Chapter 8

The sixth sneeze in less than a minute blew from me like a nor’easter roaring along the shoreline.

“God bless you,” Frayne said.

Again.

If I had my dates correct, Nanny had filled these storage units more than fifteen years ago and, from the layers of dust covering everything jam-packed into them, hadn’t come back one time since the locks were secured.

All three units were side by side, making it easy to go from one to the other. The storage facility was located on the outskirts of town and covered twenty acres of county-owned land. Nanny had the forethought to rent units housed inside the facility and not facing the outside elements. I was thankful we weren’t relegated to years of dust and frigid temperatures while we dug through them.

I’d run home after meeting with my client and changed from work clothes into sweat pants that had seen me through four years of college, then law school, and one of Danny’s old army sweatshirts. If I was going to get dirty, I wanted it to be in comfortable, washable clothes. I checked on George, who was a little doggy-confused about why I was home in the middle of the morning. A few minutes spent loving on him, and then I left.

Frayne was waiting for me at the storage facility when I pulled up.

“We should have brought filtration masks with us,” I said. “This dust could be filled with mold spores.”

I’d had some foresight on the dirt situation and had packed various rags and multipurpose cleaning solution in addition to Danny’s Swiss Army knife to slice open any taped boxes.

We’d unlocked the first two units for convenience. No one was going to be visiting any of the other lockers on a wicked cold January Tuesday, and I was confident we’d have free rein of the hallway to pull items out and strew them along the space for inspection. When I rolled the unlocked door up to the ceiling, I’d sneezed a series of rapid tornado blasts from the cyclone of stale air and dust clouds spiraling up from a decade-plus of confinement. I’d learned my lesson with the first unit, and when I unlocked the second, I covered my mouth and nose with a clean rag.

By mutual agreement, Frayne and I decided to split up and each take a locker to determine if there was any order to their storage.

After two minutes in mine, I knew there wasn’t.

“Found anything yet?” Frayne called.

I lifted another huge plastic container filled with Christmas ornaments—the eighth one so far—and yelled back, “Nope. You?”

“No. I’ve got dozens of bags of what look like formal dresses, like for a wedding, though.”

“Those are probably Nanny’s concert clothes.”

I grabbed another box, this one labeled Travel. After slicing the masking tape with Danny’s knife, I found it filled with concert programs from all over Europe. The dates were mixed, but most were from the 1940s and 50s.

“Concert clothes?”

I jumped and dropped the pamphlet I held in my hand. Frayne stood right behind me. He was holding a garment bag, and through the unzipped opening, several beaded gowns in various shades of red, Nanny’s signature color, peeped through. Despite being a flaming redhead—or because of it, I never knew which—she wore the vibrant color when she performed, while the rest of the company was garbed in the traditional mix of black and white.

“Jesus. You should wear a bell.”

One corner of his mouth tilted upward.

“My grandmother was a professional concert pianist and traveled the world with various symphonies. Those”—I nodded to the bag in his hand—“are some of the gowns she wore when she played.”

“She must have led some life.”

I lifted the box of concert programs. “She did. This is filled with programs from some of the places she performed.”

He reached out for it, and I stepped around a pile of plastic containers to hand it to him.

He was dressed, like me, for comfort and cleaning. A pair of ratty, torn-at-the-knees faded jeans cupped his butt and made me want to do the same and covered his long legs. A Dartmouth College sweatshirt with holes in the elbows kept him warm on top. He hadn’t shaved today, and the mix of gray, white, and peppery-black stubble over his jaw and cheeks made me want to drag my fingers across it. I don’t think he’d showered, either, because his hair was even more of a riot than usual. It needed a good brushing, in addition to a trim. Reading glasses were perched halfway down his nose as he regarded me over the top of the rims. Today, his eyes were clear and focused, the pain haunting them, hidden.

He was such a mix of adorable and sexy, I wanted to fold him into my arms, hold him close, and squeeze his enticing ass.

Because the urge to do it was overpowering, I turned back to work after handing him the box.

“I don’t think there’s a concert hall in Europe she hasn’t played.” He rifled through the programs.

“She’s been to Asia three times, too.” I popped open another plastic container. “Criminy. How many Christmas decorations does one person need? This is the ninth box I’ve opened.”

“I’ve got a few ornament boxes in my unit as well. They look…ancient.”

His gaze drifted to the mound of boxes still in the middle and back of the unit and shook his head. I tried to move a large garment container from the top of an old wooden hope chest, but it was awkwardly shaped and heavy, not to mention covered in dust. I started rapid-fire sneezing again and would have dropped the box if Frayne hadn’t reached out and grabbed it—and me.

