I hate money.
I hate the way everything is always about it.
I hate the way people pretend they have it when they don’t.
But mostly, I hate that I never seem to have any of it, and that without it, nothing works right. Today, for once, my issues aren’t about money. At least, not precisely. They’re about space.
“I told you,” I say. “I only have room for eight new animals.” I look down at my clipboard, as if the numbers at the bottom might change. “We have limited traffic, and—”
“Elizabeth, this little gal is set to be euthanized tomorrow,” Kristy says. “I know you don’t have room, but you’re kind of her only hope.”
I clap my hand over my eyes, but it’s too late. I saw her sweet little face. She looks as desperate as Kristy makes her sound.
“Kristy!” I shout.
She always does this. Every single time I come, I tell her I won’t keep coming back if she ambushes me with an extra pet or two right before I leave. “You knew I had exactly eight spots. I said hit me with the saddest stories up front, and not at the end.”
“But she’s such a good dog,” Kristy says.
I grit my teeth and drop my hand. I can’t help taking a good look now, especially with the image in my mind of her big brown eyes. The thing is, in the six years I’ve been doing this, I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying what pets I might be able to find homes for. Scarsdale is full of mostly wealthy people, and they’re very particular. They don’t want just any old animal. I need an angle to find the pets I take a home, and often, when I don’t have an idea of what type of person might be looking for a new pet, they languish at my shelter for a long time.
The border collie in front of me has her ears plastered against her head, her big brown eyes trained on my face in the same quiet desperation I saw at a glance. I swear under my breath. “Kristy.” She knows I’m already attached to the eight others I chose—three cats and five dogs.
She knows once I’ve heard this poor thing’s story, I won’t be able to say no.
“I don’t have kennel space for her.”
“That’s perfect,” Kristy says, her eyes bright. “She doesn’t do well in kennels. Her owners kept her in a crate all day and all night for months and months, just letting her out for an hour in the evening.”
“They did what? To a border collie?” I’m practically shaking.
“They said she chased their cat, so she had to be locked up when the guy wasn’t taking her for a walk.”
“But a border collie? They’re like Sonic the Hedgehog in dog form.” Sadly, nothing shocks me anymore. “She was kept in a box for. . .how old is she?”
“Nine months, almost. We got her six weeks ago, and you know the drill. It took a month to get her tail wound treated, and now—”
“Wait, what tail wound?”
“Stuck in that crate all the time, she got bored. Or that’s what we think. She chewed her own tail clear through.” Kristy looks strange, and I realize she’s smug. Ridiculously smug. She knows she has me now.
“That’s terrible.”
“To make matters worse, it got infected. They couldn’t afford to pay the vet, so they brought her in.”
I can’t take her. A nine-month-old border collie who has never really been properly socialized or trained is a full-time job. “That dog is like sticking a tornado in a bottle and shaking it around.”
Kristy doesn’t argue.
“She’s a full-time job.” I can’t do it. I just can’t. Between the shelter, and fundraising—we’re already behind—and the upcoming show. “Kristy.”
My old friend sighs. “Alright, I get it. I just thought I’d ask.” She tilts her head and drops into a crouch to break the news to the poor girl. The poor little dog—rail thin—races in tiny circles in the concrete box of her kennel. Even so, she looks like she’s smiling.
Smiling.
That’s what does me in. I groan. “Fine. Fine.” I sigh. “Just get me the paperwork.”
Kristy claps. “I knew you—”
I shake my head and whip my hand through the air. “No. You don’t get to gloat and croon, not over this. It’s not a triumph. It’s a manipulation, and that adorable little nightmare’s going to ruin my life.” Her border collie coloring is perfect, with a white face, but black ears that wrap around her eyes, except for a little black circle on the top of the white part of her head.
“You’re going to save hers.” Kristy looks close to tears. Being the director of an open intake shelter that serves the greater New York City region is one of the hardest jobs I could ever imagine. Without a shelter like this, people would simply let their dogs loose. Dump them in bodies of water. Abandon them in the street.
