Watchers

eat with us?”
    The retriever licked his chops and thought for a moment. Then he studied the letters he had already used, pushed some of them aside, and reused the rest along with a K and a T and an apostrophe that he had to release from the Lucite tubes.
    OK.BUT I’M STARVED.
    “You’ll survive,” Travis told him. He gathered up the lettered tiles and sorted them into the open tops of the proper tubes.
    He retrieved the pistol-grip shotgun that he’d stood by the back door and carried it out to the front porch, where he put it beside his rocking chair. He heard Einstein turn off the pantry light and follow him.
    They sat in anxious silence, Travis in his chair, Einstein on the redwood floor.
    Songbirds trilled in the mild October air.
    Travis sipped at his beer, and Einstein lapped occasionally at his water, and they stared down the dirt driveway, into the trees, toward the highway that they could not see.
    In the glove compartment of the Toyota, Nora had a .38 pistol loaded with hollow-point cartridges. During the weeks since they had left Marin County, she had learned to drive and, with Travis’s help, had become proficient with the .38—also with a fully automatic Uzi pistol and a shotgun. She only had the .38 today, but she’d be safe going and coming from Carmel. Besides, even if The Outsider had crept into the area without Einstein’s knowledge, it did not want Nora; it wanted the dog. So she was perfectly safe.
    But where was she?
    Travis wished he had gone with her. But after thirty years of dependency and fear, solo trips into Carmel were one of the means by which she asserted— and tested—her new strength, independence, and self-confidence. She would not have welcomed his company.
    By one-thirty, when Nora was half an hour late, Travis began to get a sick, twisting feeling in his gut.
    Einstein began to pace.
    Five minutes later, the retriever was the first to hear the car turning into the foot of the driveway at the main road. He dashed down the porch steps, which were at the side of the house, and stood at the edge of the dirt lane.
    Travis did not want Nora to see that he had been overly worried because somehow that would seem to indicate a lack of trust in her ability to take care of herself, an ability that she did, indeed, possess and that she prized. He remained in his rocking chair, his bottle of Corona in one hand.
    When the blue Toyota appeared, he sighed with relief. As she went by the house, she tooted the horn. Travis waved as if he had not been sitting there under a leaden blanket of fear.
    Einstein went to the garage to greet her, and a minute later they both reappeared. She was wearing blue jeans and a yellow- and white-checkered shirt, but Travis thought she looked good enough to waltz onto a dance floor among begowned and bejeweled princesses.
    She came to him, leaned down, kissed him. Her lips were warm.
    She said, “Miss me terribly?”
    “With you gone, there was no sun, no trilling from the birds, no joy.” He tried to say it flippantly, but it came out with an underlying note of seriousness.
    Einstein rubbed against her and whined to get her attention, then peered up at her and woofed softly, as if to say, Well?
    “He’s right,” Travis said, “You’re not being fair. Don’t keep us in suspense.”
    “I am,” she said.
    “You are?”
    She grinned. “Knocked up.”
    “Oh my,” he said.
    “Preggers. With child. In a family way. A mother-to-be.”
    He got up and put his arms around her, held her close and kissed her, and said, “Dr. Weingold couldn’t be mistaken,” and she said, “No, he’s a good doctor,” and Travis said, “He must’ve told you when,” and she said. “We, can expect the baby the third week of June, and Travis said stupidly, “Next June?” and she laughed and said, “I don’t intend to carry this baby for a whole extra year,” and finally Einstein insisted on having a chance to nuzzle her and express his delight.
    “I brought home a chilled bottle of bubbly to celebrate,” she said, thrusting a paper bag into his hands.
    In the kitchen, when he took the bottle out of the bag, he saw that it was sparkling apple cider, nonalcoholic. He said, “Isn’t this a celebration worth the best champagne?”
    Getting glasses from a cupboard, she said, “I’m probably being silly, a world-champion worrier. . . but I’m taking no chances, Travis. I never thought I’d have a baby, never dared dream it, and now I’ve got this hinkey