Like an off switch had been flicked, I stopped sneezing. My eyes were watery and my nose was threatening to dribble as I stared up at him. I could imagine how pathetic and unattractive I must have looked.

His clothes and hair were dust-streaked, and tiny particles were stuck to the prickly hairs on his face. A tingle of acute awareness shot through me, and for a moment I simply lost my breath. It had been long, too long, since I’d experienced anything remotely resembling arousal, and I needed a few seconds to make sure I didn’t give into my thoughts and jump him.

Why Mac Frayne, a man who I seriously thought only tolerated me because I could help him with something, should be the one my long-dormant and now-screaming hormones were zeroing in on, was baffling.

“You okay?” His voice was low and deep as he peered over his glasses at me. His brows grooved under the wild fringe of hair falling across his forehead, and my hands did that tingly thing again, wanting to reach up and push it back.

“Y-yes. Sorry. The box was heavier than it looked.” I took a subtle step backward, and he let go of my arm.

When he appeared convinced I was surefooted, he grabbed the box with both hands and then reached for a rag to wipe the dust.

“There’s a label on this. It’s pretty faded.” He adjusted his glasses and examined it closer. “I think it says Wedding: # 1. The word number is a hash tag. Is this your grandmother’s wedding dress from her first marriage, do you think?”

While he’d been busy with the label, I’d moved back to the hope chest and lifted the top.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You gasped.”

“Oh. I was surprised, that’s all. This trunk is filled with stuff from my wedding. I didn’t even know Nanny had these things. Let me see that box.”

He held it up for me.

“That’s not my grandmother’s wedding dress; it’s mine.”

“You’ve been married more than once?”

“What? Oh, no. No.” I lifted out a framed wedding picture of Danny and me. After a quick glance, I put it down on a container. “My grandmother refers to us by numerical order. I’m the oldest grandchild so she calls me Number One, ergo, the label. Colleen, unfortunately is Number Two, a name she still despises to this day but really hated when we were kids. Maureen is four.”

“What happened to three?”

“That was Eileen, Mo’s twin. The one who died.”

While I rummaged through the chest, Frayne went silent. When I turned, he was staring at my wedding photo.

“You look very young in this picture.”

“We were both eighteen. Graduated from high school a month before. He left for boot camp a week after the wedding.”

Frayne placed the picture back down on the container. His brows were kissing again. “Why does your grandmother call you and your sisters by numbers? It’s…odd, to say the least.”

“The very least,” I quipped. “It’s a long-standing feud with my mother. Nanny hated she’d given us all similar names because she wanted to play up our Irish roots. Nanny thought it made us all seem clichéd and sounded kooky.”

“Cathleen, Colleen, Eileen, and Maureen.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty obnoxious sounding when the names are all said in a row. Nanny started calling us by number as a way to annoy my mother. It worked, but it also made our lives miserable when we were kids, especially Colleen. To this day, she’s still scarred.”

“You’re all adults now. Why does she still refer to you that way?”

I shrugged, a tiny dust cloud wafting from my shoulders with the movement. “Habit, more than anything, I think.” I opened a scrapbook I found sitting in the chest. It was filled with photographs of my engagement party, my wedding shower, the ceremony. “God, we were young,” I said as I turned the pages. “I’ve never even seen some of these.”

“I would think this is an example of the items your grandmother didn’t want thrown away. Those kinds of memories are precious.”

What did old photographs mean to me now? It wasn’t like Danny and I were going to be sitting by a fireside one day, regaling our grandchildren about our younger lives. We’d had no children, therefore grandchildren couldn’t be considered. End of story. Here I was, thirty-nine years old, no husband, no kids, no prospects of either anywhere in my future. I’d done everything I was supposed to do in life, everything my parents pushed me to do and expected me to. Gotten married, became a lawyer, planned a future. Danny had wanted kids as much as I had. Until he’d decided he didn’t.

A ball of anger started to swell within me as the memory of the last time he was home on leave jumped to the front of my mind. The hurtful words, the accusations, the lies, the truth finally rearing its head.

As quick as the anger grew, it died.

“Are you okay?”

I looked up from the scrapbook. He’d slung his glasses into the neckline of his sweatshirt and moved closer to me, concern filling his eyes.

Was I?

“I’m fine.” I snapped the book closed. “Look, this trip down memory lane isn’t getting us any closer to finding Robert’s things. Help me move this chest out of the way. I want to get to the back wall.”

I don’t think he believed me, but he didn’t argue.

When we’d moved the chest into the hallway, an entire new row of boxes and plastic containers appeared.

“I’m gonna scream if those are filled with more holiday decorations.”

