The Choice (7 page)

“Neutered?” she whispered.

“Uh-huh.” He looked up from the clipboard. “Two years ago. My dad did it here in the office.”

“Oh . . .”

“I tried to tell you that, too. But you left before I had a chance. I felt sort of bad about it, so I stopped by on Sunday to tell you then, but you were out.”

She said the only thing that came to mind. “I was at the gym.”

“Yeah? Good for you.”

It took some effort, but she uncrossed her arms. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

“No hard feelings,” he said again, but this time it made her feel even worse. “But listen, I know you’re in a rush, so let me tell you a bit about Molly, okay?”

She nodded, feeling as if she’d been placed in the corner by her teacher, still thinking about her tirade on Saturday night. The fact that he was being gracious about it somehow made it even worse.

“The gestation period lasts nine weeks, so you’ve got another two weeks. Her hips are wide enough, so you don’t have to worry about that, which was why I wanted you to bring her in. Collies sometimes have small hips. Now, normally, there’s nothing you need to do, but keep in mind that most likely she’ll want a cool, dark place to have her puppies, so you might want to put some old blankets down in the garage. You have a door from the kitchen, right?”

She nodded again, feeling as if she were shrinking.

“Just leave it open, and she’ll probably start wandering in there. We call it nesting, and it’s perfectly normal. Odds are she’ll have the puppies when it’s quiet. At night, or while you’re at work, but remember this is completely natural, so there’s nothing to worry about. The puppies will know how to wean right away, so you don’t need to be concerned about that, either. And you’ll most likely throw out the blankets, so don’t use anything fancy, okay?”

She nodded for the third time, feeling ever smaller.

“Other than that, there’s not much more you need to know. If there are any problems, you can bring her to the office. If it’s after hours, you know where I live.”

She cleared her throat. “Okay.”

When she said nothing else, he smiled and began to move toward the door. “That’s it. You can bring her back home if you’d like. But I’m glad you brought her in. I didn’t think it was an infection, but I’m happy I made sure.”

“Thanks,” Gabby mumbled. “And again, I’m really sorry. . . .”

He held up his hands to stop her. “It’s no problem. Really. You were upset, and Moby does wander the neighborhood. It was an honest mistake. I’ll see you around, okay?” By the time he gave Molly a final pat, Gabby felt six inches tall.

Once Travis—Dr. Parker—left the exam room, she waited for a long moment to be certain he was gone. Then slowly, painfully, she rose from her chair. She peeked out the door and, after making sure the coast was clear, went to the receptionist’s desk, where she quietly paid her bill.

By the time she got back to work, the only thing Gabby knew for certain was that as forgiving as he’d been, she’d never live down what she’d done, and since there wasn’t a rock large enough for her to crawl under, it was in her best interest to find a way to avoid him for a while. Not forever, of course. Something reasonable. Like the next fifty years.

Four

T
ravis Parker stood by the window, watching as Gabby led Molly back to the car. He was smiling to himself, amused by her expressions. Though he barely knew her, he’d seen enough to conclude that she was one of those people whose expressions were a window to their every feeling. It was a rare quality these days. He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending, wearing masks and losing themselves in the process. Gabby, he felt certain, would never be that way.

Pocketing his keys, he headed for his truck, with the promise that he’d be back from lunch in half an hour. He retrieved his cooler—he packed his lunch every morning—and drove to his usual spot. A year ago he’d purchased a plot of land overlooking Shackleford Banks at the end of Front Street, with the thought that one day he’d build his dream home there. The only problem was that he wasn’t quite sure what that entailed. For the most part, he led a simple life and dreamed of throwing up a rustic little shack like the kind he’d seen in the Florida Keys, something with lots of character that appeared a hundred years old on the outside but was surprisingly bright and roomy on the inside. He didn’t need much space—a bedroom and maybe an office in addition to the living area—but as soon as he’d start the process, he’d reason that the lot was better suited for something more family-friendly. That rendered the image of his dream home fuzzier, since it no doubt included a future wife and kids, neither of which he was even close to imagining.

