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SINCE I DIDN’T babysit on Thursdays and had stayed up following the Swensons’ around on the Internet the night before, naturally my bleating cell phone woke me at 7 AM.
"Uh, hello?" I mumbled.
My son's laughter hit me like a shot of adrenaline.
"Garry! How come you’re up so early?"
"Going sailing," which figured. He was calling from Cape Cod. "Anyway, you're usually awake. Hot date last night?
"You wish."
"Everybody wishes that except you."
"Next," I warned. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"I need something, of course."
"I'm listening."
"White shirts. About four or five."
"Interesting. And why do we need these shirts?"
"Because I got a job."
I panicked just a little. "Up there? What will you be doing?”
"Waiting tables. Again.”
No complaints there. Chelsea had worked as a server, too, and it had forced her to become efficient. The downside was I’d be deprived of my son for another two and a half months.
“It’s a really cool restaurant on the water, so the tips should be awesome. At least a couple hundred a week. Maybe more.”
I forced my voice to remain level. "Where will you live?"
Garry blew a hefty sigh into the phone. "Mule, the brother who invited me up here, has a friend with a pool house that doesn’t get used. They sort of hooked me up.”
So my son had some new friends who liked him enough to want him to stick around all summer, and he liked them well enough to want to stay. Also, the money was nothing to sniff at.
Garry further argued that his former yardwork customers had surely made other arrangements by now and that mowing lawns didn’t offer much of a social life.
"These are good guys?" I pressed. "No drugs, drinking binges, no screwing around?”
Garry laughed. "You know me better than that."
I assured him I did. He was as upstanding a young man as a mother could hope for, a fine testament to the influence of his father. "It's your fraternity brothers I don’t know."
"They're good guys," my son affirmed, "especially Mule, short for Meuller, by the way. And you'll like this—the pool house belongs to a judge."
Relaxing, I stretched my legs so far that Fideaux groaned in protest. "So do I send the shirts, or what?”
"Yeah, I guess. I have to start work Friday."
Trying not to sound crushed, I urged him to tell me about his vacation. Garry related a couple of comical stories that were clean enough to share with his mother, then I delivered abbreviated versions of my babysitting job and Chelsea's visit from her mother-in-law.
I signed off with the acceptably unsentimental, "I love you, kid," but in the silence after we hung up, it hit me.
My baby had moved out.
***
MOVEMENT WAS my antidote for loss. Any activity would suffice, but, due to the summer heat and my new job, Fideaux and I had acquired the habit of exercising early. I dug my rubber gardening shoes out of the basket by the backdoor and grabbed Fideaux’s short green leash off the hook.
"Want to go for a walk in the park?" I shouted. “Walk” and “park” were the only words he would process, but whole sentences sounded less demented if a neighbor happened to hear.
And I hoped someone did overhear. Since I'd been widowed, the idea of my neighbors seeing me, hearing me, knowing when I was home and when I was not, comforted me, even if the comfort was probably a delusion.
“Up, up!” I told Fideaux when we got to the car, and he eagerly hopped in.
Parked at the side of the most popular entrance to the woods were a plain black sedan I didn't recognize, a large professional-looking van, and an SUV belonging to a woman with a Sheltie named Hobo. Hobo herded Fideaux and nipped, so I kept my timid darling leashed so I could help fend off the pest.
We didn’t see another soul for half a mile.
"Proves how big this place is," I commented, remembering the time a little girl had run from her parents in a huff, only to get lost in the woods. Police had enlisted the help of regulars like me to find her, but my only proof that she got rescued (and it was no proof at all) was the absence of police activity the next day.
To brighten my outlook, I focused on the beauty of nature as I tromped the root-riddled downhill path. The cool air smelled of rain-soaked mulch and ozone, and a glance upward through the trees told me the clouds were thickening again. Only when I reached the long flat stretch beside the creek was I able to pick up my pace.
Which was when I caught a glimpse of white about thirty yards ahead. Probably because Garry had just requested white shirts, I thought it was a man’s elbow disappearing behind the trunk of an ancient sycamore. Yet it just as easily could have been a flash of sun through the trees. Fideaux hadn’t reacted, though, and he never missed a chance to check a stranger’s pocket for dog treats.
After the third broad wooden bridge crisscrossing the creek, a wall of ancient boxwood hedge nearly closed off the path. Once a studied part of the original landowner's estate, the park volunteers had hacked an opening that allowed the many walkers to continue.
On a sunnier day I might have imagined myself as Alice stepping through the looking glass, but today’s growing gloom conspired to make me jittery.
Still, here I was. Where else was I to go?
I grasped Fideaux’s leash tightly and pressed ahead.
Twenty yards later, the man I’d nicknamed The Hunter marched toward me with his index finger pointed at my nose. His pale face and receding blonde curls were damp from exertion, his expression angry.
"You are single," he scolded.
"What?"
My reaction prompted a smile. "You let me think you're married, but you're not."
I blinked and gulped. "How did you find that out?"
The smile widened. "I asked around," he reported with an arm wave that encompassed the entire park. "You shouldn't mislead people like that. It isn't nice."
Too shaken to be anything but blunt, I stated, "I'm not interested in dating.” What if he planned to follow me home? What if he was a murderer or a rapist? Most of all, how was I going to handle this new development?
Charlie's owner, I finally remembered the dog's name, raised his eyebrows. "We'll see," he said. "We'll see." Then he called to his German Shorthaired and marched past Fideaux and me with what I hoped was make-believe righteous indignation.
"I was being tactful," I muttered quietly enough not to be heard. I hadn't been pursued like that in a couple of decades, and a small but rambunctious part of me wanted to break out the champagne.
"Guess I'm not totally over the hill," I bragged to my dog. "Whaddya think of that?”
Then I remembered about shaving my legs, changing outfits seven times before a date, makeup, and flirting with silly getting-to-know-you questions like, "Did you grow up around here?"
Yuk, I decided.
Double yuk.
"Let's go home," I informed my pet.
Fideaux performed an about-face and bolted for the hole in the hedge.