A ghost of a grin crossed Frayne’s sexy mouth. “I’m going back next door to rummage. Call out if you find anything promising.”

“You, too.”

An hour later, after opening more boxes and containers, the only thing worthwhile I’d uncovered were some publicity shots of Nanny from her touring days, remarkably preserved, their color still brilliant.

She’d been a looker, for sure. Tumbles of curly, flame-shot hair framed a perfect face of porcelain skin and periwinkle eyes. As an homage to the times, a scarlet slash of red covered her lips, and her cheeks were the color of ripe cherries. It was no wonder she’d taken four trips down the matrimonial aisle. Even at ninety-three, she was still a beautiful woman who looked twenty years younger in any light.

“Found them,” Frayne called from the third unit. After moving everything in the second locker out into the hallway with no luck, he’d opened and started on the last one.

“They were right in the front of the pack.” He came into the hallway, a box under each arm. “I wish we’d started in this unit. I saw six or seven others along the back wall. There may be even more. This locker is the most jammed of all.”

It was impossible not to smile at him. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning who’d found precisely what he’d asked Santa for waiting for him under the tree. He was covered in even more dust, his glasses cloudy with it. I was surprised he could even see through the lenses.

Maureen is the sister with some serious cleaning OCD, but there was no way I could let this go. I reached up and pulled his glasses off his nose. To say the move surprised him was an understatement. Armed with my cleaner, I squirted the lenses and then buffed them dry with a rag. After holding them up to the hallway light to ensure they were now clear, I slid them back on his face, ensuring they were snug around his ears. “Better?”

The lopsided grin he gave me was almost my undoing. “Much. Thanks.”

His eyes were huge behind the glasses, and I understood why he wore them the way he did, perched on the tip of his nose. I must have looked distorted and gigantic as he peered at me through the magnification. The brilliant blue of his irises was stark and clear, the sorrowful cast to them, gone.

In truth, I could have stood there for hours staring at them.

“I’ll go grab some of the boxes,” I said.

Together, we were able to unload fifteen bankers boxes and four huge plastic containers labeled, simply, Robert.

“There’s a lot more here than your grandmother remembered,” Frayne said, prying open a container. “This is going to take a while to go through.”

“Well, we don’t have to do it here.” I pinched my upper lip between my fingers and thought for a moment. “This stuff is, for all intents and purposes, property of the historical society now.”

“Do you want to move it there?”

“No. Not until I know what we’re dealing with. Since I’m the one charged with maintaining the personal archives while Leigh is out, and this stuff definitely falls under that purview, I think we’d be better served carting it all back to my house and then sorting through it.”

“I want to help you go through all this,” he said, opening another container.

“Don’t worry.” I tossed him a side eye. “You’re elected to help since you’re the one who discovered stuff was missing. I don’t relish going through all this by myself. And getting some of the other society members involved would be more trouble than I care to deal with.”

“Why?”

I rolled my eyes and wiped my hands across my sweat pants. “Most of them have a my-way-or-the-highway mentality. While it isn’t necessarily bad, when it comes to organizing and decision-making, they each have a different opinion of how things should be done, and I’d spend 99 percent of my time refereeing arguments rather than getting anything accomplished.”

A tiny grin started at the corner of his mouth and then grew like wild fire across dry grass, engulfing his entire face in mere seconds.

“What?” I asked, enchanted.

“I witnessed that for myself after you left the luncheon. A few of the gents got into a shouting match. I don’t even know what it was about, but all of a sudden voices were raised and faces turned red. One guy, I think Ollie?”

“Olaf.”

“Yeah. Him. He stood up, rammed the table with the flat of his hand, and I thought poor Mrs. Johnson was gonna have a stroke.”

“Probably because she thought he might have done some damage to the antique furniture. She’s very protective of it. Did that end the argument?”

“Not even close. It was…entertaining, to say the least.”

“That’s one word for it.” I shook my head and looked around. The hallway was stacked with boxes, containers, furniture, two bikes, and at least eight tall garment bags. “Since you’ve found what we set out to find, we need to put all this stuff back. I’ll come out here some other time with my sisters, and we can go through all Nanny’s personal stuff.”

“You don’t want to take any of it now?” He lifted my wedding picture and the scrapbook I’d left on top of the hope chest.

“No. I need a plan, garbage bags, and my sisters to do this any justice. Not to mention face masks to protect us from the dust. Let’s get it all back in, and then we can load both our cars with Robert’s stuff, okay?”

“If you’re sure.”

I was.

Getting all the crap back into the storage units was easier than taking it out had been. At least I had an idea of what was in store for me when I could get back here.

After dividing the boxes and containers and cramming them into our two cars, Frayne followed me back to my house.

