A Dog's Perfect Christmas Read online

  Juliana looked at the first item on her list and pulled in a deep breath. “I know I’m not supposed to say this, but the twins are the worst thing that has ever happened in my life.”

  When picturing herself saying this to him, Juliana had imagined that she and Hunter would share a laugh of rueful acknowledgment. Instead, he continued to stare silently. It made her not want to look at him. She plunged on. “And our daughter, in case you haven’t noticed, has become a full-on, no-holds-barred teenager. She goes into sullen silences or screaming rages without any warning at all. I need you to back me up when I lay down the law with her, because she’s been doing an end run to you whenever I give her an answer she doesn’t like.”

  “Are you thinking of leaving me?” Hunter asked plaintively. “Divorce?”

  God. Juliana shook her head. “No, no, that’s not it. I love you, Hunter. I just kind of hate my life right now.”

  “Well, how about if Mrs. Espinoza comes more than three times a week? She could pick up the twins after preschool every single day, maybe, and then she could keep them an hour longer?”

  “That’s not the essential problem,” Juliana replied. “You’ve been absent so much. The kids need a father, and I need my life partner. Remember when we first got married? We were both working so hard, and yet somehow it seemed like we spent more time together then, when I was with the firm and you had that job at the hospital. And then there’s your dad.… He doesn’t do anything at all to help. He just sits in his room. We serve him food, we clean up after him, he never says thank you, and he’s depressed—clinically depressed—but refuses to seek help.”

  From his expression, Juliana could tell that Hunter had swung into problem-solving mode.

  “Okay,” he responded eagerly, “what if you go back to work, like, part-time?”

  Juliana was already shaking her head. “Oh, there’s nothing I want more in the world than to go back to my old job, but there is no ‘part-time’ for a trial attorney, Hunter. It’s impossible.”

  Hunter was processing a list of his own. “I’ll talk to my father, I really will. And, once this big project is over, my schedule will calm down.…”

  “Honey, you have not worked fewer than sixty hours a week since you took the job. And now you’re going to be promoted and start leaving town?”

  “So are you saying that if I get the promotion, I should turn it down?”

  Juliana could see that the concept was completely foreign to him. But if he worked on the road for days on end, how would she be any different from a single mom?

  “It’s something I’ve worked for my whole career,” he argued. “It’s the game-changer we’ve both been waiting for, a way to get ahead financially. A way to make everything right.”

  “Hunter,” Juliana replied softly, “how would you leaving town on a regular basis make everything right?”

  “I’m sorry.… I didn’t know you were feeling this way. I…” Hunter spread his hands out helplessly, truly gobsmacked. Then his eyes widened in horror. “Is there someone else?”

  “What?” Juliana cried, then lowered her voice. “No. Stop making this into such a catastrophe. Couples have conversations like this with each other all the time. Honey, I feel like I’m drowning. I’m just asking for help.”

  Hunter’s expression said it all—he had no idea what to do.

  * * *

  Sander stood in his bathroom, alone in the house, alone in his life. In front of him, lined up like soldiers, were orange plastic bottles with white lids, each a medication prescribed for recent health issues. Vicodin for when he blew out his back: maybe eight of those left. Valium for after Barbara died: only a few rattling around in the bottom of the pill bottle. Ambien to help him sleep, though eventually he’d realized it was addictive and had stopped taking it.

  All in all, a hefty handful of tablets. Would it be enough to do the job?

  Sander had also stumbled upon another medication while looking for something else in another bathroom: a packet of citalopram, an antidepressant Juliana was apparently taking clandestinely. What if he added those to the mix? Probably that would do it, but he hated to think about how guilty his daughter-in-law would feel.

  Sander turned at a slight and familiar noise. Winstead had eased out of his dog bed, padded over, and was now standing in the doorway of the bathroom, regarding Sander with those old, soulful eyes.

  “Hey there, Winstead,” Sander greeted softly.