It’s absolutely vital.
But it’s really, really hard to be the one in charge dealing with of all these innocent animals. There just aren’t enough responsible humans to go around. “Alright, girl.” Now I’m the one crouching down, and her tail stump is working overtime as she tries to lick me. “What are we going to call you?”
“The owners who dumped her called her Snow,” Kristy says.
I arch one eyebrow. “But she’s mostly black.”
She shrugs.
“How about Lucky?” I ask. “Because you are one lucky dog to have a program director who scored you a reprieve.”
“I’m not sure she’s been very lucky so far,” Kristy mutters as she clips a collar and then a leash to the shaggy mess. “The seven regional border collie rescues are all entirely tapped out—not a single foster available. Normally one of them would take her, but as it is. . .”
“Still.” I hold out my hand for her leash. “She did meet me.”
Kristy smiles. “That’s true.”
“Plus, I like to channel my hopes for the future. Once we get her cleaned up, I’ll try to find some obsessive idiot who likes to run who will take good care of you.”
Within five minutes of reaching my shelter, I’m regretting my moment of pity. Lucky has jumped up on me seventeen million times, knocking me into the counter, scratching my arm, and knocking over the dog food I’m measuring into bowls for the newest members of our small shelter family. She’s not aggressive or mean, but she’s so energetic and so pathetically attention-starved that I might put her down myself if she doesn’t quit.
“Lucky.” I crouch down and let her lick my face—but after two minutes, she shows no signs of stopping. I finally pull the plug and stand up. “I know you’ve had things rough.” She stares up at me intently, her fluffy ears pressed back against her skull again. I swear, it feels like she’s actually listening and understanding me. “But you are making me cuh-ray-zee right now. Later today, we’ll do a little behavioral training, and we’ll get you a ‘place’ command started, and we’ll head down the path toward making you into a responsible citizen. Until then, I really need you to calm the crap down.”
She jumps up again immediately, then starts racing in maniacal circles round and round the food prep counter in our dog kennel center. So much for her understanding me.
Over the next few hours, as I integrate the three cats—two of whom are terrified, and one of whom is actively aggressive—and the five other dogs—most of whom are not at all interested in food, which isn’t uncommon in a new place—Lucky acts absolutely tied to my heels. I trip over her at least a dozen times.
The irritation seeps through into my tone. “Lucky.” She crouches down low, her entire body pressed against the concrete, her eyes looking up at me in a terribly sad mix of hope, fear, and shame. I exhale gustily and crouch down yet again. “Lucky.” This time, I try to infuse her name with more patience, but it mostly comes out exasperated. “We’re going to find you a really good home. I hope. Okay?”
At least she’s not dead.
Some days, that’s about the best thing I can say for myself, too.
Once the rest of my chores are done, I give her a really good, really long bath. I scrub, and I rub, and then when she’s done, I dry and I brush, and I comb, and she holds entirely and completely still the entire time. She doesn’t bark. She doesn’t whine. She doesn’t snap. I’ve never seen a dog hold that still or be that calm during a bath.
As she dries, she looks transformed. I’m impressed, really. “Maybe someone will adopt you after all.” I smile, and she jumps up on me. Of course.
I’ve avoided it as long as possible, but it’s finally time. “Listen, I’m going to have to put you in there.” I point at the largest kennel we have. It’s intended as a quarantine kennel for several dogs, but the others I adopted today are small breeds, so they’re making do with three less expansive ones. Once they’ve been here without any signs of illness for a few days, I can integrate them into the current fabric of the ever-changing society of our rescue. “I know you already love me.”
She scootches a few inches closer to me, her eyes never leaving mine, her tail stump thumping back and forth on the ground as if she can’t help trying to wag what’s already gone.
“But I have other things I have to do. I can’t stay here all day.”