****

When Danny was home on leave the year after I received my law degree, we decided the time had come to get a house of our own. We’d been renting a tiny one-bedroom apartment in town, and since I was now working for my father, we knew having our own property would be beneficial in more ways than one. We toured a few houses in and outside of town and decided on a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old farmhouse resembling the home I’d grown up in, something Nanny was quick to point out. When Danny was deployed again, I spent the long lonely months fixing up the house. I became an expert in fuses, electrical wiring, sheetrock, and paint.

Somewhere along the way, the house became more mine than ours; everything in it from the paint colors to the furniture, and even the layouts of the rooms, were all my own choice. When Danny came home on leave, he’d rarely notice any of the cosmetic improvements I’d made, even in the master bedroom, where’d we’d spend the majority of our time when he wasn’t hanging out at the Love Shack—our town bar—with his high school friends, drinking and telling war stories.

Now, with my husband gone, the house had turned from my home to my refuge and safety zone. I never had guests over who weren’t family, and George was the most stable and committed relationship I’d ever had with a male of the species, including my husband.

Even though I lived alone, I still kept the house tidy and neat, a side effect of growing up with two women who were neatness fanatics—my mother and my grandmother—and a younger sister with cleaning OCD.

“Bring a couple of the boxes inside, and we can start on them,” I told Frayne, grabbing two from my car.

George lifted his head, his rheumy, half-closed eyes peering at me in the afternoon light when I came through the doorway. I set the boxes on a counter and dropped to my knees. With his face cradled between my hands, I rubbed his nose with mine. His breathing was faster than when I’d seen him a few hours ago, his tongue swaying back and forth with each rapid pant. He hadn’t eaten anything in almost forty-eight hours, not even the delicious food Maureen had sent home for him or the sausage from Ruthie. I’d been able to get him to drink a few ounces of water every few hours, but when I offered him some now, he turned his head.

“Baby, you have to drink something. Just a little. Please.”

I sensed Frayne come into the room, then a moment later crouch down next to me.

George’s cloudy eyes turned his way, the gray hairs above his eyes lifting, sensing someone new.

“Hey there, old fella.” Frayne reached out a hand to let George sniff him. His thick, dry tongue swiped across the tips of Frayne’s fingers, something he always did when he recognized a friend.

“How old is he?”

“Almost sixteen.”

His gaze swept across George’s face and frame.

“Not feeling too good, are ya, boy?” His fingers slid up and around the dog’s ear, scratched, and then petted his head.

I don’t know whether it was because George was seeing someone new in the house for the first time in a long, long while, but I actually sensed a little sparkle of life come back into his eyes. His shaggy tail wagged and thumped on the floor several times under Frayne’s stroking.

“He’s not eating?”

I shook my head. “Or drinking. My vet says I should keep trying, though, even if he refuses.”

“Do you have a syringe or a turkey baster?”

Talk about a weird request.

“I’ve got a baster, one I use at Thanksgiving. Why?”

Frayne sat on the floor, his hand still stroking George’s head. “My mother had a dog when I was a kid. Old as dirt and as spoiled as any animal I’ve ever known. She paid more attention to him than she did to me.”

The wry grin on his mouth made me sad.

“When it wouldn’t eat or drink on its own, she was able to force fluids by using a tiny eye dropper filled with water. It worked, although I think the dog did it because it liked being catered to and not because it physically couldn’t drink. Like I said, it was spoiled rotten.”

“Do you think that’ll work with George?”

Under the shaggy fringe spilled across his forehead, his eyebrows tugged together and the corners of his mouth turned down. His gaze slipped to my dog and then back to me. “This”—he pointed under the table—“is George?”

I nodded.

“This is who you and your sister were speaking about in the kitchen the other day? And the one the diner owner, what’s her name, Ruthie, sent home sausage for?”

“Yeah. Who did you think George was?”

“Your husband.”

I snorted. Not the most feminine sound to make, to be sure. “Nope. This is George.” I rubbed his snout.

“The way people talked about him, I assumed he wasn’t, well, a dog. George isn’t exactly a canine name.”

“True, but it fits him. Doesn’t it, baby?” I kissed his snout this time. “Okay.” I stood up. “Let me find the baster.”

Frayne stayed on the floor and continued rubbing the dog’s head and ears. “It kinda does fit you,” he told my old friend.

I located the glass cylinder in the bottom of my kitchen junk drawer, rinsed it, then filled it with some of the filtered water from the fridge. “Okay. Let’s see if this works.”

Carefully, I slid the baster into the side of George’s mouth and gave the plunger a little push. George lapped the liquid, then licked the syringe. I squirted in another ounce, then another, until the baster was empty.

