forty-five

Winnie had her second wind by the time we arrived home, so in the interest of getting some sleep when the time came, we all went outside for a game of tennis ball. I had installed lights halfway down the backyard after a break-in the summer before, so visibility was no problem.

Despite her size, Winnie was game. Tom or I would throw the ball, the three dogs would chase it, and the boys would stand aside and let the puppy win almost every time. When she tried to engage one of us in a game of keep-away, we ignored her, and she was quickly learning that if she wanted the game to go on, she had to deliver the ball to one of our hands. By the fifth race down the yard and back, her battery seemed to be running down a bit, so we put the ball away and just enjoyed the brisk spring air and starlight.

We were ready to go in when Goldie’s back door opened. Bonnie woofed once when she saw us, glanced back, and when she saw that her new mistress was right behind her, trotted to the fence to greet our gang.

“I’m so excited!” said Goldie. “Bonnie and I start class next week. Janet, do you have any good books I can read about basic training?”

I promised to get her set up with reading material and videos, and added, “Bonnie’s used to having a job, you know, and unless you plan to put a few sheep in your garden, you might want to try agility after you get the basics down.”

We chatted a few minutes more, but when Winnie lay down and curled up to sleep, we said goodnight to Goldie and Bonnie, took the dogs in, and settled in to watch a movie. The first few minutes were chaotic as Pixel reached from my lap to bop Winnie on the nose, and Winnie tried to squirm free of Tom to respond with a wrestling match. Drake didn’t want any part of that nonsense, but Jay hopped onto the couch beside me and started to lick Pixel. By the time the previews had finished, Pixel had slid from my lap and curled up between Jay’s lovely white paws, Winnie was snuggled against Tom’s chest, Leo was purring behind my head on the back of the couch, and Drake was sprawled across the big round dog bed.

I tried to lose myself in the movie, but it was no use. My mind wandered first to Ray and then to Summer. Summer, who had created a fiction about herself in Indiana. She and Evan weren’t married, and Winslow wasn’t her name at all, and her diploma from Purdue was a forgery. What had she been running from in Reno, and what else had she made up? More to the point, why? And why had she been frightened by the two goons from Cleveland? They were there to collect from Evan, not Summer. Or were they?

“What’s the matter?” Tom’s voice broke into my reverie.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You’ve been fidgeting since the movie started.” He picked up the remote control and hit pause. “So what’s up?”

I gave him the abbreviated version, and when I finished, he said, “Okay, let me put Winnie to bed and we’ll do a little research.” He turned the television off.

“You’ll help?”

He gave me a one-armed hug in reply, then carried Winnie to her pen. She barely opened her eyes when he laid her up against her giant teddy bear. I got up as carefully as I could, leaving Jay and Pixel where they were. I set my laptop up on the kitchen table and Tom sat next to me. Drake traipsed in and thunked down on the floor beside him.

We started with Summer Winslow, and several references came up to her yarn shop and herding lessons. I had never seen her website before, and it was lovely, illustrated with lots of great photos, including a few that I had taken of her herding students and their dogs. When we had clicked through all the internal links, Tom pointed out that there were no photos of Summer herself.

I returned to her “About Me” page. “Her bio begins with her studying at Purdue, which she didn’t.” And Tom was right. There was no photo of her.

We tried again, this time looking for Summer Smith and adding and subtracting search terms as we went—Nevada, weaving, wool, sheep, Reno. Nothing came up. Then we tried “Summer” with the other terms in various combinations. That brought up the kinds of page links I could get lost in—Basque shepherds and cowboys of Nevada, sheep farms and weaving workshops, herding and guardian dogs. But nothing about the woman we knew as Summer Winslow.

We were scrolling through a list of links to weaving workshops much like the ones Summer offered at the farm when Tom stopped me. “Wait! Go back a page.” I did, and he pointed at a listing for Summertime Woolens in Winnemucca, Nevada. “Didn’t you say Summer was from Winnemucca?”

The link led to a bare-bones site. The home page showed a storefront with a dark-haired woman standing in front with a basket of colorful yarns in her hands and a Border Collie at her feet. I clicked the About Us link and found two more photos. In one, the same woman sat at a loom. The second picture showed a flock of sheep in the distance, and the back of a little girl with her hand on a different dog, this one a blue merle Aussie. The girl had her back to the camera, and the only clue that she was female was the pink boots she wore. I leaned into the screen for a glimpse of the girl’s hair. Her straw hat hid it, but something in her build and stance, even though she appeared to be about ten, was familiar.

Tom and I looked at each other, and we both said, “That’s her.”