Sometimes, the way he and his sister had turned out struck him as strange, since she, too, was in no hurry to marry. Their parents had been married for almost thirty-five years, and Travis could no more picture either of them single than he could picture himself flapping his arms and zooming into the clouds. Sure, he’d heard the stories of how they’d met on a church group camping trip while they were in high school, how Mom had cut her finger while slicing a piece of pie for dessert, and how dad had clamped his hand over the wound like a surgical bandage to stem the bleeding. One touch and “Bing, bang, boom, just like that,” Dad would say, “I knew she was the one for me.”

So far, there’d never been a bing, bang, boom for Travis. Nothing even close, for that matter. Sure, there was his high school girlfriend, Olivia; everyone at the school seemed to think they were perfect for each other. She lived across the bridge in Morehead City these days, and every now and then he’d run into her at Wal-Mart or Target. They’d chat for a minute or so about nothing important and then amicably go their separate ways.

There had been countless girlfriends since Olivia, of course. He wasn’t clueless when it came to women, after all. He found them attractive and interesting, but more than that, he was genuinely fond of them. He was proud of the fact that he’d never had what could even remotely be considered a painful breakup for either him or one of his exes. The breakups were almost always mutual, petering out like a soggy fuse on a firecracker as opposed to the big kaboom of fireworks overhead. He considered himself friends with all of his exes—Monica, his latest, included—and figured they’d say the same thing about him. He wasn’t right for them, and they weren’t right for him. He’d watched three former girlfriends get married off to great guys, and he’d been invited to all three weddings. He seldom thought about finding
permanence
or
his soul mate,
but in the rare times he did, he always ended up imagining finding someone who shared the same active, outdoor passions he did. Life was for living, wasn’t it? Sure, everyone had responsibilities, and he didn’t mind those. He enjoyed his work, earned a good living, owned a house, and paid his bills on time, but he didn’t want a life where those things constituted all there was. He wanted to experience life. No, change that. He
needed
to experience life.

He’d been that way for as long as he could remember. Growing up, Travis had been organized and capable when it came to school, getting good grades with a minimum of fuss or anxiety, but, more often than not, just as happy with a B instead of an A. It drove his mother crazy—“Imagine how well you could do if you applied yourself,” she repeated every time a report card came home. But school didn’t excite him the way riding his bike at breakneck speed or surfing in the Outer Banks did. While other kids thought about sports in terms of baseball and soccer, he thought of floating on air on his motorbike as he soared off a dirt ramp or the rush of energy he felt when he successfully landed it. He was an X Games kind of kid, even before there was such a thing, and by thirty-two, he’d pretty much done it all.

In the distance, he could see wild horses congregating near the dunes of Shackleford Banks, and as he watched them, he reached for his sandwich. Turkey on wheat with mustard, an apple, and a bottle of water; he had the same thing every day, after the exact same breakfast of oatmeal, scrambled egg whites, and a banana. As much as he craved the occasional adrenaline rush, his diet couldn’t be more boring. His friends marveled at the rigidity of his self-control, but what he didn’t tell them was that it had more to do with his limited palate than discipline. When he was ten, he’d been forced to finish a plate of Thai noodles drenched in ginger, and he’d vomited most of the night. Ever since then, the faintest whiff of ginger would send him gagging to the bathroom, and his palate had never been the same. He became timid about food in general, preferring plain and predictable to anything with exotic flavor; then gradually, as he grew older, he cut out the junk. Now, after more than twenty years, he was too afraid to change.

As he enjoyed his sandwich—plain and predictable—he wondered at the direction of his thoughts. It wasn’t like him. He usually wasn’t prone to deep reflection. (Another cause of the inevitable soggy fuse, according to Maria, his girlfriend of six years ago.) Usually he just went about his life, doing what needed to be done and figuring out ways to enjoy the rest of his time. That was one of the great things about being single: A person could pretty much do what he wanted, whenever he wanted, and introspection was only an option.