“It works.” Pleasure floated through me. I turned to Frayne to find him grinning. “I wish I’d known about this a few days ago.”

I moved to fill it up again.

“Don’t give him too much,” Frayne cautioned. “If he hasn’t had anything in his stomach, he might get sick from too much too fast. Dole it out, and see what happens.”

“Good idea. Feel better, baby?” As an answer, George dragged his sandpapery tongue across my hand.

I stood, as did Frayne.

“I can’t believe you thought George was my husband. That’s too funny.”

He folded his arms in front of him and leaned back against the kitchen counter. With a shrug, he said, “I don’t know if funny is the right word. The way everyone spoke about him, I assumed it was your husband’s name.”

I shook my head, then took two glasses down from the cabinet, filled them with the filtered water, and handed one to him.

“I don’t know if I could ever be married to a George,” I said, considering the idea. After a few sips, I shook my head. “Nope. Can’t see it.”

“What’s your husband’s name?”

I greased over the present tense. “Danny. Daniel Mulvaney.”

Frayne nodded. “Definitely different from George.”

I smiled into my glass, then cocked my head like he was prone to do and asked, “Where does McLachlan come from? Are your parents Irish?”

“My father is. Born and bred. Thick brogue and a will of iron.”

“Were you named for him?”

“No.”

The way his jaw clenched and the finite sound of the word screamed sore subject. There was some family drama there, and I was an expert on all things family and drama related. I sensed Frayne didn’t want to talk about it so, instead, I said, “Well, we should start on these boxes. See what we’ve got that’s salvageable and usable. Let’s bring them into the dining room. There’s more room to spread out in there.”

I grabbed a few dishtowels to clean off the mountains of dust on each box and lifted the two I’d brought into the kitchen. Frayne followed me.

For two hours, we systematically went through five of the boxes we’d carted from the storage unit. The huge plastic containers were filled with Robert’s clothing. They’d make a good addition to the public archives once they were cleaned and ironed. And boy, did they need to be cleaned. Nanny had packed them into airtight containers, but they still smelled stale and musty.

Every half hour, I’d gone back to the kitchen and given George another baster of water, thrilled when he not only drank it, but kept it down as well.

By four thirty, the January afternoon sun was gone and we were almost finished with the first wave of boxes. Frayne had been delighted when he’d found several leather personal diaries dated from the 1940s and ’50s belonging to Robert. He placed them in a separate pile and said we should read them together when we were done going through everything else.

Working side by side, we talked little, concentrating instead on the task at hand, but I was acutely aware of him at every turn. Little things filtered through my consciousness as I worked, like how every time he lifted an item from a box he’d readjust his glasses to see it better. Inevitably, the glasses would inch their way down to the tip of his nose. Or how when he went through the clothing containers, he’d methodically search all the pockets in a jacket or a pair of pants, a few times finding small items like an extra button, or in one instance a lighter with a monogramed H embossed across its face.

“Was Robert a smoker?”

“I don’t remember ever seeing him with a cigar or cigarettes. We can ask Nanny.”

He placed the lighter in the pile of personal effects we needed to take pictures of and catalogue.

When my stomach started to growl, Frayne’s did as well. It was a contest whose was louder.

Laughing, I went into the kitchen, checked the stores I had in the refrigerator, and then called out, “Slim pickings, I’m afraid. I haven’t had a minute to shop this past week. Do you like grilled cheese? I can make us sandwiches.”

When I closed the fridge, I jolted. “Good golly. I’m buying you a bell.”

“Sorry,” he said, holding a piece of paper in his hand, the tops of his cheeks going pink.

God, how was it possible for a grown man to be adorable and hot-as-hell sexy at the same time? I had a wild urge to reach up, grab his face, and kiss him silly.

In the same instant, I wondered how he’d respond if I did.

Better not to go there.

“So. Grilled cheese okay?”

With a quick nod he said, “Fine.”

“Okay. Give me a few—”

A noise I’d never heard before thundered from under the kitchen table. Both of us turned to see George standing upright on wobbly legs, a thick, white substance covering his mouth. His breaths were harsh, and sounded like a seal barking.

“Oh my God, what was that?” I fell to the floor next to him. His chest retracted with each labored breath, the outline of his entire ribcage visible through his fur. “I don’t think he can breathe.”

Frayne moved next to me and ran a hand along George’s ribs. “I’m no expert, but it feels like he’s not moving any air into his lungs.”

I wiped the froth from George’s mouth only to have it cover him again within seconds. Deep expressive eyes settled on me. Through the clouds of his cataracts, pain engulfed him with each breath he tried to take. His body shook as if he were in the throes of a feverish seizure, his spindly legs quivering, fighting to keep him upright.

