Hot Rocks

from her own yard stroked her frayed nerves.
    She set her keys in the raku dish on the entry table, pulled her cell phone out of her purse and plugged it into the recharger. Slipped out of her shoes, out of her jacket, which she draped over the newel post, and set her purse on the bottom step.
    Following routine, she walked back to the kitchen. Normally, she’d have put on the kettle for tea and looked through the mail she’d picked up from the box at the foot of the lane while the water heated.
    But today, she poured a big glass of wine.
    And drank it standing at the sink, looking through the window at her backyard.
    She’d had a yard—a couple of times—as a kid. She remembered one in . . . Nebraska? Iowa? What did it matter, she thought and took a healthy gulp of wine. She’d liked the yard because it had a big old tree right in the middle, and he’d hung an old tire from it on a big thick rope.
    He’d pushed her so high she’d thought she was flying.
    She wasn’t sure how long they’d stayed and didn’t remember the house at all. Most of her childhood was a blur of places and faces, of car rides, a flurry of packing up. And him, her father, with his big laugh and wide hands, with his irresistible grin and careless promises.
    She’d spent the first decade of her life desperately in love with the man, and the rest of it doing everything she could to forget he existed.
    If he was in trouble, again, it was none of her concern.
    She wasn’t Jack O’Hara’s little Lainie anymore. She was Laine Tavish, solid citizen.
    She eyed the bottle of wine and with a shrug poured a second glass. A grown woman could get toasted in her own kitchen, by God, especially when she’d watched a ghost from the past die at her feet.
    Carrying the glass, she walked to the mudroom door, to answer the hopeful whimpering on the other side.
    He came in like a cannon shot—a hairy, floppy-eared cannon shot. His paws planted themselves at her belly, and the long snout bumped her face before the tongue slurped out to cover her cheeks with wet and desperate affection.
    “Okay, okay! Happy to see you, too.” No matter how low her mood, a welcome home by Henry, the amazing hound, never failed to lift it.
    She’d sprung him from the joint, or so she liked to think. When she’d gone to the pound two years before, it had been with a puppy in mind. She’d always wanted a cute, gamboling little bundle she’d train from the ground up.
    But then she’d seen him—big, ungainly, stunningly homely with his mud-colored fur. A cross, she’d thought, between a bear and an anteater. And she’d been lost the minute he’d looked through the cage doors and into her eyes.
    Everybody deserves a chance, she’d thought, and so she sprang Henry from the joint. He’d never given her a reason to regret it. His love was absolute, so much so that he continued to look adoringly at her even when she filled his bowl with kibble.
    “Chow time, pal.”
    At the signal, Henry dipped his head into his bowl and got serious.
    She should eat, too. Something to sop up some of the wine, but she didn’t feel like it. Enough wine swimming around in her bloodstream and she wouldn’t be able to think, to wonder, to worry.
    She left the inner door open, but stepped into the mudroom to check the outside locks. A man could shimmy through the dog door, if he was determined to get in, but Henry would set up the alarm.
    He howled every time a car came up the lane, and though he would punish the intruder with slobber and delight—after he finished trembling in terror—she was never surprised by a visitor. And never, in her four years in Angel’s Gap, had she had any trouble at home, or at the shop.
    Until today, she reminded herself.
    She decided to lock the mudroom door after all, and let Henry out the front for his evening run.
    She thought about calling her mother, but what was the point? Her mother had a good, solid life now, with a good, solid man. She’d earned it. What point was there in breaking into that nice life and saying, “Hey, I ran into Uncle Willy today, and so did a Jeep Cherokee.”
    She took her wine with her upstairs. She’d fix herself a little dinner, take a hot bath, have an early night.
    She’d close the book on what had happened that day.
    Left it for you, he’d said, she remembered. Probably delirious. But if he’d left her anything, she didn’t want it.
    She already had everything she wanted.
     
     
     
    Max Gannon slipped the