It had to be Gabby, he thought, though for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why. He barely knew her, and he doubted whether he’d even had a chance to meet the real Gabby Holland yet. Oh, he’d seen the angry one the other night and the mea culpa one just a little while ago, but he had no idea how she behaved under ordinary circumstances. He suspected that she had a good sense of humor, though on closer reflection, he couldn’t pin down the reason he thought so. And she was no doubt intelligent, though he could have deduced that on the basis of her job. But other than that . . . he tried and failed to picture her on a date. Still, he was glad she’d come by, if only to give them a chance to start over as neighbors. One thing he’d learned was that bad neighbors could make a person miserable. Joe’s neighbor was the kind of guy who burned leaves on the first gorgeous day of spring and mowed his lawn first thing Saturday mornings, and the two of them had nearly come to blows more than once after a long night with the baby. Common courtesy, it sometimes seemed to Travis, was going the way of the dinosaurs, and the last thing he wanted was for Gabby to feel any reason to avoid him. Maybe he’d invite her over the next time his friends came by. . . .

Yeah, he thought, I’ll do that. The decision made, he gathered his cooler and started back toward his truck. On tap that afternoon were the regular assortment of dogs and cats, but at three, someone was supposed to be bringing in a gecko. He liked treating geckos or any exotic pet; the idea that he knew what he was talking about, which he did, always impressed the owners. He enjoyed their awed expressions:
I wonder if he knows the exact anatomy and physiology of every creature on earth.
And he pretended that he did. But fact was a bit more prosaic. No, he of course didn’t know the ins and outs of every creature on earth—who could?—but infections were infections and pretty much treated the same way regardless of species; only the medication dose was different, and that he had to verify in a reference book he kept on his desk.

As he got in the car, he found himself thinking about Gabby and wondering whether she’d ever gone surfing or snowboarding. It seemed unlikely, but at the same time, he had the strange feeling that, unlike most of his exes, she would be up for either of those two things, given the opportunity. He wasn’t sure why, and as he started the engine he tried to dismiss the notion, doing his best to convince himself it didn’t matter. Except for the fact that, somehow, it did.

Five

O
ver the next two weeks, Gabby became an expert in making a covert entry and exit, at least when it came to her house.

She had no other choice. What on earth could she say to Travis? She’d made a fool of herself, and he’d compounded the matter by being so forgiving, which obviously meant that coming and going required a new set of rules, one in which avoidance was Rule #1. Her only saving grace—the only positive thing to come out of the whole experience—was that she’d apologized in his office.

It was getting harder to keep it up, though. At first, all she’d had to do was park her car in the garage, but now that Molly was getting close to her due date, Gabby had to start parking in the driveway so Molly could nest. Which meant that Gabby thenceforth had to come and go when she was certain Travis wasn’t around.

She’d come down on the fifty-year limit, though; now, she figured a couple of months or maybe half a year would suffice. Whatever amount of time seemed long enough for him to forget, or at least diminish the memory of, the way she’d acted. She knew that time had a funny way of dimming the edges of reality until only something blurry remained, and when that happened, she’d go back to a more normal routine. She’d start small—a wave here or there as she got in the car, maybe a wave from her back deck if they happened to see each other—and they’d go on from there. In time, she figured they’d be fine—maybe they’d even share a laugh someday at the way they’d met—but until then, she preferred to live like a spy.

She’d had to learn Travis’s schedule, of course. It wasn’t hard—a quick peek at the clock when he was about to pull out in the morning while she watched from her kitchen. Returning home from work was even easier; he was usually out on the boat or the Jet Ski by the time she arrived, but on the downside, that made the evenings the worst problem of all. Because he was
out there,
she had to stay
in here,
no matter how glorious the sunset, and unless she went over to Kevin’s, she’d find herself studying the astronomy book, the one she’d purchased in hopes of impressing Kevin while they did some stargazing. Which, unfortunately, hadn’t happened yet.

She supposed she could have been more grown up about the whole thing, but she had the funny feeling that if she came face-to-face with Travis, she’d find herself
remembering
instead of
listening,
and the last thing she wanted was to make an even worse impression than she already had. Besides, she had other things on her mind.