“Oh, baby.” Tears swelled in my eyes, and I touched my forehead to his.

I knew this day was going to come. The vet had told me I was on borrowed time, but I wasn’t prepared to lose George. And because I wasn’t, I was still going to fight for him.

I swiped at my tears and chugged in a deep breath. “I’m calling my vet. She’ll be able to tell me what to do.”

“He’s probably dry as a bone, Cathy,” the receptionist told me when I connected. “Even though you were able to get him to drink a little, it’s not enough. The doc says to wrap him in a blanket and bring him in right now.”

“We’ll be there in less than five minutes.”

“Your car is bigger than mine,” Frayne said while I covered George with an afghan I pulled from the rocking chair in my living room. “He’ll be more comfortable in it than he would in my two-door. You sit in the back with him while I drive. I’ll need directions.”

Together, we carried him out to my vehicle. I slid into the back seat, and Frayne lifted George in as if he weighed no more than a five-pound bag of potatoes. With George’s head on my lap and his breathing worse, I sent up a few silent prayers while I directed Frayne to the veterinarian’s office.

The waiting room was empty, and we were shown into an exam room the moment we came through the door.

“Put him on the table,” Shelby Sinclair, my longtime veterinarian instructed. I’d known Shelby since kindergarten. She’d been interning with Heaven’s local vet, Doc Masters, fifteen years ago when I’d brought George in for his first vaccinations. When she’d bought the practice five years later, she’d continued to be the only doctor George ever knew.

“Hey, buddy. Not feeling too good, are ya?” She ruffled his head and slid a stethoscope bell along his ribs. “He’s not moving any air, and from the color of the mucous, it looks like he’s in congestive heart failure.”

“Congestive, like he’s clogged with water? Oh, my God, did I cause this? I’ve been giving him water all afternoon through a turkey baster. Did I do this?”

Shelby fixed her steady gaze on me and, in a stern voice that would have made Nanny proud, said, “You did nothing to cause this, Cathleen. Nothing. This is a progression of his ailments and his age.”

“Really? You’re not saying that because you want to spare my feelings?”

“When have I ever said anything to spare your feelings?”

She had me there.

“Okay. Okay.” I tried to keep from letting go of my tears. “Can you fix this heart failure?”

“I can try to alleviate some of the symptoms causing it, but we’ve talked about this.” She spoke to me but kept her hand on George. “Combined with all the other conditions he has working against him, I can’t fix the underlying cause. George is elderly. A dog’s body ages at a much more rapid rate than ours. In people years, he’s over one hundred. Old by anyone’s standards.”

“I know. I know, but I’m not…ready to say… I mean, he’s all I have. I can’t…” A sob finally tore from me, unchecked, and I shot my fist to my mouth. A strong and steady hand rubbed along my back.

Frayne.

Shelby’s dark eyed gaze shot from him, then back to me.

“Please, Shelby. Please. Try something. Anything,” I pleaded. “I can’t stand to see him this way.”

With a quick nod, she called out to her assistant and issued a series of orders. “Okay, let me work. Go outside to the waiting room, and I’ll call you back in in a few minutes.”

“Can’t I stay?” I sounded like a whining child, but I didn’t care. My emotions were sliced raw. My life had been filled with too much loss the past few years. I couldn’t bear to add George to the list.

“No,” Shelby said. “I’ve known you forever, Cath. You can’t stand the sight of needles or blood, and I don’t want you getting sick or, God forbid, fainting.” Her gaze flicked to Frayne again. She pointed to the door. “Outside, and when I’m set, I’ll let you know.”

“Come on, Cathy.” Frayne’s hand circled around my upper arm. “Let’s let the doctor do what she needs to.”

I pulled against him and grabbed Shelby’s hand. “Please. Please.”

She patted my hand and nodded. “I know, kiddo.”

I let Frayne guide me out to the empty waiting room. My bones felt as if they’d turned to unsettled jelly, loose and liquid. I slid into a cushioned chair and folded in on myself, my hands wrapped around my midsection, my body bent at the waist.

I couldn’t lose George. I couldn’t.

When the army representatives had come to my door to tell me Danny had been killed, I hadn’t reacted as everyone assumed I would. Lucas had been with them, and he’d volunteered to be the one to notify me because, as one of my oldest friends, he’d thought to try and temper the emotional blow of the news. With his strong, familiar voice cracking at the loss of his dearest, best friend, he’d told me what had happened.

I kept my cool, didn’t shed a tear. I thanked the soldiers and Lucas and then sent them away.