  He stared at his dog, who stared back. It felt as if his brain were processing something deep in his subconscious, a background calculation. It would be easier to swallow the pills without thinking about what he was doing. Just get it done.

  He pictured Winstead watching loyally, escorting his person out of the mortal world. Sander would do it in his chair, he decided, so that his hand could rest on Winstead’s head. Leave this life touching his best friend. Or maybe call the dog up on the bed, lie on his back with Winstead’s head on his chest, his arm draped over the wolfhound.

  When he slipped away, would Winstead know it? His body would go silent. He pictured his dog nosing him in concern, trying to wake him up, growing more and more panicked. He’d whimper; he’d lick Sander’s face; he’d cry out loud, pleading for a human to come help.

  But by then, Sander would be beyond help.

  The thought made Sander shudder. He wasn’t ready, not yet. His knees popped as he knelt in front of his dog. He reached out and seized Winstead’s head with both hands. “Okay, buddy,” Sander said huskily. “Not today.”

  When Sander lowered his face to Winstead’s, the dog swiped his cheek with his tongue. It broke him, that doggy kiss, it broke Sander, and he gathered his best friend into his arms and sobbed into his dog’s wiry fur.

  * * *

  The next morning, Juliana was at the stove. She liked to cook. When the mood struck her, she would prepare feijoada, her mother’s black bean and pork stew, or her favorite: rich, delicious pão de queijo—Brazilian cheese bread. Hunter showed his appreciation for such efforts by patting his stomach, an unconscious gesture Juliana found charming. Sander didn’t comment, but he always finished whatever Juliana placed in front of him. Her three children turned away from such preparations as if the food had spent a week lying dead in the road.

  Sander. Juliana had learned exactly how he preferred his fried eggs, and making them had become so automatic that she executed the steps in precise order, always perfectly, never making them for anyone else in the family. The secret was basting them right before they were done. Normally she went through the motions without complaint, but this morning it irritated her, like everything irritated her these days.

  She heard Hunter step into the kitchen earlier than the regularly scheduled program. “I’ll take Dad his breakfast,” he announced, his tone of voice sounding like he was saying, “I will now enter the burning building and save some orphans, plus establish a scholarship fund for them.”

  He took the tray as Juliana expertly dropped bacon next to the perfect eggs and the perfect toast.

  “He doesn’t understand a thing you told him,” Juliana murmured to herself after he left.

  “What?” Ello asked as she arrived.

  “Just talking to myself, honey,” Juliana replied.

  “You say that like it’s normal. But you’re the only person who does it, Mom,” Ello accused her. She moved to grab Sander’s tray, then peered at Juliana in confusion.

  “Your dad took Grandpa his breakfast,” Juliana advised.

  Ello’s eyes bulged as if Juliana had announced that their father had just given live birth. She recovered quickly, though, sitting at the table and pulling out her phone. “Okay, Mom, we should get a dog,” Ello announced. “I made a list of reasons why.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  Her daughter’s eyes flashed. “Would you just listen to me for once? I don’t have any friends! I need a dog!”

  Juliana shook her head. “This isn’t a good time.”

  Ello lo
oked up sharply at her. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you and Dad getting a divorce?”

  The question made Juliana light-headed. What sort of subliminal messages had she been sending her daughter? Why did both Hunter and Ello go there so automatically, so effortlessly, when to Juliana the word sounded more like a fatal disease? Divorce.

  “Oh, honey,” she said again.

  Ello kept staring, her eyes full of burning accusation.

  Juliana glanced away, almost ill. Was that really what she wanted?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sander glanced up in surprise when his door pushed open without warning and his son stood there with his breakfast.

  “What happened, is Ello sick?” Sander asked by way of greeting.

  “Uh…” was Hunter’s response, an answer Sander found lacking in specificity.

  Since Hunter had never brought breakfast, he didn’t know where to set the tray. He stood, frowning, obviously considering the options from a facilities-management point of view. The small table by the window was stacked with books and magazines. There was a tray for eating in bed, but Sander was up and dressed.

