Page 90 of Lost Love on 6th Street

This is nightmare fuel.

One last text comes through.

Were the suspenders for me?

My response is quick and unflinching.

All for you, baby.

Maybe if I can make her believe it, the day she knows the truth she’ll understand I’ve never done anything to hurt her.

29

ELEANOR

“I need to keep Shortie here for a couple more weeks. He’s already been fixed, but he needs to be vaccinated. It also gives us a chance to observe his behavior and make sure he’s ready for a new environment,” Claire says as she leads me into the main building of Harmony Hounds. It’s a beautiful wooden cabin on the outside that’s been upgraded on the inside to house all the animals in their kennels on two separate floors. Big windows let in lots of natural light and there are more than a few cats wandering freely, lying on the windowsills and enjoying their lives as they’ve always deserved.

Claire is greeted by a mammoth wolfhound and a tiny, scraggly mutt; a funny pair I could imagine a children’s movie being written about. The massive wolfhound, ironically called Whisper, strides up without hurrying while the smaller dog hurls her body toward Claire until she runs smack into Claire’s shins.

“Easy, Janis—” Claire coos, scooping the dog into the crook of her arm.

“That’s a cute name for a dog,” I say.

“She was my mom’s. Named after Janis Joplin,” Claire says with a laugh that feels distant and yet deeply rooted in her chest. “Anyway . . .”

I say nothing more as Claire takes me into an office. Whisper sidles up to me like he’s my spirit guide or something. He’s humongous, comes almost all the way up to my armpit, and yet so utterly unthreatening.

Claire’s office isn’t updated like the rest of the building. The walls are made of the cabin’s original wood. The cedar smell is distant yet intoxicating.

The walls are covered in framed photographs of various animals that must have had their home here.

Whisper goes directly into the corner to his bed that matches him proportionally, while Claire keeps Janis on her lap when she plops behind the desk and begins to tap around on her ancient-looking computer. “What we can do today, is get you in the system with your application to adopt,” Claire explains, beginning to type. “If you’re interested in adoption, that is.”

I sit in the chair across from Claire’s desk. “Yes, absolutely.”

Claire smiles to herself as she taps on the keyboard. “I didn’t think he’d find a home so fast since he’s so standoffish, but when it’s right, it’s right.”

“That’s kind of been my life the past few months,” I say with a wistful glance out Claire’s window that looks out at the pasture of dogs rumbling around. Shortbread has left his searching at the fence and is letting a puppy gnaw on his ear.

“Must be nice,” Claire says. She means it. “Nice when everything aligns, and you don’t have to wonder if you’re doing the right thing or if you should be doing something else.”

I nod. “Tell me about it.”

She makes a couple of clicks, and then the printer on a pedestal in the corner wakes up and starts to churn out a few inked pages. “So, we’ll work on getting his shots, and make sure he’s in good shape for his new home. I know you live in an apartment, so I need you to provide me with some proof of access to a dog park, or a backyard, or—”

“I can definitely do that,” I say. I’ve already mapped out my neighborhood, all the parks we can go to, the walks we can take. Not to mention that Luke has a whole house. We could visit him and give Shortbread space to run around in a fenced-in yard.

I mean, I’ve never been to Luke’s house, so I don’t know if he has a fenced in yard, but . . . a girl can dream.

It’s odd that I’ve never been to his house. But it’s out of the way, and he’s been so focused on getting me settled at my own place, that he’s never even suggested we spend the night at his place. It makes me a little uneasy, like he doesn’t want memories in his house on the off-chance things don’t work out. He doesn’t want to be haunted the way I would be.

Although things are going so well, there’s no reason for me to believe either of us will be haunted any time soon.

I shake off the feeling, and focus on the excitement of today, and the swelling of love in my chest. It’s a love close to pride. I’m proud of making a life here and proud of the woman I’ve become in such a short time when I was so scared, so nervous to leave footprints or lay down roots.

“I’ll work on crate training him,” Claire says, then pushes her chair away from the desk. It rolls over to the printer. Janis scrambles in Claire’s lap, looking over each arm of the chair nervously. Claire’s hold on the dog is the same as it’s been the whole time—steady and unconcerned. I’m sure she’s had a lot of practice from working with animals. “And usually, our animals are pretty good about being housetrained because they have so much access to the outside.”

As she’s fetching the paper from the printer, I notice three photographs above the printer aren’t of animals, but people. The first one, directly above the printer, is of Claire and a woman sitting on a swinging bench that I noticed on the front porch of the main building. The woman is thin to a degree that seems to suggest something is wrong. Her beauty is still apparent, but her cheeks are sallow, and her arms lack the usual amount of sinew, even for an older woman. Her head is wrapped in an elegant scarf. Claire has her arms around the woman, her head tipped onto her shoulder.

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