The Dogs of Christmas Read online

  That night the lights were on in the place next door—Josh could see them through the trees. In his own house, he turned off everything and sat with only the firelight, just like Lucy’s first night.

  I’m not home.

  He waited all the next day for Ryan’s knock on his door. Lucy picked up on his anxiety and followed him closely as he paced, practically stepping on his heels.

  “Lucy,” Josh murmured. “I don’t know what to do.”

  After a second day of feeling under house arrest, Josh waited until dark and then slipped out the back door, shutting it in Lucy’s face. He carefully walked through the woods, hating how much noise he was making in the silent trees, wincing every time he broke a twig underfoot.

  His stealthy reconnaissance gleaned nothing of value. Ryan’s SUV wasn’t in the driveway, but the garage door was closed. Some lights were on and a half-empty bottle of bourbon was on the counter. Ryan didn’t step into view.

  The next night Josh was back in the woods, and again, he didn’t see Ryan. The suspense was like sleeping next to a rattlesnake, except Josh wasn’t sleeping much.

  “Should I go over there, Lucy? Get this over with?”

  Lucy regarded him with nothing but support in her eyes.

  “Okay, I’ll go,” Josh decided. “Just not today.”

  When Josh finally did go, he took a deep breath before he knocked on the front door. Ryan didn’t answer. Peering in the window, Josh saw no sign of life. The bottle of bourbon was gone.

  That night the lights were on, but still, no response when Josh rapped his knuckles on the door. Emboldened, he was there first thing in the morning, and again, no answer. Somehow Ryan’s continued absence made him seem less of a threat. The knot in Josh’s gut unclenched a little.

  When the puppies opened their eyes, Josh felt as if he had a good excuse to call Kerri. But was it good enough? The dogs have opened their eyes, he would say. Oh, and they all have blue eyes, which must be pretty unusual, right? But then what? What if she waited for him to say more—there was nothing more to say! They’re squirming a lot more. How about that weather?

  You have the prettiest smile I have ever seen. Probably everyone told her that. Every guy, anyway.

  That afternoon he brought Lucy with him to see if Ryan was there. It felt good to have a dog by his side until Lucy realized where they were going, and then she hung back, an unsure look in her eyes. She lowered her head and sat at the end of the driveway, refusing to accompany Josh any farther. “You’re right, Lucy. We won’t come here again,” Josh told her. Let Ryan come to us, Josh decided. He was tired of living with the tension.

  When Josh went online to research names for his puppies, he discovered that newborn dogs often have blue eyes when they manage to open them for their first milky look at the world. Calling Kerri to talk about that would have made him look foolish.

  He spent two days deciding on names for the puppies, entering them into a spreadsheet that he printed and affixed to his refrigerator with the magnets that had Amanda’s face imprinted on them.

  Except for Lola, whose ears were perky and short, all the dogs had ears that hung down, and all had snouts that stuck out like a Labrador’s instead of being short like a boxer’s. Their fur was short and their coloring a lot like a boxer’s, with white, brown, and black predominant. Rufus was the silliest looking, with his white face and brown spot over his right eye. None of them looked anything like Lucy, who had the mostly black muzzle and alert ears of a German shepherd. But the vet and Kerri were right; if Lucy even noticed that her children were adopted, she didn’t seem to mind.

  Josh stood back and eyed his chart. He was aware that not a lot of people would take such great pleasure in organizing a bunch of dog names into a chart, but for him it caused the clean satisfaction of a job accomplished. His only dissatisfaction was that he really wasn’t able to come up with much of a description for Rufus. Always sleeps near Cody? Yet Josh knew that if he’d left that square blank, it would have nagged at him and probably caused him to lose sleep. A spreadsheet needed things spread on the sheet.

  Should he call Kerri to tell her he had named his dogs? That hardly seemed like a good excuse. Why hadn’t he thought to get an e-mail address from her? E-mail would be easier than voice-to-voice. She’d pretty much put him on notice that she wasn’t going to give him her cell number yet, so he couldn’t text, but people were more free with their e-mail addresses, in Josh’s experience.

