One Mountain Away (19 page)

They rounded the fence, got to the door and knocked. Charlotte didn’t expect an answer. In fact she was beginning to feel like a trespasser and was ready to give up for the day. Just as she was about to say so, a man threw the door open and stared at them through red-rimmed eyes.

Their host looked as if he might have just gotten up from a nap. He was at most in his mid-thirties, wearing straw-dusted overalls covering what was probably a college sweatshirt. His chocolate-brown hair needed cutting, and he needed a shave, which he seemed to realize, because his hand went to his chin.

“I don’t get many visitors all the way out here,” he said in greeting.

“I’m so sorry,” Charlotte said. “We just took it on ourselves to see if anybody was home. We were about to leave.”

He opened the door wider and gestured them in. After a brief hesitation, Charlotte preceded Harmony into a cheaply paneled office with a metal desk against one wall, file cabinets and a bulletin board against the other.

“You caught me at a bad time,” he said, “but at least you caught me. You wouldn’t have in an hour. I’m on my way out of town.”

Beyond them was a large room divided into sizable partitioned areas that opened into attached runs along the back of the building. Here, too, everything was clean and neat. Only there were no dogs in sight.

Charlotte held out her hand and introduced herself, then Harmony. He wiped his palm on the side of his overalls before shaking hands with both of them. “Brad Reynolds,” he said.

“I think we’ve not only come at a bad time, we’ve come to the wrong place,” Charlotte said. “I’d heard you bred goldendoodles for seizure-response dogs, but it looks like you got out of the business.”

With fingers spread wide, he swirled his hair off his forehead. He still looked half-asleep. “Right place, wrong time,” he said. “We’re shut down for now. Breeding was my wife’s project, and she was in a car accident three weeks ago.”

“That’s awful,” Harmony said. “Is she okay?”

“She’s going to be, after a few hard months of therapy. For the next two weeks she’s at a rehab center in South Carolina, where her mother’s a nurse, and she and my father-in law are keeping our two kids. I’ll be on my way down there to see them in a little while.”

“We won’t keep you,” Charlotte said. “I’m so sorry. May I leave my card for later, when things get back to normal?”

“What happened to the dogs?” Harmony asked, before he could respond. “Even if you don’t have puppies, you must have the mothers?”

“We were between litters—well, except for one mother who’s about to whelp. Friends are keeping the rest of them for us, along with our horses, but nobody’s ready for a litter of pups.”

“What will you do with her?”

“I don’t have many choices. The organization we sell the puppies to is closed for a couple of weeks, off on vacation somewhere, and I can’t reach them to see what they can rig up. They’re in Indiana, so they wouldn’t be much help, anyway, not until the puppies are old enough to transfer to local families to be socialized and trained.”

He hadn’t answered Harmony’s question, so Charlotte persisted. “So what will you do?”

“Tonight my sister’s coming down from Johnson City, and she’ll take Velvet to her vet. She’d keep her, but she’s got a couple of territorial females who won’t accept her. So the vet’s agreed to take her, and when the time’s right he’ll find good homes for the puppies and make back his investment. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to afford to pay his fees if we try to get them back.” He looked surprised he had told them so much. “Look, I—”

“They won’t be trained as seizure dogs, then?” Charlotte asked.

“Probably not. The logistics are just too difficult. Rilla, that’s my wife, had real hopes for this litter, too.” He glanced at a clock on the wall. “I—”

“Couldn’t a volunteer raise the puppies? At least until they’re old enough to go to the right homes to be trained?”

He looked frustrated and flipped his hands, palms up. “I don’t know
anybody
like that. I’ve cashed in all my chips with friends and family, even my own vet. Everybody’s already taking care of something.”

Charlotte thought about Minnie Marlborough, who would have stepped forward without a second thought. They needed Minnie right now, or somebody like her. Analiese had told her about all the people who had helped and loved the old woman. She thought about the large check she had written the local animal shelter as penance.

“I could take them,” she heard herself saying. “No charge, of course. Until they’re old enough, I mean. The mother would come back to you?”

