacted the police or the animal warden. Or the local shelters,
all of which would have contacted the police, too.”

“
Maybe he belonged to
someone who was just here on a vacation,” Meredith
suggested.

Dr. Burnham looked from Meredith to Scott and
back again. “It isn’t exactly tourist season here on the Cape.”

“
No kidding,” Scott
muttered.

“
Well, here’s where we are,”
Dr. Burnham continued. “I want to keep him overnight and make sure
there are no complications. But assuming all goes well, he should
be free to leave tomorrow. If we don’t find his owner, I’m going to
have to send him to a shelter.”

“
A no-kill shelter?”
Meredith asked.

Dr. Burnham’s smile grew tentative. “I can’t
guarantee that. Obviously, we’ll hope the dog’s owner steps
forward.” She rolled the gloves into a tight ball. “In the
meantime, not to be crass, but...an emergency call, X-rays, setting
and splinting his leg, overnight care...”

“
We’ll pay,” Meredith said
before Scott could object.

Not that he would. He might not be as
soft-hearted as she was when it came to animals, but she’d seen the
way he’d swaddled the dog in a towel and cradled him in his arms.
He’d been the one to announce that he’d sit in the back seat of the
car with the dog, rather than in the more comfortable front seat
with Meredith, when they drove to the clinic. And he would never
deny a professional the compensation she deserved.

“
I accept all major credit
cards,” Dr. Burnham said.

Chapter
Five

“
ALL I’M SAYING IS, don’t
get any ideas,” Scott said as they drove back to the
cabin.

“
Ideas about
what?”

“
About adopting that dog.
One animal is enough.”

She might have argued. But that would only
upset her, and she was desperately tired. She wanted to sleep.
Fighting could wait for tomorrow.

Still no electricity when they got back to
cabin. Even though she sensed a major explosion brewing between her
and Scott—whether over the dog or something else, she couldn’t
say—she wanted to hold his hand on the dark, pine-needle-strewn
path back to their dark cabin. But Scott remained one step ahead,
shining the flashlight’s beam down and slightly to his left to help
guide her to their door. She supposed he deserved a point for that,
but...

She understood her mother’s yearning to hold
a man’s hand.

She wondered if Emily was holding her really
hot guy’s hand. Or doing much more than holding his hand. Who knew?
As of yesterday, the last time Meredith had spoken to Emily, she
was still gushing over the guy, but by today she might have found
someone new. She was eighteen, awash in hormones and romantic
notions.

Meredith and Scott stumbled into the cabin,
peeled off their jeans and collapsed onto the bed. Meredith assumed
a clock existed somewhere in the room, but it was probably electric
and therefore not working. She could have used the flashlight to
read her watch, but she didn’t want to waste the battery. Her phone
was buried inside her purse, and she didn’t want to waste its
battery, either.

Not surprisingly, Scott fell asleep almost
instantly. Meredith lay beside him, her body absorbing the warmth
of his, her mind churning far too rapidly for sleep to take hold.
She thought about the dog, about how tenderly Scott had carried it,
how coldly he’d announced that she shouldn’t consider adopting it.
She thought about how attractive she found him even when he was
being a bastard, and how infuriating that was.

When she finally did drift off to sleep, she
dreamed about taking long evening walks with him back home. In her
dream she held Skippy’s leash in her left hand, and in his right
hand Scott held a leash at the end of which was the dog they’d
found on their cabin’s threshold, his leg fully healed and his eyes
as bright as Skippy’s, knowing he was wanted and loved. In the
dream, she and Scott held hands—her right, his left, their fingers
intertwined, their palms pressed together, warm and comforting.

She woke to a cabin filled with sunlight. A
surprisingly charming cabin, now that she could see it. Its rustic
paneled walls held framed watercolors of seascapes and beach
scenes. The dresser was sturdy oak; it looked like an antique. The
bed on which she lay featured an elaborately wrought brass
headboard, and the cover spread over her was a delicately stitched
quilt. Tulle curtains fluttered at the windows, and the braided rug
she’d felt beneath her feet last night was in fact an intricately
woven floor covering. The chairs where she and Scott had eaten
their too-late supper last night were as drab as she remembered,
but everything else in the room was much prettier than she’d
imagined.