When I close her into her kennel, she sits still and quiet, not even wagging her bizarrely long stump of a tail, just staring at me with those intense eyes. Lucky’s whine is so soft, I almost can’t hear it.
It’s not like I don’t have two dozen dogs every day who want to come home with me. They all need homes. They’re all cute. They’re all sad. They’re all pathetic. That’s the biggest difficulty about what I do. My heart asks for more than my head can manage already. The one promise I made myself when I started all this was that I would not add to my little pack. I have to draw the line somewhere, and I already have not one, but two other dogs.
Cute dogs.
Dogs I love.
And they’re tiny.
I have two special-needs Pomeranians—one’s missing a leg and the other’s blind in her right eye. Pomeranians almost never come through rescues. When they do, they’re an easy dog to place. They’re small. They’re wicked smart, especially for a toy breed. They’re usually well-behaved, even around kids. But any time you take something lovely and break it a little, it’s a harder sell.
That’s where I come in.
I always fall for the hardest-to-love dogs, and it gets me every time. Ironically, Scarsdale, New York is probably the place in America that has the least tolerance for things that aren’t perfectly beautiful, other than Hollywood, maybe.
I’m worried with her exuberance that Lucky will run over my tiny puffs, and I shouldn’t risk putting them in harm’s way because I’ve decided to try and spare another damaged pup.
Right?
Right.
I close the door and head for my car.
But Lucky’s haunted eyes keep plaguing me. I can’t stop thinking about how she was stuffed in a box for, well, basically for her entire life. Even when she made it to the Animal Care Center, they stuck her in another, slightly larger box.
Like I just did.
Border collies aren’t like other dogs. They’re made to move.
They thrive on work—on helping humans. We bred them that way. It’s our fault they have so much energy and drive, and on top of that, she was tormented by a cat that was presumably left free to roam in front of that crate. In spite of the piles of reasons why this is a terrible idea, I find myself walking back into the shelter.
I’m greeted, as always, by the cacophony of three dozen dogs, all of them shocked and elated that I’m already back. It takes me five minutes to calm them all down—and another round of chicken jerky that was not in the budget—but then I’m finally on my way, with Lucky sitting completely upright in the passenger seat next to me, panting like mad even though it’s not hot.
“I’m headed to the barn,” I say. “You’re lucky the weather’s nice, because otherwise, I could not take you with me. I’ve had this lesson lined up forever, and I have a show coming up. I can’t skip it.”
Lucky looks over at me, her tongue lolling out, looking for all the world like she’s smiling. Of course, the second I make eye contact with her, it’s all over. She hops over the divider in my car and tries to crawl inside my skin. It takes me fifteen seconds and a near-collision with the guardrail to get her back into the passenger seat.
“You know, you really are your own worst enemy.” I shake my head at the poor, exuberant puppy. “You really need to learn that you can’t flip out every time you get the smallest scrap of attention.”
Dogs are so much more honest than we are. I’ve felt like she feels—actually, more often than not, I feel about like she does. My parents aren’t very warm people, and my brother’s my only truly kind family. Now that he’s not around much, I have two best friends that I try not to maul with my needy affection, and that’s about it.
“It took my parents a while, but I’ve been taught that I can’t climb all over people, lick their faces, and pee on the floor when I get excited,” I say. “If I do things like that, my friends stop being my friends. Okay?”
I need to find her a decent home, but no one will want her when she’s this frustrating.
“How are you with horses?” I ask, knowing she’s not going to answer.
But I’m about to find out, because I’m pulling up at the barn.
One of my two best friends and also my trainer, Victoria Perch, is walking by the parking area when I pull up. She slows down, she squints and leans closer, clearly looking through the windshield, and then she arches the eyebrow.
That’s how I know I’m really in for it.
“Elizabeth. Jane. Moorland.” I can hear her through the closed car doors.
