A moment came when I thought I had a chance.
“Look!” Monica said, stopping, pointing up. “See it? A redheaded woodpecker.”
“Where?”
“Right there. Three, four-five branches up, left side, that maple tree.”
Sam knew birds; they’d become his hobby when we bought the cabin. “I think that’s a red-bellied woodpecker.”
“But it’s got a red head.”
“It’s got a red crown. A redheaded woodpecker’s head is completely red.”
“But where’s its red belly?”
“It’s hard to see; you have to be closer.” His hand went slack during this fascinating conversation, his attention focused completely on the bird. I let the leash go loose to soften him up even more, then gathered my feet under me and leapt.
And almost pulled Sam’s arm out of the socket.
“Hey!”
I’d almost strangled myself, too, but I had the wit to go into a bedlam of barking, pretending I’d seen something incredibly exciting, a rabbit, a deer, an elephant. When Sam told me to cool it, calm down, I obeyed instantly. “Good girl,” he had to admit.
“She is,” Monica agreed, surprised.
“I really think she’s starting to get it.”
Escape-wise, lunchtime was a bust because Sam looped the leash around one leg of the picnic table. Nothing to do but lie down and be good, and munch on tidbits Benny and the twins let fall from time to time.
Sam asked Monica if Benny could stay late at her house on Thursday, and I learned something I didn’t know. “We’re moving up the closing on the cabin,” Sam said. “Guy decided to pay cash, so there’s no reason to wait.”
“Oh,” Monica said. “Well.” And then, when the kids were talking, she said, “I’m sorry,” just loud enough for Sam (and me) to hear.
“No, it’s good. Really. The money’s coming just in the nick.”
Well, didn’t that just tie it. Another reason, as if there weren’t enough already, to act fast. What else could possibly go wrong in the human world?
After lunch, Sam did his disappearing saltshaker trick. I always knew it had to end up in his lap somehow, but I could never figure out how. A new perspective changes everything.
“Have you been doing any magic shows lately?” Monica asked, cutting big pieces of layer cake for everybody. Homemade, naturally. What a perfect family we must have looked like to everybody else in the park. Mom, Dad, three kids, the faithful dog.
“No, no.” I recognized Sam’s fake-careless voice. “That’s all… I don’t do that anymore. No time.”
“Ah,” Monica said softly. “Too bad. But I guess with the new job and all…”
“Right.”
“Do you still…” Hate it, she was going to say. But she changed it to “Is it getting any better?” even though Benny wasn’t listening-too busy comparing his loose tooth to Ethan’s.
“It’s a job. I’m in no position to complain.”
“You don’t complain.”
“It’s just… well, you know.”
“It is what it is.”
So profound.
But a little later, I wondered if maybe Benny had been paying attention, at least to his father’s tone of voice- upbeat but tight, a world of discontent just beneath the surface. Because Benny pulled on Sam’s sleeve, interrupting something Monica was saying, and told him about troodon dinosaurs. “The male sits on the eggs and guards the nest, Dad. I read about it. He’s the mom. She goes out and does stuff and he stays and makes the nest safe and keeps the babies warm.”
All Sam said was, “How about that,” but he put his arm around Benny’s waist and pressed him close.
Oh, Benny. Light of my life.
Monica decreed the grass was now dry enough to play games on, so that was what the boys did, with Sam. I got to stay where I was and watch Monica clean up.
Desperation was creeping in. How in the world was I going to pull this off? To be this close and still fail-I couldn’t think about it. Maybe if I…
“What, Sonoma? Do you have to go? Do you have to do business?”
Bingo. It was partly the high whine, partly the soulful-eyes thing. They never let me down.
“I’m taking Sonoma for a walk,” Monica called over to Sam, who waved and went back to swinging the kids around in a game of statue.
She picked the secondary trail this time, the one that wound east, under a cement bridge and around a bend-out of sight. Perfect, perfect. Nobody was here; the path was too narrow and boggy for hikers today, and too close to the clattering river. That sound and the smell of wet earth filled my head, intoxicating. Sunlight made blue crystals on the damp tree leaves. Everything was beautiful, but lost on me. I’d remember it later-or not.
Monica went at an excruciatingly slow pace when she wasn’t stopped dead, admiring nature. She’d brought along an expensive-l ooking camera. She halted on the bank to snap a picture of dappled light on water. Was this my chance? I would only get one. If I failed, she’d be on guard from then on. I preferred nonviolence, but only as a first resort. I would fight if I had to.
I braced. Don’t make me have to hurt you.
She had the leash looped around her wrist, though. Better to wait till it was loose in her hand. Then I could just snap it and run.
“Come on, Sonoma. Don’t you have to pee? I do,” she said, laughing, and I hoped she would, right then and there. Talk about a distraction. But no, too much of a lady. We slogged on.
A thick pine tree had snapped at the base and half fallen in the river, years ago from the look of it. “How pretty,” Monica said, turning the camera on again. It did look picturesque, the sparse, rain-dark branches stretched out over churning water. She took a few shots. Then, “Oh, look, Sonoma, a spiderweb. See it?”
I saw it, in the crotch of a dead branch at the end of the tree, just before it dipped into the river. It would’ve been invisible if it hadn’t been shiny with drying raindrops. Yes, very pretty. Why don’t you go out there and take a picture of it?
And that’s exactly what she did.
What a moron. Are you crazy? I thought, before I recollected myself. Be that stupid; go farther out there with a camera in one hand, a dog leash in the other, the racing brown river beneath you. Please, after you.
But she was so athletic and surefooted, she never even tottered. And she wasn’t stupid enough to go to the end, only halfway, with me about four feet away, the length of the leash, just one long leap to shore. The expensive camera had a telephoto lens. I heard it whir into action, watched Monica sight her spiderweb picture, one-handed, through the LCD. I started to shake. From anticipation, I thought, but then I realized-I was the one who was scared. The chopping sound of the river, the potent smell of water, and the humid air were the last good memories I had of my human self. What came next was all a nightmare. I hated rivers.
Still one-h anded, Monica snapped off a couple of shots, then tilted the camera ninety degrees for a vertical. Now or never. I dug my toenails into the bark and jerked my head, my whole body, to the side as hard as I could.
She yelped as the leash flew out of her hand, and I spun and leapt to the bank.
A splash, hard to hear over the chop. I looked back. Oh, for the love of-
Monica lay flat out in the water, gripping a branch in one hand, camera high in the other, trying to keep it above the drink. Let it go, you idiot-but I saw myself in another river, leaping cartoonishly after a slippery cell phone, and I knew she wouldn’t.
The current was strong enough that her feet were bobbing at the top behind her. I didn’t know I was barking until I had to stop to hear what she was yelling. “Help! I can’t swim!” She gave an angry wail and dropped the camera-so she could grab for the branch with that hand, too. Crack. The branch broke and the water took her.
It was supposed to be the other way around, but in that moment my life passed before my eyes. I saw it all in fine detail, a Technicolor highlight film, the ups and downs of Laurie Summer’s life. Glimpsed as a whole like that, I could see it came up short in an important department, the very one Sonoma the dog excelled in. The love-and-beloved department. The only one that mattered to her, and really the only one that mattered-I saw it in this extreme instant with perfect clarity-period.