“Go on,” said Diana. “It’s okay. It’s for you.” Instead of eating it, the dog carried the treat back to her bed, where she carefully nudged it under a wadded-up blanket and curled up on top of it with a sigh. Twenty minutes later, Diana had filled out the forms, paid the fees, purchased a leash and a collar and a ten-pound bag of kibble, and was driving back to Truro with Willa on a blanket on the passenger’s seat.
Willa’s skin was dark gray beneath her patchy white fur. Her ears were enormous and pointy, and her bushy eyebrows protruded like fans over brown eyes that looked weary and sad. Diana knew that Willa had been found on Skaket Beach at the end of summer. Had some family that had loved her for years taken her on one last vacation, then abandoned her? Had she been startled by the fireworks on the Fourth of July, and run away from some campsite or cabin or hotel room and gotten lost? Or had she run from a home where she was kicked and yelled at, taking off in search of a better life?
“Poor Willa,” Diana murmured as she led the dog into the cottage. Willa took a tour, carefully sniffing at the baseboards, the legs of the director’s chairs, the bottom of the couch, and the refrigerator. “Are you hungry?” Willa had wagged her stump of a tail, and looked up with her head cocked to the left. In the kitchen, Diana filled a bowl with kibble, and another with fresh water, and watched as Willa nudged at the bowl, looking up after every few sniffs like she was trying to make sure no one would snatch it away. She ate a few careful mouthfuls, then looked up, this time with her head cocked to the right.
“Go on,” Diana said. “It’s okay.” She lifted the bag. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
Willa ate more, but she didn’t empty her dish. Diana kept her distance, watching out of the corner of her eye as Willa took a mouthful of kibbles, walked to the corner, let them spill out of her mouth, and nosed them under the couch. Diana retrieved them and, under Willa’s reproachful gaze, put them back into her bowl. “You can eat them or leave them, but you can’t hide them,” she said, and Willa wagged her stump, as if she understood.
That first night, after she’d made sure the door was locked and turned out the lights, Diana climbed into the loft and got into bed. She could see Willa’s silhouette below her, sitting on her haunches at the foot of the stairs. “Come on, girl, it’s okay,” she said, patting the bed, and Willa had gathered herself, trotting up the stairs and leaping onto the mattress, her tail rotating madly. She licked Diana’s hand, sniffed her way around the perimeter of the bed, then turned herself around three times and curled up on her side, with her back against Diana’s hip. Diana wrapped her arm around the dog’s head, and Willa rested her muzzle on Diana’s forearm. That was how they fell asleep.
Diana bought a dog bed, and one of the bike shops sold her a used three-speed bike with a roomy wicker basket on its handlebars. She’d take Willa for a walk every morning, and, every few days, for a bike ride to the post office to collect her mail. At two in the morning, with the whole world quiet except for the waves and the wind’s low keening, Diana would come home from work and unlock the cottage door to find the light above the stove still burning and Willa curled up on the couch, tail wagging in welcome.
Diana’s skin got tan; the sun put streaks of gold in her hair. The biking and the swimming worked her heart and her lungs and her muscles, the nights of sound sleep erased the worry from her eyes. Day by day, week by week, with every walk on the sand and each stroke through the water, with each workday completed, and each deposit to her savings account, she felt stronger. A little more herself; a little more at home.
By October, all the trees were bare, except for the scrubby pines. The water got too cold for swimming, and the beach looked desolate. The town had emptied out, just as Reese had predicted. In Provincetown, Diana had her choice of parking spaces, and started becoming familiar with the faces of some of her fellow washashores and year-rounders: the clerk at the grocery store, the librarians at the public library, the guy with the shaved head who worked behind the counter at Joe.
One morning, she was sleeping late, dressed in a sweatshirt and a pair of boxer shorts with Willa curled up beside her. Reese had celebrated his fiftieth birthday at the Abbey the night before, closing the restaurant to the public and throwing a party for all his friends, which seemed to include every resident of P-town. Diana had spotted the woman from the art gallery, with her pink hair and cat-eye glasses, the guy who ran the copy shop, the meter maid and the cops and the shellfish constable and even the guy who directed traffic, dressed as a pilgrim, on busy weekends. The Abbey had been crowded, with three bartenders hustling to keep everyone’s glasses full. Chef had made paella, studded with linguica and chunks of lobster meat and fresh clams, and, after dinner was served, Reese had insisted that his staffers join the party. It had been a long night, which had culminated with Reese, after much coaxing from Jonathan, standing on top of a table and singing “Let’s Get It On.” He’d started a capella, but at some point one of the patrons had produced an accordion, of all things, and then a few of the drag queens, powerless to resist the spotlight, had climbed on the table to join in. At one point, Reese had fought has way through the crowd to Diana, taking hold of her head and planting a resounding kiss on her cheek. “Dee! My baby washashore! Are you having fun?”