He looked as if he was trying to make sense of that. “She could, although Rilla was going to retire her after this litter. We’re not a puppy mill. We don’t wear out our breeders, and we were probably going to find her a family once the pups were weaned. Do you have—”

“Experience?” Charlotte shook her head. “I’ll be honest, not a bit with raising puppies, but I grew up on a farm farther up Doggett Mountain, and I know animals backward and forward. I have money for vet care and advice, and resources—”

“And she has me,” Harmony put in. “I’m good with dogs. They trust me, and we could learn anything we need to really fast.”

“Why?” he asked.

Charlotte admired the young man for going straight to the point. “Because my granddaughter has epilepsy, and one day soon I’d like her to have a trained dog. If these pups have potential to be particularly good with seizures, then they shouldn’t be wasted. And with luck maybe we could even end up with one from this litter. I know you can’t guarantee we’d get one, that’s probably up to the organization that trains them, but maybe you could put in a good word.”

He was waking up now. Charlotte imagined the days since his wife’s accident had been all about reorganizing and making decisions. Sleep had not been a priority.

“Someone will vouch for you?” he asked.

She opened her purse and took out her card. “This is me. You can call my office for a start. They can give you a long list of Asheville’s finest who will promise you the puppies will be in good hands.”

He thought for a moment. “You have a place for them?”

Harmony took that one. “You ought to see Charlotte’s house. Every puppy could have a private room with a bath. Not that they will. Will the mother be okay with this? Living indoors? Strangers?”

“Velvet’s lived in and out of our house, so that’s not an issue.”

Charlotte could imagine his dilemma. The offer sounded too good to be true, but if it
was
true, it solved so many problems for him.

She added a bonus. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll get in touch and bring them back here. Or even take them up to that vet in Johnson City, if that’s still the only answer. But at the very least this will give you some time to work out a better plan. When are the puppies going to come?”

“Sometime next week.”

“We’ll be ready. We’ll take good care of Velvet.”

“I have a friend, Glenda, who works as an assistant to a vet in East Asheville,” Harmony said, as if she’d just remembered. “I bet she’ll come and stay with us, to be there when the puppies are born.”

That seemed to be the final piece of the puzzle for Brad. “Mind if I make a few calls?”

“Of course. May we see Velvet in the meantime?”

“Sure. She’s been out here keeping me company. She’s probably still snoozing in that last kennel.” He gestured to the room beyond.

Charlotte followed Harmony, who took the lead. The space was divided into six cubicles. There was only one dog in sight now, an amber-colored retriever asleep on a bed of clean straw in a kennel with an open door. Charlotte wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Brad had been napping on the straw beside her when they knocked.

“That’s a goldendoodle?” Harmony asked.

“No, Velvet looks like a golden retriever, so the puppies’ father must be a poodle. According to their website, a first-generation cross of the breeds is supposed to be the best. Isn’t she gorgeous?”

The dog lifted her regal head and stared at them, but she didn’t bother to get up.

“Boy, don’t I know how she feels?” Harmony squatted beside the dog and offered her hand to sniff. Then, when it was accepted, she began to pet Velvet’s neck. “She’s a beauty.”

Charlotte joined Harmony closer to the ground, offering her hand as the younger woman had done. “I don’t think we’re going to make it up the mountain today, after all.”

“Where were we going?”

“A place called the old Sawyer farm. Velvet would love it there, but we’ll have to go another time. We need to take her back to the house and settle her in. If Brad decides we’re reliable enough.”

“What will your references say when he asks if you’re sane enough to take the dog?”

“They’ll think he’s joking. Then they’ll think I’ve lost my mind.”

“Maybe you have.”

Charlotte stroked Velvet’s ears. “If I have, I won’t be looking for it anytime soon.”

Chapter Eighteen

HARMONY LOVED TRYING this and that, so tapas were her favorite and Zambra her favorite restaurant. She hoped she and Davis could eat in the courtyard, with its parallel rows of tables against caramel stucco walls. She loved the fresh air wafting through the keyhole-shaped doorway and the snatches of conversation as people strolled the sidewalk beyond. It seemed Davis was going to spare no expense to get her back in his bed and in front of his stove.