  Josh’s text messages were routed automatically from his mostly dysfunctional cell phone to his PC, which was where he read a text from a colleague that told him, “Blascoe sez UI your FU,” which meant that Blascoe was advising the other members of his former team that the problems with the interface were Josh’s fault. Josh sighed in irritation when he read this—it meant he couldn’t count on getting a good reference out of his most recent client, though maybe if he just told everyone that the project manager was Gordon Blascoe, prospective employers would understand why he got fired.

  His résumé was out there in the job market right now—sending out inquiries was pretty much his sole occupation at the moment. This had long been his favorite part—launching his curriculum vitae, picturing them as little sailing ships headed toward the New World. He’d open the résumé and review it every morning, knowing somewhere out there people were reading it, people who would be impressed with his accomplishments. This time, though, the phone didn’t ring immediately, the inbox didn’t automatically fill with queries. Maybe it was a sign of leaner times, or maybe it was just the season—few IT departments initiated new projects in late October, when annual budgets were nearly depleted.

  The danger now, Josh knew, was that his skills would atrophy or grow obsolete—in his world standing still meant falling behind. Josh signed up for some online courses and plunged himself into touch-screen application programming—phones, tablets, even ATMs. He made a master list for himself:

  • Study

  • Develop a demo app for smart phone

  • Hike

  • Call Kerri

  Every day he consulted the list on his computer, but that last task somehow never got done.

  He didn’t feel good about leaving Lucy behind when he went hiking, but he didn’t want to leave the babies without their mommy. Besides, his favorite route took him past the back of Ryan’s place, and he knew Lucy wouldn’t like that. Josh never saw any activity there, and he never went to the front of the home to see if there were any indication his neighbor was still around.

  The puppies were not yet three weeks old when they began to exhibit a wanderlust. They weren’t really good at walking—it was almost as if they were trying to swim in their box, propelling themselves on their stomachs or staggering around on wilting legs like little drunks. But whenever Lucy groaned and stood up to take a break from mommyhood, they would squeal loudly and then be on the move, trying to scale the sides of the box as if it were a prison break or working their way to the far end of the chamber to see if momma dog might be down there.

  Already their personalities were asserting themselves—Oliver ranged the farthest and seemed the most frustrated to be walled in. Lola, the small female, would seek out Josh’s voice, heading in his direction if she could find him, and would squeak in agitation until he picked her up—Lola just seemed to want to be hugged. Sophie wanted to paw at dog toys, while Cody and Rufus pretty much waited for Lucy to return, hanging together for moral support.

  Lucy would often come to him and lay her head in his lap, as if to say, “I’ve had enough.” Chunks of her hair had fallen out and she’d lost some weight, giving her a permanently exhausted appearance, and whether the air outside was chilly or warm and dry, she seemed to linger when Josh let her out to do her business, no longer in a rush to get back to her brood.

  “Good dog, Lucy,” Josh told her. Sometimes he’d kiss her on the face, and she’d lick him back. He loved to kiss her on the side of her muzzle, between her eye and her nose where there
was a slight concavity. He couldn’t tell if Lucy appreciated it, but she didn’t bite him or anything, so he felt it probably meant she was okay with it.

  When four days of clouds and cold wind gave him cabin fever, Josh put a box filled with the puppies on the floor of the truck’s front seat and drove down into Denver to a chain pet store that allowed animals inside. He was thwarted, though, by a sign saying animals under eight weeks of age weren’t allowed inside for health reasons. It made sense—the puppies hadn’t yet gotten their shots. Josh left them in the truck and ran in to buy a few chew toys for Lucy. When he came back, three young women were clustered by the side of his vehicle, peering in at his puppies and making cooing sounds. He opened the door and let them hold his little babies, which seemed to cow Cody a little but Lola absolutely loved. Josh glowed with all the attention, especially when the women, saying good-bye, hugged him.

  It struck him that maybe you didn’t need Leigh and Wayne if you had a pickup truck full of puppies.