  “Right here,” Sander suggested mercifully, indicating the table next to his chair.

  Hunter set the breakfast down. Sander eyed his food with no enthusiasm. Winstead lifted his nose for the bacon.

  “Ello’s fine. I just wanted to do it this morning.” Hunter settled into a different chair, a serious expression on his face.

  Ello never did this, never hung around for prolonged conversation, and Sander decided that’s how he preferred it—drop breakfast and flee like a zookeeper feeding grizzly bears.

  “How are you doing, really?” Hunter asked.

  Sander frowned at the way his son posed the question. “What do you mean, really?”

  “I just … I worry a little bit, Dad. You don’t seem to do anything. You never take Winstead for a walk. You just sit in your room. We serve you food, we clean up after you. It’s like you’re depressed.”

  Winstead became alert when the word “walk” was spoken in association with his name, but opted not to get out of his bed in case Hunter was bluffing.

  “Do? What do you want me to do?” Sander asked irritably.

  “Well, what about finishing the restoration of your car?” Hunter proposed reasonably. “You completely stopped working on it when Mom died. Weren’t you going to put a new engine into it?”

  Sander grunted. “Don’t got one.”

  Hunter nodded. “Yeah, I know, I was online looking at companies that specifically specialize in classic car engines. I found one for a 1981 Monte Carlo that—”

  “—1980,” Sander cut in. The conversation was making him itchy.

  “Oh, sorry. Well, I’m sure they have those too.”

  Sander shook his head. “I don’t trust the Internet.”

  Hunter didn’t have anything to say to that.

  As Sander regarded his son, the intense expression in Hunter’s eyes made him turn away.

  Pity. Sander could have endured concern, but this wasn’t that.

  This was pity.

  * * *

  Hunter returned to the kitchen, peering around as if searching for flaws. “Anyone seen my coffee cup?”

  “You set it on the counter there when you took your dad his tray,” Juliana told him.

  Hunter grabbed the cup, sipped, found it tepid, and put it in the microwave. While waiting, he slapped his hands together in an, “Okay what’s next?” gesture. “How else can I help, Juliana?”

  His wife gave him a tolerant smile and he couldn’t help but grin back. Okay, she was right: he was not going to fix everything that was bothering her with one hyper-efficient morning, but it was a start, right? Everything ever done began with a start.

  “Here’s something,” Juliana offered. “You could locate the twins. They ran by a few minutes ago headed toward the back of the house. It was weird … they weren’t yelling or holding anything that could be used as a weapon.”

  Hunter nodded and turned to his daughter. “Did you see where the boys went?”

  “Oh,” Ello responded scornfully. “I get it. Your way of finding the twins is to ask me to do it for you.”

  In that moment, as his little girl glared at him, Hunter was struck by how much she resembled her mother. True, her hair was his, a light brown that she’d been begging for years to be allowed to dye blond, something Hunter had decreed wouldn’t be allowed until she no longer wanted it. Ello’s eyes were all Hunter and Sander, too—green, a fleck or two of black floating in them, which Ello considered hideous imperfections. She even sported a few faint freckles. They were the first things to go when she began troweling on makeup. But her high cheekbones, the broad smile (so seldom on display, recently), dark brows, and the intriguing pucker between her nose and her full lips—those were pure Juliana. Ello would someday be as beautiful as her mother. At that point, all boys would be prohibited.

  “I see your point,” Hunter responded affably. Ello’s eyes widened at her father’s decision to speak to her like an adult. “All right,” he announced, “this can’t be too hard. I’ll just follow the sound of things breaking.”

  Hunter did not have far to go. At the end of a hallway was a closet where they stored goods purchased at Costco. They probably had five hundred dollars locked up in toilet paper, but they’d saved at least a nickel a roll. The door to this home warehouse was kept firmly latched with a knob that, as far as common wisdom held, was too stiff for little boys’ hands to turn. But the door was cracked ajar. Hunter flung it open and, because the situation called for it, cried, “A-ha!”

