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It was bad enough that December was the shortest, darkest month, Erin Nash thought as she stared out the window, but at least back home in Vermont it would be snowing and pretty. Out here in the Pacific Northwest the late December sky seemed to cry big plopping tears all day and all night as though lamenting it had no snow to offer.
Rubbing her hands up and down her arms she wondered, not for the first time, what she was doing here in Kaslo, Washington, a town that had boomed at the turn of the century as a logging hub, but now limped along catering to tourists, back-to-the-landers and outdoor types. The cottage she was renting had seemed perfect when she’d viewed it online: small, rustic, miles from other humans. She’d wanted solitude for this first Christmas after everything changed.
Solitude she had.
She simply hadn’t realized her temporary home would be quite so wet.
Letting the ugly plaid curtain fall back into place, she turned and put another chunk of wood in the river rock fireplace. The log hissed and spat like an angry cat.
Even the wood was damp.
However, the rent was cheap, nobody was asking her fifty times a day if she was all right, and she had all the peace and quiet she wanted to work.
At least she had her work. It seemed to Erin that the more her life had become crazy, the more inspired her jewelry designs. Her pieces sold in high-end jewelry boutiques and art museum gift shops around the world. Her pieces had been profiled in magazines from Vogue and Elle to Nylon and Zink. Clothing designers often contacted her for jewelry to complement their latest collections. Rock stars asked her to design specific pieces and her work had appeared on the necks, ears and fingers of several TV stars. For some reason, Erin Nash Design was especially popular with television vampires and soon-to-be vampires. Erin had no idea why her jewelry had such appeal for the undead but she wasn’t complaining.
As she resettled herself at the small dining table-cum-work bench, smoothing the plastic sheeting she’d put in place to protect the table, she picked up the scissors and a fan of ruby red polymer plastic. She glanced at the pencil sketch taped to the wall beside her and began cutting freehand the design she’d sketched on the plane out here. As a nervous flyer, she often found immersing herself in her work helped calm her nerves and pass the time.
Technopop music played softly on her iPod, low enough that she could still hear the shush and chatter of the fire.
A new sound intruded. Like crying.
At first she assumed the piteous sound was the wind. But no. When she stopped and focused she realized the sad little cries, like the mewling of a baby, were coming from outside her door.
A glance at the old ship’s clock on the hand-hewn mantel showed ten o’clock. How could a baby be outside her door at ten o’clock at night?
Her hand slipped instinctively to her belly. Please, God, let her not be cracking up completely.
The cries came again, but this time more insistent. Definitely not imaginary.
She jumped up, raced to the door and opened it.
She glanced down and almost slammed the door again, thinking the bedraggled black and white creature was a skunk.
Black and white and wet all over the small animal wore the remains of a red bow around his neck, all soggy and sagging from the rain and whatever journey he’d taken to get here. Nobody’d be crazy enough to give a baby skunk as a gift. Not even out here. When she looked closer, the creature was a forlorn puppy.
“Why, you’re just a baby,” she said. “Wherever did you come from?”
The dog didn’t make eye contact, just hung his head and made another of those sad little sounds.
“What’s your name?” she asked gently, kneeling so she didn’t tower so above him. He didn’t answer, of course, but when she reached out to rub the top of his furry head, his tail thumped her soaking welcome mat.
She looked out into the dark yard, but there was no one with him.
“Well, my little darling, I don’t know where you came from, or what your name is, but you came to the right place.”
As she scooped him up, she felt his little body tremble. “You’re scared and wet and I’ll bet you’re hungry,” she cooed, saying whatever came into her head in an effort to soothe. “How smart you were. You must have seen the light and followed it.” She couldn’t imagine all the dangers that lurked out there for a newly-weaned pup. No wonder he was shaking.
She cradled and cooed until the trembling stopped and then laid him on the old rag rug in front of the fire, curling her body on the floor beside him and stroking the wet fur until he seemed settled.
“A towel. We need a towel,” she told him, then slowly rose and went to the bathroom for one of the thick towels she’d brought from home. He accepted the gentle rubbing, though he watched her with big, scared brown eyes. “Not a skunk at all,” she informed him. “I think you’re a Border Collie. Are you a Border Collie?” If a tail wag was anything to go on, it seemed she’d guessed his breed.
“I wonder what I’ve got to feed you?” she asked him. His tail thumped again. “I’ll go and see.” It wasn’t far from living room to kitchen -- about ten feet -- and as she opened the few cupboards and the fridge she explained to her nervous visitor that she didn’t have a lot of food in the house. At the back of a cupboard she found a can of Spaghetti-Os with meat sauce left from a previous tenant. She warmed the pasta in a saucepan on the little stove and the clacking of tiny toenails on the worn plank floor told her her visitor was on his way.
When she placed the warm food in a bowl on the floor along with a second bowl of fresh water, he fell to the food with gusto, tail wagging. When he’d banged the dish into the wall a few times chasing the last scraps of food, he daintily lapped a little water.
Then the puppy turned to her as though to find out what was next on the evening’s program.
The toweling had not improved the state of the red bow around his neck. She had to laugh.
“My poor darling. You look like the Christmas present that nobody wanted.”