Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

the elevator man would be fast asleep in the basement, and there wasn’t a moment to waste with Cecilia’s life in the balance, now was there?”
    “So he passed his character test?”
    “So he did, my dear. So he did. However, in general, I thought his character to be the lowest. Wouldn’t you agree?“
    “And once you were up there?”
    “I tossed the umbrella down and looked over the ledge. Good Lord, I said, see what she’s gone and done. He came running, the dear man, so concerned.”
    Again, there was that faraway look in Beryl’s eyes.
    “He was a wee thing, wasn’t he? Couldn’t have weighed much more than nine stone, nowhere near as heavy as Charles.“
    „Charles?”
    “Carl’s bullmastiff, dear. Remember?”
    “Your Carl was a veterinarian, too, wasn’t he?”
    “He was indeed.”
    “An American?”
    “Yes, dear.”
    “And you loved him with all your being?”
    “You have no idea.”
    She lifted Cecilia and held her against her bosom, squeezing the little terrier so tightly that she began to squirm.
    “I used to kill him off every day,” she said. “In my imagination, of course.”
    “After he left you?”
    “No, dear, before. I loved him so desperately, I used to think, what if anything ever happened to him? I wouldn’t be able to go on. So every day, I’d kill him off and then imagine how I’d cope, how I’d care for Christina and make a life for us. It assuaged my anxiety. But at the time, I had no idea—”
    She looked at me for the first time in what seemed like ages, and I could see the years of pain in her eyes now, all exposed.
    “It was his heart,” I whispered.
    “Yes, dear, his heart”
    “He fell in love with someone else.”
    “Yes, dear, that’s what he did.”
    “And abandoned you and his child.”
    Beryl nodded. “At first no one knew his whereabouts. And in my shock and grief, all I could think about was that someone would take Tina from me.”
    “You wanted to keep her.”
    “Wanted to keep her? She was all I had left. She was my life. So as soon as we could, we moved to England, not to London, where I’d lived when I met Carl, but the Cotswolds, where I hoped none of his family would be able to find me.”
    “And did you ever find out what happened to Carl, where he went and with whom, and what became of him?”
    “Oh, yes, dear. Actually, I did. He’d disappeared with a wealthy client. That was clear from the first”
    “He left a note?”
    Beryl smiled the saddest smile I’d ever seen. “A note? Why, no, he didn’t think to do that, Rachel. No, there was no note. But she went missing too. That part wasn’t hard to figure out.”
    “And what became of them?”
    “I don’t know about her,” she said, “but shortly after they came back from France, poor Martyn—”
    “You mean Carl.”
    “Yes, shortly after they came back from France, poor Carl had a terrible accident.”
    “Fatal?”
    “As it happens, it was. A lucky thing, too. With him gone, I was able to sell his practice. That gave me the money I needed to raise my daughter and get on with my life.”
    The longer it cooks, my grandmother Sonya used to say, the thicker the stew. No matter if you were a dog or a person, you only got to be more like yourself as time passed.
    I looked out the window. People were on their way to work. Traffic had picked up, too.
    “I’ll get ready now,” Beryl said.
    I reached into my pocket and shut off the tape recorder. Then I walked over to the phone and called downstairs. Beryl waited until I hung up. She whispered something in her little dog’s ear; then, back straight, head held high, she handed her to me and began to pack her things.