He was there again, the balding black guy with the curly-coated dog, a mixed breed named Spike, despite her being a girl. Their after-work schedules seem to bring them to the dog park at the same time every weekday afternoon. Five-thirty. She goes right after work, and he works at home and is ready to stop for the day by that time. After a few weeks, they finally got around to introducing themselves.
“Marley, yeah, that Marley.”
“Rasta parents?”
“Something like that.”
“Meghan Custer. No, not that Custer.”
He squatted down so that she could see his face. “Iraq or Afghanistan?”
“Both.”
“Me, too.” He stood up. “Spike’s my service dog. PTSD.”
“Shark’s mine. For obvious reasons.”
After that, it got easier. After that, it seemed like a cup of coffee would be nice. Soon enough, that after-work dog park meeting took on certain aspects of friendship. They rarely mentioned their military experiences, but it was nice to have someone around who didn’t treat her like some kind of exotic creature. Not just the wounds but the whole experience of being in a war, being in the military, tends to be beyond the scope of most of the very nice but somewhat clueless people Meghan spends her days with. Marley is more like the guys she lived, ate, and survived with, sometimes a little jokey, sometimes very, very quiet.
“Hey, Rosie.”
“Meghan, you wouldn’t believe this place.” Rosie doesn’t sound thrilled, that’s for sure, as she enumerates the flaws in the old house. No hot water! No shower! Sleeping on an army cot because the beds are beyond gross.
Meghan listens patiently, her fingers hovering over her keyboard, as she was composing an email when she answered Rosie’s call. “That’s nice. Sorry, that’s not nice.”
“You okay?”
“Just working, babe.”
“Oh, man, I am so sorry.”
“Not to worry. Hey, just think, you can make a phone call anytime you want. You can go to Target.”
“Yes, Meghan, I am free to poke around mindlessly.”
“How quickly we adjust.”
“Sorry. I’m just frustrated. And this Bellingham guy is a pain.”
“Who’s he?”
“The contractor. Excuse me, the general contractor. He wants everything done authentically, so there’s no ripping up, knocking down, and the freakin’ paint has to be analyzed for original color, and now he’s waiting for some special kind of recycled floorboards from a teardown in New Hampshire, so there’s this gap in the front room’s floor that I’m afraid I’ll fall into should I take up sleepwalking. You’d think he was making it into a museum instead of a family retreat.”
“Sounds expensive.” Meghan opens a new blank email. TO: don@donflintlaw.com
“I guess so. Guess the Homestead Trust has the dough. They must want it done properly.”
Meghan lets Rosie rattle on for a bit longer before signing off. Maybe she should have interrupted her unintended soliloquy, spoken of Marley and his dog, Spike, but Meghan is of a cautious nature; she’s not quite ready to mention Marley to Rosie. She’s not quite ready at all.
Now that she no longer lives with them, Carol and Don Flint are frequent visitors to Meghan’s fifth-floor apartment. They pop in for a drink before heading to the train, or bring takeout and the three of them spread it on the small kitchen table, an indoor picnic. Without his tie and with his suit jacket flung on the back of the couch, Don stops being the principal partner of the law firm and goes back to being her cousin’s soft-spoken husband. The gentle soul who believes that everyone deserves a fair trial and a fair shake at life. Second chances, he says, are his favorite kind.
Meghan has, oh so casually, mentioned her “friend” Marley Tallman to her cousins, in the context of someone who has also enjoyed a second chance.
“Where did he acquire his dog?” Carol is clearly keeping a poker face. If it had been her mother, Meghan would have been subjected to the third degree. “Not a prison program?”
“No, another program altogether. One that matches rescue dogs with veterans.”
“I’m glad that there are other programs out there, and it makes me think that you would have gotten a dog even if you hadn’t been accepted into the prison program.”
“But I wouldn’t have Shark. That’s like saying if you married a different man, you’d have had different children, but they wouldn’t have been the ones you did get.”
“And I wouldn’t have known the difference.”
“I suppose. You can’t know what you’ve missed by chance. Still, I’m really happy that I got into that program. That I got to know Rosie.”
“Tell me how she’s doing.” Carol holds her plate up to Don, who slips another piece of chicken onto it.
“She’s—I don’t know the best word. I guess confused captures it. The effect of having been abruptly released and then finding herself in charge of a crazy project is really disconcerting, but she’s coping. Mostly by kvetching.”
“You should go see her.”
“Not yet. It’s too soon.”
“Why?”
“I might confuse things for her.”
“So, will you ever tell her?” Don sits down opposite Meghan. “We can only go so far with this.”