  When he arrived home Lucy was watching from the window. Her accusatory expression seemed to say I expected you home before now. She needed to nurse as much as the puppies needed to eat, and Josh felt a little guilty when he saw how greedily the little ones went for Lucy’s teats. As he had done every day since Kerri had given him the instruction, he made sure the tiniest dog, Lola, had a chance for two separate meals.

  Lucy forgave him, though—that seemed to be what dogs did, they immediately canceled any grudges and excused any offense because it was just so much more fun to be friends. She jumped on a squeaky cow toy when he gave it to her, shaking it so that it gave off mad squeals that caused the puppies to nose each other in astonishment.

  When the weather channel served up a miracle day—high seventies, no breeze, fluffy clouds—Josh decided to give the dogs a chance to romp. He lifted the puppies and put them into the same cardboard box and carried them onto the sparse lawn of his front yard. Lucy was anxious about the whole operation, pacing and yawning as if worried that Josh was going to head down to Denver again, but as soon as he gently let the puppies onto the warm grass she relaxed and went up on the front deck to take a snooze.

  The puppies seemed pretty surprised to find themselves out in the open. They raised their wobbly heads to the wind, sniffing, and squealed at one another, none of them willing to leave the dog pile of siblings to venture farther into the yard.

  Josh backed away to give them a dozen feet of freedom, lying down on his back with his fingers interlaced behind his neck, gazing up into the sky. What a day! It was easy, sprawling there, smelling the pine needles baking in the sun, to picture that it was the middle of summer on some long ago day. Maybe a Sunday—Mom would be making a roast in the oven and Dad would be reading the paper on the deck.

  In a few days it would be Halloween, a complete nonholiday for Josh. No child had ever ventured up his long driveway to ring the bell in all the years he’d lived here. But for his mother, October was the time to get really serious about Christmas, which as far as she was concerned was a holiday that lasted six months. Decorations would start popping up overnight, like mountain flowers after a summer rain. Christmas cookies would fill the house with their warm, sweet scent as they baked in Mom’s oven, and she owned VCR tapes of every Christmas movie a person could name, playing them ceaselessly both before and after December twenty-fifth.

  Josh had them all on DVD now. Maybe he’d watch one tonight, like It’s a Wonderful Life. Josh loved that one, how Jimmy Stewart comes to realize that nothing should ever change, and that the most important thing is to keep a family together.

  Smiling in pure pleasure, Josh dozed for a moment, then gave a start when he felt something wet nudge his arm. It was Oliver the Explorer, pressing his tiny black nose against him, the white around his mouth like the grease paint smile of a clown. Josh rolled and looked and the rest of the puppies were straggling behind their brother, all of them making their uncoordinated way to him in a ragged line.

  Oliver put his small paws on Josh’s side, trying to climb up on top of him. “Hey there, little guy,” Josh murmured, pulling the puppy onto his stomach.

  Soon little Lola was there, and then Rufus and Cody, with Sophie bringing up the rear. They all squeaked softly, trying to clamber on top of him, so Josh helped them and soon he had all five puppies up on his chest, a pile of little dogs, squirming and eventually falling asleep. That’s how Josh spent the afternoon, his whole dog family on top of him, taking a nap.

  That day seemed to be a turning point in the lives of the puppies. Now they wanted to roam, and would squeak shrilly until Josh helped them out of the box. They made little messes on the hardwood floor, which were easy enough to clean up, and otherwise just moved around, sniffing at the wall or jumping on each other in comically uncoordinated attacks. Josh kept the box in his sister’s old room, which was a sterile place with a bed and a dresser reserved for guests he’d never had, and that’s how their adventures always started, with Josh letting them out of the box and putting them on the floor in Janice’s room. Oliver always ventured the farthest of all the puppies—soon, Josh knew, he’d want to be let outside. Lola always sought out Josh and wouldn’t stop complaining until he picked her up. Sophie would find a toy to wrestle. Cody and Rufus usually were the slowest to emerge from the bedroom and were always together, inseparable.

  It snowed on November first, the sort of teasing, dancing flakes that drifted around on the wind and seemed to be moving more sideways than down. Gradually some of the logs in the woodpile accumulated a little of the white stuff, like grandmother’s lace laid delicately on the arm of a chair.