He had no idea just how cheap dinner was going to be in comparison to the child support the court would probably order him to pay next year.

She considered not dressing up. Asheville was a casual town, and she knew Zambra’s patrons would be dressed in everything from denim and shorts to flowered sundresses and dress shirts. Her wardrobe was perfunctory at best, but in the end she donned a lime-green layered skirt that fell almost to her knees and a paler green tank top. She covered the top with an oversize white shirt from the men’s rack at Goodwill, and rolled the sleeves up to her elbows. Beads, hoop earrings and hair down her back, she was on her way.

“You’re sure you’ll be okay with Velvet?” she asked Charlotte.

“We’re already friends.” Charlotte was lying on the living room sofa with a book, and the big golden retriever was curled up on the floor beside her. On a pillow, Harmony noticed. Or possibly two, from the bedroom she’d occupied that first night.

“I’m not going to be late,” she promised. “It’s just dinner.”

“You’ve got a key. Have a good time.”

Harmony wondered where Velvet would sleep that night. They had made the dog a bed of folded blankets in the laundry room, but somehow she didn’t think the dog would spend much time there.

Outside, she turned her car in the driveway and started into town. After a turn around Zambra she ranged farther afield and found parking a couple of blocks away. The day had taken its toll, and she was ready for a good night’s sleep, not a hike uphill. She was also hungry, or at least she thought that was what her roiling stomach was trying to tell her.

As she’d dressed, she had asked herself if she should tell Davis about the baby tonight. While she had considered the possibility, she didn’t want to. Of course, even though she was going through with the pregnancy, she still had options. If she decided to give the baby to adoptive parents, she’d learned she could choose a family, interview them, see their home, even communicate regularly and reunite with her child some day in the future.

At the library she’d discovered a website with photos of happy couples just waiting to give her child a home. She appreciated their struggle and desire, but the website had made her uncomfortable, as if these smiling people were vultures poised to tear the flesh from her bones. All she had to do was say yes, choose the pair with the sharpest beak and the widest wingspan, and her baby would be stripped from her arms.

She figured maybe choosing parents from a website wasn’t going to be a good solution, either.

Davis wouldn’t be any help. He was nothing if not practical, and a baby out of wedlock was a bad career move for an up-and-comer in a conservative firm. He would probably pull out his calculator, punch numbers while he mumbled things like “private school, formula, diapers—do you know how much diapers cost, Harmony?” Then he would show her the final screen, with some astronomical figure even a Saudi sheik couldn’t afford, and shake his head sadly.

No, she wasn’t going to tell Davis tonight.

When she got to the restaurant, he was waiting out front. He wasn’t even staring at his watch, which was good, since she was five minutes late, something that always annoyed him. He wore a charcoal sport coat over a casually styled white shirt and designer jeans. This was Davis trying to be cool.

Actually, he’d managed cool. For a moment she saw beyond her own anger at his fling, her recognition of his impatience and perfectionism, and just saw the guy she’d been crazy about once upon a time.

“You look great,” he said, leaning over to kiss her.

She turned her head so he just caught her cheek. “You don’t look half-bad yourself,” she said, sorry it was true.

“I asked for an outside table. I hope that’s okay? It’s so pretty out tonight.”

She knew he had done this for her. He absolutely hated retrieving napkins that blew off the table. She had to silently give him a point for trying.

Once inside, the host led them to the courtyard. She noted they were escorted to the same table where they had celebrated her twenty-first birthday. That time she’d asked for an outside table, and Davis had fidgeted and brushed imaginary dust particles off the surface through the entire meal. Tonight, though, he pulled out her chair before he seated himself across from her.

“Think it’s warm enough for sangria?” he asked. “Or is that a summer thing?”

He was suggesting sangria to please her, too. Only she wasn’t drinking these days, not even something watered down with fruit juice and sparkling water.

“I’m not really in the mood,” she said. “But I
am
thirsty. Maybe some club soda and lime.” She hoped it would settle her stomach, which apparently had chosen dinnertime tonight to misbehave.