Alone, except for George, I’d sat in my rocking chair for the rest of the day, thinking about how my life and my marriage had turned out so different from what I’d imagined and dreamed it would be. Lucas had been the one to notify my family and as soon as they heard the news, they’d descended on me, seeking comfort, fighting tears, grieving, wanting to be comforted.

I was the one to give it. I was the one who held Danny’s mother up, physically and emotionally, through the endless days of the visitations, the mass, and then the burial.

When my sister Eileen died a year later of breast cancer, history repeated itself. I was the one who notified people, organized the funeral, wrote thank-you responses for the condolence cards, while my sisters and parents fell apart. No one ever knew how weak I was on the inside each time I was called upon to be strong.

Those same emotions whirled inside me now while one of my oldest friends worked on a dog I loved beyond all end.

Frayne’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “Can I call anyone for you? Your sisters? Your husband?”

His face was a mask of concern. Seated next to me, he leaned in close, his gaze fixed on my face. His fingers were doing a little kneading thing on my shoulder, and a soothing calm, like the sensation you get right before falling asleep, flowed through me from his touch.

I was used to being the one doing the comforting; the one who stayed strong and focused. Through the haze of my amazement to actually be the one receiving comfort, Frayne’s words seeped through.

I squinted at him. “My husband?”

“Do you want me to call him to come and be with you? I would think you’d both want to be together in case…” He didn’t need to finish his thought.

I sat up so abruptly, his hand slipped from my shoulder. Heat shot up from my neck, and my face burned as if I’d been caught out in the bright sunshine all day without sunblock.

“What? Cathy, what? Did I say something wrong?” His concern morphed into confusion.

I shook my head. “No. No, you didn’t. I just realized you don’t know a thing about me.”

“What does that mean?”

I sighed and stood, prepared to pace. “My husband is dead. He was killed in combat three years ago. And you don’t need to call my sisters. I’ll handle this like I do everything else.”

Frayne’s hands shot out and halted me, his fingers now flexing and extending their grip on my upper arms. The movements were careful and controlled. The emotion swimming in his eyes was anything but.

“Your husband is dead?”

I nodded.

“You’re a widow?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I?”

Frayne shook his head, the disheveled hair I’d fantasized about clutching on to, swishing side to side. His eyes bore into mine. No longer kind and caring, they were now hard and questioning. “All the times we’ve been together, at the museum, the storage locker, Christ, even your own house, you never once mentioned your husband was dead.”

“Again, why would I? It’s not like we talked about anything other than your research. What does his being gone have anything to do with, well, anything?”

It was as if he hadn’t heard me. Or if he had, chose to ignore my words. “The other day in the basement, you knew, you had to know, how much I wanted to kiss you. Take you in my arms and slake this hunger, this need to feel you, hold you against me. You had to know what I was thinking. It took everything in me to rein in the need running through me.”

“What?”

If he’d told me we were twins separated at birth, I couldn’t have been more stunned.

“But I didn’t give in to the craving,” he continued, “because I thought you were married and there are rules about that. Everything I’d heard, every indication said you were. If I’d known then”—his fingers pressed a little harder into my arms—“I would have—”

Shelby’s tech interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. “You can come back in, Cathy. Doc’s all done.”

I wanted to move, but it was like a magnetic force field held my feet rooted to the floor.

He’d wanted to kiss me. Me. Good God, the notion alone was equal parts terrifying and arousing. The truth was written in his eyes, though. He wasn’t playing with me.

“Cathy?”

The tech’s voice penetrated through my paralysis, and I tore out of Frayne’s death grip and bolted back into the exam room.

Shelby stood, observing George from next to the metal exam table, her gaze moving from the intravenous bag connected to a rod above the table down to my dog. A tiny green face mask was secured over his snout, plastic tubing connecting it to an oxygen tank on the wall. His labored breaths echoed and wheezed through the mask.

“How is he?” I laid my hands on his back and head. His eyes were closed, and he gave no indication he knew I was there.

Shelby glanced at Frayne as he came into the room, and then to me. “Not good. I gave him a bunch of meds to try and help his breathing, get some of the fluid out of his lungs. It’ll take some time to see if they work, but I have to be truthful with you; I’m not hopeful he’s gonna come out of this.”

I choked back a sob and bit down on my bottom lip to stop it from quivering. My entire body went numb at her words.

This was it. This was the day I’d prayed would never come.

“Is—is he suffering?”

When she didn’t answer me right away, I knew the truth.

“If the meds are going to work, it should be in a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll know better, then. Stay here with him. I’ve got to go check on a dog I did surgery on a few hours ago. I’ll be back.” She pulled a stool out from under a desk and shoved it over to me.

When she left, I plopped down on it and leaned in close. “I’m here, baby. I’m here. You rest. Let the medicine work.”