  The phone rang while Josh was singing to the puppies. He ran to answer it, his socks sliding on the floor. It was Kerri.

  “You sure lost interest in me in a hurry,” she observed.

  “What?” Josh gripped the phone. “No. I mean…”

  She let him dangle at the end of his sentence a little while. “You didn’t call me because…” she finally prompted.

  “I don’t know. There wasn’t anything going on or anything,” Josh replied. “Did you … did you want me to call?”

  “Only if you wanted to call me.”

  He had no answer to that one.

  “I came by to see you, but only Lucy was home,” she continued breezily.

  “You came by to see me,” Josh repeated stupidly, his heart pounding.

  “To see the puppies,” she agreed.

  “Oh.”

  “Where were you, anyway?”

  Josh told her about his trip with the puppies in the cab of the truck, describing the attention they received from people but neglecting to mention that all of the people were females.

  “That’s good, you should keep doing that,” Kerri encouraged. “We need to socialize them. Get them with people. Also, need to do the same with other dogs. I’ve got a four-month-old terrier mix we named Bob who is just a love dog, plays with everyone. I thought I’d bring him out.”

  Josh desperately wanted Kerri to come out, but the idea of some giant four-month-old canine playing with the puppies gave him pause. “Won’t he hurt these little guys? They don’t really run very well.”

  Kerri told him it would be fine so of course he agreed she could come out around lunchtime the next day. Then he went to his laptop and tried to search on “the most popular lunch for women” but all he came up with was recipes for dessert.

  Amanda’s favorite lunch was chicken Caesar salad with iced tea. Her second favorite was Chinese chicken salad. The deli department at the grocery store luckily had both, so he bought generous helpings of each. He picked up six different types of iced tea to go with them.

  Bob turned out to be a fluffy gray-black dog with hair that covered his eyes. Lucy growled at him from the front window when Kerri opened the tailgate of her car, a deep-in-the-throat noise Josh had never heard the dog make. “It’s okay, Lucy,” he whispered, not sure.

  Kerri was wearing a sweater, tight jeans, and hi
gh boots. She shook her long brown hair exactly the same way as the very first time he’d seen her, and something like an electrical current buzzed through Josh’s chest as he watched. She waved at him through the window while Bob sniffed at the bushes. Josh opened his front door.

  “Lucy’s growling,” he called.

  “Hello, it’s good to see you, too,” Kerri replied.

  “Um, yeah … sorry, I’m just…” Josh felt like a complete idiot.

  “She’s just being a good protective mommy dog. Let her out.”

  Lucy was pressing up against his legs, eager to push out the door. Josh reluctantly stepped aside and Lucy ran out, her tail stiff and her ears erect, straight as a missile right at the intruder dog.

  Bob reacted as if shot, falling to the ground, rolling onto his back, and wagging his tail. When Lucy bent over to disdainfully sniff him up and down, Bob wriggled and licked her in the mouth. Finally Lucy turned away from him in disgust and went to greet Kerri.

  “Hi, Lucy,” Kerri said while Bob crawled around at Lucy’s feet, head low in submission. “See what I mean?” Kerri called to Josh. “Total love dog.”

  He came down his steps, his hands jammed in his pockets, and only realized at the last second that she was offering her cheek for a kiss. He managed to land his lips somewhere between her jaw and her ear. Her perfume wafted delicately on the air and he had to restrain himself from closing his eyes and breathing it in.

  With Lucy back in the house and watching motionless from the window, Bob wallowed with the puppies, who swarmed him, nipping and squeaking. “They look more like Lab puppies every day except for the coloring. And what’s up with Lola’s ears? That’s like Chow or Akita or something,” Kerri speculated.

  Every time Bob rolled on a puppy, Josh lurched forward, and every time Kerri put a hand on his arm to stop him. “They’re fine,” she assured him more than once. Soon that whole side of his body was warm from her touch. He could have been accused of maybe making a false move or two just to have her physically restrain him.