I’d been on my own with Pippa, a rotund French bulldog, who had actually been pretty easy to walk. I had a feeling that her owner had scheduled a walk more to get the dog some cardio than anything else, since I found if I paused even a little, Pippa took that as an indication that it was time to rest and flopped down on the ground. But that was the only real incident, which seemed to me to be a good sign.
“Great,” Maya said with a grin as she hopped off the back and took the key from me. She clipped it onto an enormous carabiner that held what had to be thirty sets of keys, then flipped through them and selected one, pulling it off and handing it to me. “Ready to do one without me?”
I knew there was only one real answer to this if I wanted to keep the job I had just started. “Sure,” I said, with what I hoped was more confidence than I felt.
Maya laughed. “You’ll do fine. I’m just a phone call away if anything happens.”
“Right,” I said as I took the keys from her—three on a ring clearly marked GOETZ-HOFFMAN.
“It’s a new dog for us,” she said. “Dave walked him for the initial temperament test the other day and thought he’d be fine. They’re looking to have their dog walked once a day, so this could be a great regular client for you.”
I nodded, trying to ignore how hard my heart was beating. I’d been on national TV before. This was just walking a dog. So why did it seem so much harder? “Great,” I said, gripping the keys hard.
“I’ll text you the address so you’ll have it,” she said, pulling out her phone. “And the client wanted the dog walked in the afternoon, but they’re flexible with time. If they’re at home when you pick up the dog, just confirm that they want this to be a daily thing. And you should be all set.”
“Great,” I said again, realizing a second too late that I’d repeated myself. “I mean, good.”
Maya laughed at that, then slammed her back hatch closed and walked around to the driver’s seat. “You’ll do awesome,” she called as she got into the front seat. She started the car and drove away, waving to me out the window.
I closed my hand tightly around the keys—suddenly and irrationally terrified I would lose them and a dog would be sitting at home, unwalked and miserable, maybe having accidents on expensive rugs, and it would all be my fault. I dropped them in the front pocket of my cutoffs and headed for where I’d parked my car on the side of the road.
I’d just gotten behind the wheel when my phone beeped with the address. I glanced down at it, and felt my stomach plunge. But this only lasted a minute, as I made myself read the address again and realized there was nothing to be concerned about.
MAYA
Hi! The house is at 8 Easterly Terrace.
Call or text with any problems!
I let out a breath, telling myself to calm down, that this was ridiculous. But for just a second, when I’d first seen it, I’d read the address as East View Terrace, which was where our old farmhouse was.
I hadn’t been back since the day I’d left for Camp Stepping Stone. And even though I obviously wasn’t driving when I was twelve, I could have gotten one of the people staying with me to drive me over there. But I didn’t, and the more time that passed without me seeing it, the more I wanted to avoid it. My friends knew this and wouldn’t drive past there when I was in the car. Not that it came up a lot—the farmhouse was on the very outskirts of town. But now that I’d gone five years without seeing it, I was certain that I didn’t want to. What if the house had been replaced by something horrible and modern? Or—and this was somehow worse—what if it hadn’t? What if it was exactly the same house, and there was some other family eating dinner under my mother’s drawings, getting to see them every day, taking them for granted like I had done?
I punched the address into my phone’s GPS, put the car in gear, and headed over there. I was halfway to the Goetz-Hoffman house when my phone beeped with another text. I kept my hands on the wheel, ignoring it, until it beeped four more times, in rapid succession, and I knew that a text chain had started without me. I made a quick right on a side street, put the car in park, killed my engine, and pulled out my phone, hoping it was an actual all-four-of-us conversation and not just Toby texting until someone responded to her. I looked down at my phone and smiled when I saw everyone was on board.
PALMER
Okay, it seems that being a stage manager
means watching your boyfriend macking
on some random college freshman
BRI
Macking?
TOBY
PALMER
Toby, that is the opposite of
helpful right now
BRI
It was helpful for me. I had no idea
what you were talking about.
ME
You’ve seen Tom kiss lots of
girls in the other plays, P.
PALMER
Yes, but that meant I had to see him do it
only at the performances.
Now I’m having to live with it. Like every day.
TOBY
Egad. I see what you mean.
Or I would, if I’d ever had a boyfriend.
BRI
Please don’t say that you’re cursed
TOBY
BECAUSE I’M CURSED
ME
Seriously, T, you’re not cursed
BRI
Thank you.
I checked the time on my phone and realized that I should probably get going, especially since it was the first time I’d be walking this dog.
ME
Gotta go—I’ve got dogs to walk
BRI
Am I the only one who think that
sounds vaguely dirty?
TOBY
Yes
BRI
You don’t see it?
TOBY
NO. What’s wrong with you?
BRI
Andie?
ME
I am no way getting involved in this, guys
PALMER
Call me later?
ME
For sure
TOBY
PALMER
Seriously, Toby, we’re about to stage an intervention
TOBY
Wait, about what??
I smiled as I turned the sound on my phone to silent, knowing this conversation would probably keep going and that when I looked at my phone again, there would be a dozen or more messages waiting for me. I double-checked my directions to the Goetz-Hoffman house, then turned on my engine and headed that way.
I slowed as I reached Easterly Terrace and started looking for number eight. I pulled up in front of a gray shingled house and felt my jaw drop a little. Unlike the houses in Stanwich Woods, which had all clearly been built around the same time and by the same person, this house had character. It was big, with numerous windows all painted white and a round center section that looked almost like a turret, except really wide. There was a circular driveway with an SUV parked in the turnaround near a three-car garage with the doors down. I pulled around the circle and parked next to the SUV. It was beat-up and mud-spattered, with dents along the side, and it looked like it might have actually been used to go up mountains, unlike most of the SUVs I saw around town, which mostly looked like they were bringing kids to soccer practice. I got out of the car, holding on to an extra leash and the key, in case they weren’t home. As I walked past the SUV, I noticed it had Colorado plates. There was a lot of tri-state-area spillover in Connecticut—New York, New Jersey, occasionally Pennsylvania or Delaware. But Colorado? That one was new to me.