  The boys reacted to the ambush by giggling. They had managed to rip open a bag full of chocolate chip cookies and, judging by the crumbs on their shirts, had consumed seven pounds apiece.

  “All right, gentlemen,” Hunter announced in a stern voice. “Go back to the kitchen. Those cookies rightfully belong to me.”

  The twins glanced at each other and indulged in brief, unintelligible conversation.

  “Ello isn’t here to translate, so I’ll take that as a ‘yes, sir.’ Now let’s go.” Hunter walked behind them like a court officer. Back in the kitchen, he put the boys in their high chairs. He felt almost euphoric—he could do this. Juliana wouldn’t be unhappy with him for long.

  “Where’d you find them?” she queried.

  “They were having breakfast,” Hunter replied. “Has anyone seen my coffee cup?”

  Juliana gestured with a spatula toward the microwave, which chirped helpfully.

  “Right.” He opened the door and put his hand on the cup. The coffee was back to being cold. He shut the door and punched the microwave back on.

  “Mom and I were just talking about maybe we should get a dog,” Ello stated forcefully. She was eyeing her father with such an odd intensity that he turned and shot a baffled glance at Juliana.

  Juliana communicated something with her dark eyes, a warning, and Hunter figured he knew what it meant. A new dog would only be another burden on his wife, who was already at a breaking point. Unhappy in our marriage. He started shaking his head. “Oh, no, wow, this would not be a good time for a new dog,” he advised, happy he could back up Juliana on this.

  The way his wife and Ello both stared at him suggested he had just committed a colossal blunder. What was going on? He decided to try again. “What about Winstead? We already have a dog.”

  “Winstead’s old,” Ello said scornfully.

  Ewan proclaimed something like, “Ah Wensaw we go eh fart!” He and his brother found this impossibly hilarious.

  “He said all Winstead ever does is fart,” Ello translated.

  Hunter nodded. “Thank you. How nice that Ewan’s first intelligible word was ‘fart.’”

  The boys reacted to their father’s statement like drunks at a comedy club, convulsing with laughter.

  Juliana sighed.

  “So, hey, I’m
doing chauffeur duty this morning,” Hunter announced, looking for his coffee cup.

  “Oh my God,” Ello groaned. “This will be the absolute worst.”

  * * *

  Ello was so sullenly silent in the car that it made Hunter want to turn and yell at her. He asked her about her classes and got a grunt. He asked her about her friends and received the same response. The twins were behind them, chattering to each other in their alien tongue, and all Hunter wanted was … Well, what he wanted might be impossible. He simply wanted his daughter to like him again.

  He brightened. “Hey, Ello. My boss has a son a little older than you in your grade.”

  Ello reacted not at all to this announcement.

  “I guess he’s been living with his father until the end of football season. Now he’s moving here and will be going to your middle school. I told my boss you’d be happy to show the guy around.”

  Finally, a response. Ello jolted as if she had just taken a direct hit. “What?” she replied in a scream that would’ve satisfied the director of any horror movie.

  “Yeah,” Hunter continued reasonably. “He’ll be here the Monday after Thanksgiving. We’ll pick him up and take him to school and you can introduce him to your friends. His name is Sean.”

  “Oh my God, Dad, you are ruining my life!” Ello shrieked, her face contorted as if she were being hit with jolts of electricity.

  “I don’t get it,” Hunter said, because he did not get it. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal?” Ello demanded. “Don’t you think my life is hard enough already? Do you know what I’m going through? Don’t you understand that my generation has a harder time than any other generation in the history of the world?”

  Hunter let that proclamation echo around the car for a second or two, savoring the concept. “Really,” he observed. “So, the kids growing up in the Great Depression? Or how about if you lived in Germany during Hitler? Or if you grew up under Pol Pot? Do they even teach Pol Pot at school, or do you think I’m talking about some sort of cooking device?”