JULIA HADN’T COUNTED on taking the puppy immediately.
Seemingly within moments, she’d signed a lease and found herself in possession of a tote bag containing a leash, a small dog bed, a bag of puppy kibble and a couple of bowls, and a collection of squeaky toys that filled it to the brim.
Loath to leave him in the house—her new home!—and not knowing what else to do, she took him back to Beverly’s, nudging the front door open with her foot as she clasped him to her, fearful he might leap from her arms and run into the street, straight into the path of a passing car. No chance of that, though. Maybe it was merely the warmth of her body, but Jake seemed perfectly comfortable where he was, blinking brief adoring gazes her way before returning to sleep.
Julia tiptoed down the hallway toward the kitchen, wary of waking him. Beverly stood at the counter, rolling out a crust for chicken pot pie. She turned, and Julia watched in amazement as her indomitable mother-in-law’s composure cracked, her gaping mouth snapping shut as she fought for control.
Calvin streaked past her.
“A puppy!”
Jake, so sound asleep moments earlier, wriggled free from Julia’s arms and leapt directly into her son’s.
Calvin fell backward onto the floor and squealed as the puppy gamboled around him, yapping. Lyle the cat shot from a hiding place and scrambled halfway up the stairs, where he turned and yowled outrage.
Beverly’s floury hands flew to her ears.
“What in the world? Julia, what have you done? This house cannot possibly abide a dog.”
Which was how Julia found herself, a mere two days later, ensconced in the echoey new house, hastily furnished with the few pieces she and Michael had owned, along with some rejects from Beverly’s home.
That first night, Calvin fell asleep early, worn out from the day’s excitement, puppy Jake slumbering beside him, his chubby body vibrating with soft snores.
Julia walked through the rooms, trying to imprint this new strange layout on her memory. She’d lived in Beverly’s house for years and could have negotiated it blindfolded. Its very size had afforded her the illusion of privacy, albeit always with the prickling awareness of another adult in the household.
Before that, she’d shared the apartment with Michael. There’d been roommates in college and law school and in those first years as a public defender, before she’d met Michael. And of course, before that she’d lived with her parents.
How had she reached her thirties without ever having been truly on her own?
“Oh, Michael,” she breathed. Her husband would have so loved this house. But a sneaking realization wormed its way into the nostalgia that had finally supplanted the raw pain that for so long had accompanied any thought of Michael: she loved this house, too, and possibly loved it even more because she wouldn’t have to share it with another adult, just her son and this canine invader into their lives.
Jake, she reminded herself. A Brittany, Caroline had briefly informed Julia, tossing only a few details her way in her rush to get away from the tragedy that had befallen her family. A kind of spaniel, a bird dog, with auburn and white patches and soft feathery fur on its legs.
“It won’t get that big. Maybe forty-fifty pounds.”
Which to Julia sounded pretty big. But Calvin had assured her he’d take care of the dog, and given the fact that the two were already inseparable, Julia decided to focus her energy elsewhere. Specifically, on a bath.
The first thing she’d done after she’d locked the door behind the movers Beverly had generously found and hired on short notice was to set the temperature on the water heater as high as she safely dared. When she twisted the faucet, the resounding gush was satisfyingly just short of scalding.
She’d carved out a few minutes in the rush of the previous days to duck into one of the boutiques increasingly lining Main Street, emerging with an assortment of bath salts and candles. Over the last few years, she’d seen increasing references to something called “self-care” and snorted each time. Who were these women who had the time and money for massages, exercise classes, elaborate skin care regimens?
But now she was going to join their ranks, to the best of her limited ability, sinking into lavender-scented water up to her chin, the candles’ tiny flames twinkling on the windowsill, the radio turned low to a classic jazz station.
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift. How did this work? She was supposed to think of peaceful, pleasant things—a sunny beach, a flower-strewn meadow. Her mind apparently didn’t work that way. She conjured images of a childhood trip to California, only to bring back memories of itchy sand and a fierce sun that had left her redhead’s fair skin blistered and peeling. And the postcard-perfect mountain meadows north of Duck Creek were home to grizzly bears that, though rarely glimpsed, imposed a nerve-jangling awareness that tempered even the most enthusiastic appreciation of the abundant wildflowers.
She sank deeper in the tub, tilting her head back, letting the water lift her hair. She had to stretch her legs to touch the tub’s far end with her toes. Leslie Harper had been a big woman. Julia supposed she’d ordered a custom tub to comfortably accommodate her dimensions.
Her enjoyment of a dead woman’s tub should have been discomfiting, but she couldn’t help it. She’d barely known Leslie, as she’d explained to her sister as she signed the lease. “She and a friend of mine were close, though.”
Her phone buzzed. Julia sat up, water sloshing from her shoulders. Caroline Harper’s number, as though summoned by her thoughts, flashed on the screen.
What could Caroline possibly want at this hour? Especially given that it was nearly midnight back in New York? Had Caroline finally come to her senses and realized how profitably she could cash out on the house if she put it on the market? Were wannabe buyers already clamoring? Given the area’s hot housing market, Julia had heard, some people scanned the obituaries, sniffing opportunity. But she had a lease!
The phone stilled.
She sank back into the water, all the way under this time, hair twisting in auburn corkscrews above her. But even underwater, the phone’s insistent buzz sounded again.
“Goddammit!” She splashed to a crouch, grabbing it from its perch on the sink, half hoping it would slip from her soapy hand into the tub and kill the bad news that surely awaited.
Caroline voiced an apology, her words tentative, even pleading, exactly the way one would sound when about to screw somebody over.
“Julia? I hope I’m not calling too late.”
“It’s ten o’clock here.” Fuck her. Julia wasn’t going to make it easy.
“You’re a lawyer, right?”
She’d remembered. Which meant she’d probably hired some fancy-ass New York lawyer to wiggle out of the lease.
“A public defender.” As though that made any difference,
“Then I suppose you know the cops in this town.”
Was she going to marshal the police to her efforts? Maybe have them bodily throw Julia out if she resisted? Julia had treated herself to a second glass of wine with dinner and now wished she hadn’t. Although the muddled quality of Caroline’s voice made her wonder if they’d shared that particular indulgence.
“Pretty well, actually.” Trying to imply they’d be on her side. Take that, Ms. Evil Landlady.
“Why are they so incompetent?”
Julia pressed the phone’s speaker button and set it very carefully back on the sink. Just seconds ago, it had been her enemy, one she’d seriously contemplated drowning. Now, she wanted no harm to befall it.
“What do you mean?”
“I talked with them today. Well, I talk with them every day, asking if there’s any progress on her case. And you know what they told me?”
Julia couldn’t imagine. But she guiltily suppressed a moment’s envy for Caroline’s right, as a victim’s survivor, to have access to the kind of information unavailable to her.
“What?”
“That they think the medical examiner got it wrong. They went right back to that business of my sister drinking too much. But Leslie had been sober for years. As I told them right away. So why do they keep coming back to that?”
Sober people fell off the wagon all the time, Julia thought. Ray being exhibit A. That said, she was surprised to hear there was any doubt about Pinkham’s findings and said as much.
“I’m just telling you what they told me.”
“You know I’m not on the case. I mean, I might be if they arrest someone,” she began cautiously.
“If they arrest someone. Great. Just great. You’re just like everyone else in that fucking town.”
Which left Julia sitting in water gone cold, looking at a call gone dead, and wondering what had gone sideways in the investigation into a case that—she reminded herself as she climbed from the tub and wrapped her shivering body in a towel—was not hers to wonder about.