I don’t know how many minutes I sat there, stroking the fur on his head, his back. Time stopped moving.

Memories are funny things, and they pop up at the craziest times. While I sat there, listening to my best friend’s jagged breathing, watching the fluid drip down the IV tube, I remembered the day I’d brought George home from a local breeder. I was lonely with Danny gone for months on end and wanted a dog for company during the long days and nights alone. He’d been the runt, surprising the owners when he’d survived, the twelfth of the litter and the tiniest. I’d come into the room where mama was nursing her pups. All but George. He was splayed on his belly, his four legs spread out at all corners. He spotted me and then on those tiny, weak legs, pushed up and tried to walk to me. I lifted him, and I swear he looked right in my eyes and smiled. From that moment, he held my heart, and each year his grip grew more snug around it.

Shelby returned, listened to George’s heart and lungs, and then sighed. “He’s not any better, Cath.”

“Can’t you give him more medicine?”

“I already gave him the maximum doses—”

“Well, maybe he needs more than the maximum.” I knew I was shouting, but I couldn’t help myself. “You’re the one who told me his organs are failing. Maybe he needs more to be able to, I don’t know”—I flapped my hands in the air—“metabolize what he needs.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Cath.” Unlike me, she kept her voice low, her tone controlled. “Look. I know this is hard. You need to come to grips that this is it for George. He’s lived a long life, longer than a lot of Labs I’ve taken care of. He’s been loved by you and spoiled and given a great existence. But his poor body is tired. You need to face it, understand it.”

“I can’t.”

George startled at the pitch of my wail, shocking me into silence. In the next moment, he took a huge, deep, tortured breath, and then his entire body went still. His legs stretched out and relaxed, and his chest stopped moving. The panting echo of his breathing against the mask grew silent.

“Shelby.”

She was moving before I screamed. Stethoscope out, she called to her tech and then moved to George. She listened to his heart, her eyes trained on me. I held my breath, fearful to move or make a sound. My heart was hammering like a pile driver against my ribcage. Frayne pushed off the wall and came to stand next to me, took my hand in his and then slung his other hand around my shoulder, tucking me close to his side. I clung to him like a lifeline.

Shelby dragged her hands all over George’s chest, his back, his abdomen, examining every bit of him. After an eternity, she stood tall and removed the stethoscope.

I knew what her words were going to be before she opened her mouth.

I shook my head. “No.”

“I’m sorry, Cath. I’m so sorry.”

“No.” I pulled against Frayne’s grip, but he held on to me. “Do something,” I pleaded with her. “Please. There has to be something, anything—”

She reached out her arms, and when Frayne let go of me, she pulled me into a fierce hug. With her hands rubbing down my back and holding me tight against her, she said nothing more, simply held me while I cried.

Shock was such a weird sensation. You could either become lost in a fugue state when it occurred, unable to understand anything going on around you, your mind shutting down and your body going numb; or you could become hyperaware of every movement, every sound, every thing around you.

I fell into the latter category.

The feel of Shelby’s fingers sliding up and down my back sparked my nerve endings, the sensation jolting all the way to my feet. The sound of the oxygen whooshing through the mask still attached to George, blared. When Shelby’s tech turned it off, the silence was deafening.

Like being underwater, background sounds grew muffled. My head suddenly felt as if I’d taken one too many sleep aids and was fighting the effects to stay awake.

After a while, I became aware Shelby was speaking. I pulled back from her embrace and pressed my fingers against my eyes. When I swallowed, my ears popped.

“Sorry. I’m okay.” I took a deep, rough breath and cleared my throat. “What do I need to do? Sign something? What? Tell me.”

Shelby wound her hands around my arms again. “Cathleen. Stop. You just lost your best friend. Your baby. Take a few minutes with him. We don’t need to discuss what comes next right this second.”

“No, I know. But I want to.” I squared my shoulders. “Tell me what I need to do.”

The tech brought in some papers for me, and then Shelby and I decided what to do with George’s body. I almost lost control when I made the decision to cremate him, but I was able to keep myself in check long enough to get everything secured.

When she left the room, Frayne asked, “Do you want a few minutes alone with him before I take you home?”

I nodded. With one last swipe down my back, he left me with my best friend.

“I’ll be right outside,” he said.

The tech had pulled the IV from George’s leg and removed the oxygen mask. His body was still and peaceful, and it was only if you noticed his chest wasn’t rising and falling you’d ever think anything was amiss.

I leaned down and hugged him before kissing his snout. When his whiskers tickled my cheek, I bit back another sob.

“I love you, old friend. More than anything. Be at peace now,” I whispered. “I love you.”