I didn’t just get the whole first name. I got the slow-talking, punctuated, whole name. “Dang it, Lucky. I knew I should’ve left you at the shelter,” I mutter.
“Did you—no.” Victoria shakes her helmeted head, her sky blue eyes flashing. “Do not tell me you brought another mongrel with you to my barn.”
“Okay,” I say in as chipper a tone as I can manage while opening my door, my hand firmly clasped around the end of Lucky’s leash. “I won’t tell you that I brought a severely traumatized border collie who has been stuck in a box for her entire life along with me because I could not bring myself to abandon her. I also won’t tell you that she—” I drop my voice to a whisper. “—was taunted constantly by a cat, and eventually chewed off her own tail and got an infection from it, because her entire life was just so miserable.”
Victoria’s shoulders droop just a little, and that’s how I know I’m in the clear. She looks fierce, and she sounds absolutely terrifying, but in her heart of hearts, she’s a Godiva raspberry ganache truffle.
Sweet as can be.
“She has to stay inside the tack room—I can’t have her spooking the horses.”
I cross my heart.
“Please tell me she’s housebroken.”
“I have had her for three hours, and she has only gone pee outside during that time.”
Victoria—prim and proper Victoria—swears like a sailor when she gets annoyed. Actually, that might be an insult to sailors. I imagine that even they would be embarrassed by some of the foul things she says. The dumbest stuff sets her off, too, like sweet little dogs in her tack room.
“Oh, stop it. Take one look at this face, and tell me—”
“If that mongrel soils one of my client’s ten thousand dollar saddles, who do you think—”
“Vick, they’re all up on racks. If Lucky has an accident, I swear I’ll clean it up, and you’ll never know it even happened. Okay?”
Blessedly, not many people are around at three in the afternoon, so no one will let Lucky out of the tack room. Even so, I tie her collar to an empty saddle rack, because better safe than sorry.
Most of Victoria’s clients come for lessons in the morning—the rich society wives—or in the early evening for the people with jobs and kids getting off school. With just a half dozen kids in her program, she blocks them all in on Tuesday and Thursday. I’m the only one who hits the middle of the day, usually when she’s training client horses.
“Get tacked up fast,” she finally says. “I’m in a bad mood now, and it’s your fault.”
By the time I get Lucky calmed down, I’m running late. So when I reach the far pasture and see that my rescued off the track thoroughbred, or OTTB, One Hot Shot, has rolled in mud. . .I don’t cry. I’m proud of that. Thirteen minutes later, I’m filthy as a happy pig, but he’s sleek, dark, and clean. Even his bright white face blaze and his three white socks are shining when I swing up into the saddle.
“You’re late,” Victoria says.
I may be her best friend, but in the arena, she’s my trainer, and she often acts like she doesn’t even like me. “Today, we’re doing cavalettis.”
Yep, she’s mad.
Hottie, our nickname for my horse, loves jumping high. He loves making tight turns. He adores tearing through a complicated jump course. Those are all the reasons I love him so much. But he hates working on rhythm, balance, and suppleness. I should’ve known we’d wind up doing this when I brought Lucky.
The lesson is brutal.
But the best ones always are. Change—real change—is always painful. By the time I get Hottie rinsed down and back to his pasture, I’m running late. Really, really late.
“Are you coming too?” I ask.
Victoria sighs.
That’s a yes. Neither of us likes attending all these social events, but she’s as stuck as I am. Her parents co-signed on her mortgage for the barn, and I think they’re still subsidizing it. It’s only been hers for two years, and new businesses are hard.
“If you’d get a real job, you could stop going,” she says, glaring at Lucky.
“But that’ll never happen,” I say. “I flunked out of college, remember?”
“Do you know how many NYU dropouts are making small fortunes all over the world?” Victoria sighs. “You could find a dozen jobs with one call from your brother. Or just go work for him. Family has to hire you, right?”
I scratch Lucky behind the ears. “Sad, pathetic people have jobs. I have a calling.”
She’s still laughing as I reach my car. “Too bad callings don’t pay your rent!”
Thankfully I don’t pay much in rent, at least, not on the shelter. Even without having to pay rent—my parents are letting me use my dad’s old warehouse—I have absolutely zero money in the shelter’s checking account to pay myself a salary this month. Again. Hopefully there’s enough left in my trust fund to cover my apartment rent one more time.
“Maybe I’ll meet someone today, and they’ll pledge some money.”
“If they do, you need to pay yourself and use that to get new boots.” She curls her lip at the duct tape I had to wrap around my left riding boot where the zipper finally broke. “Those are a disgrace.”
“It’s on the list,” I say, “but you know what’s higher on that list? Food for the dogs. And for the cats.”
“I know. Stuff for you is always at the bottom of your dumb list.”
She’s not wrong about that, and on my drive home, I can’t help thinking about all the things I desperately need in my personal life. My car blinker’s held together with baling twine. My boots really need to be replaced. Duct tape is a very short-term solution that I’ve been using for weeks already. My apartment was furnished with castoffs from Mom and Dad—but that’s fine, because no one ever comes here. Plus, I never have to worry about dogs hopping up on the sofa. I haven’t been to the dentist in over a year, and my hair needs a cut worse than the high school swim team, but it’s all fine.
It can wait. I know, because it always does wait.
And then I’m home, and there are a few chaotic moments as Floof and Boba are barking and jumping, and Lucky is crouching down with her head near the ground. But after a moment, Lucky stands up, and the dogs stop circling her so badly, and they all sniff each other’s backsides, and then I move into my room while I get dressed, and they all follow, Lucky letting the little ones take the lead. They all calm down pretty quickly after that, thankfully.
The other two eye Lucky strangely, and she crouches whenever they snap at her, but she doesn’t seem to have any desire to argue with them for dominance, which surprises me.
Once I’m dressed, I keep one eye on them, but as I finish getting ready, I can’t help thinking about how Lucky looks. She may be damaged, and she may be struggling. She may be missing most of her tail, but when you look at her, she’s beautiful. I’m a little like that. My life may be falling apart, but the things in my life that matter, the things people see?
Those all look perfect.
As I clasp the sparkling solitaire pendant around my neck, I don’t even regret selling the diamond my grandmother gave me when I turned eighteen to fund the shelter. I replaced it with a fake, so Mom and Dad will never know.
I don’t regret buying knock-off designer heels to replace my Christmas and birthday presents I returned for cash—even if they pinch. That money paid for a new washroom. The shelter may always seem to be held together with fishing wire and gorilla glue, like my life, but all the animals I’ve helped would have been killed if not for me. That’s worth an awful lot of faux designer shoes and cubic zirconia pendants.
I work with Lucky while I finish getting ready, and then I take a gamble, and I decide not to lock her up in the laundry room or a crate when I leave. “Please, please, please be good and don’t destroy anything. Okay?”
I’ve sold most of my designer stuff at this point, but I close the door to my bedroom just to be safe. The fluffers aren’t delighted, but I leave them in there. They have food and water in my bathroom, and I’m just not ready to trust them alone with Lucky yet.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two, and hopefully I’ll find some rich person with a big heart and come back with a nice, fat check.”
Only, things don’t ever work out quite like I plan.
Instead of a check, when I reach the funeral Mom texted to say I had to attend, my parents tell me they’re selling my shelter. Apparently some friend needs a new warehouse here, and they’re making a killing.
Which is good, because Mom told me last week that Dad was a hop, a skip, and a jump away from bankruptcy. I just wish she didn’t intend to sell me down the river to deal with it.
“I’m sorry about this, but I already told you why.” Mom’s eyes widen. “We can’t pass up this offer.”
No one can know they’re broke. I may be the one selling diamonds and designer heels, but they’re the ones who taught me to hide my money issues. The sale of Dad’s old warehouse will float them living extravagantly until he can figure something else out. “But you said I could use it for another year.”
Mom sighs like she’s dying.
“Let me buy it, then.”
Dad laughs.
Mom’s lips compress. “Where would you get the money? The whole reason we’re selling it is—”
“I know,” I say. “But I’ll think of something.” What do normal people do? “I can get a loan.”
Now Mom’s laughing too, silently, her sides shaking and her face contorting. She thinks it’s funny? Mom and Dad have never liked pets, and I know this isn’t their passion, but do they really not care about the animals at all?
“Just think about what will happen when—”
“That’s not our job. It’s not even yours. And charity’s fine, but when the chips are down, you cut bait and save yourself.” She sighs and shakes her head. “Surely we’ve taught you that at least.”
“Oh, you taught me that,” I say. “I just didn’t want to learn that lesson.”
“At some point, Elizabeth, you’re going to have to grow up and be an adult. Superheroes aren’t real.” Mom steps toward me. “Fairy tales don’t exist. The real world runs on money, and saving fluffy bunnies isn’t viable unless you find someone to bankroll it. I’ve been telling you that for years.”
“I’m not going to marry someone I don’t like just to fund the shelter.” She may have married Dad to fund her life, even though she doesn’t like him and never did, but I’m not doing that. Not even for all the fluffy bunnies in the world.
“Then close the shelter,” Mom says. “It’s that simple. Everything in life runs on money. Find some, or stop complaining.”
And that’s it.
They have nothing else to say, and no other options to offer their only daughter.
I realize that I’m about to cry, and that’s the worst thing I can do in this moment. A visible display of drama would horrify my mother, so I spin on my heel and head for the door instead. Getting into the main party area will startle my body into sliding back beneath the mask—what Victoria, Rhiannon, and I have always called the way we interact with people at these things.
It’s safe.
It’s familiar.
It’ll keep me from crying.
But instead of sliding into the mask, I crash into a waiter carrying a hundred champagne flutes and collapse, my purse sliding across the floor. The champagne dumps out on me and the crystal shatters all around me like a huge, liquid-filled chandelier. Nothing hurts, so at least none of the shards cut me, but I’m one hundred and ten percent positive my nostrils are flaring as I glare at the stupid waiter who was in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.
Only, he’s way, way hotter than I expect him to be.
His jaw’s square.
His eyes are bright—a startling shade of golden brown.
His mouth’s sultry, and his hair’s shiny, and it falls in waves around his face. Plus, he’s tall, broad, and he has beautifully bronzed skin.
He wrecked an already bad afternoon, and now he’s staring at me like it’s my fault. I can’t handle anyone else yelling at me. I’ll definitely break down and sob, and then Mom will probably kick me out in two days instead of two weeks. I should tell him I’m sorry for causing the crash. Or I could offer to try and clean up or something, but I just can’t do it. Mom’s right behind me, looking a strange mixture of embarrassed and angry, and I have to escape.
I snatch my purse with one hand, shaking shards of crystal free so I don’t cut my hand, and then I run for the bathroom.
I’ve been hiding for all of two minutes when I realize that my outfit and hair can’t be salvaged—maybe for normal life, but not for an event like this. My only play is to run and hide at home.
When I finally get to my own front door, my fake designer heels squelching with sticky champagne with every step, and I unlock it, Lucky doesn’t jump up for once. She’s too busy sniffing my dress, my knees, and my shoes. Apparently, the little vagabond likes champagne.
I need to go by the bank and talk to someone about a possible loan, but I need to spend a little bit of time with my dogs first to settle my nerves. The last thing I ought to do is show the bank just what a jangly mess my nerves are by forcing my way over there right now. I spend an hour or two working with Lucky and helping her integrate with my tiny dogs. At least that’s something I’m good at.
It’s the non-four-legged parts of my life that always screw me up.