The puppy is a husky mutt of some kind, with thick gray and white fur and a retriever face with floppy black ears and the ice-blue eyes of one of his parents. He meets my gaze and gives a soft woof, not at all little or puppyish.
“Nice try, Meadow,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t need a puppy. I haven’t even been taking good care of myself.”
“You don’t have to decide right this minute,” she says. “I’m going to stay with you for a little while, until you get on your feet.”
“No,” I say. “You don’t have to stay.” I really need to learn how to be on my own again. Be present with being single, with being in recovery, with the fact that my life has changed irrevocably.
“Not for long,” she says. “Just a few days.”
Again I notice the strain in her face, and it makes me feel guilty. How much has worry about me contributed, and how much is grief over my father’s death? They’ve been divorced eight years but continued to be business partners—friends, even. In my opinion she never really got over him, and he would tell anyone who listened how leaving her was the greatest mistake of his life.
“I just want to help you get settled,” she says, touching my shoulder, running her hand down my arm. I have so craved touch. It eases something deep within me. “Keep you company while you get your sea legs. Is that okay?”
I stroke Cosmo’s ears, and they’re softer than a velvet throw. Sensing my weakness, Meadow lifts him into my arms. I take his surprising heft without thinking, and automatically bend my face into his fur, inhale puppy smell and puppy breath as if it’s the elixir of life. Maybe it is. He licks my ear, then again, as if it’s his job to clean me up. “Can he sleep with me?” I ask.
“It’s your house.” She turns to Rory. “Can you stay a little while? I made lasagna.”
Rory bends down to hug her. “Not today. The girls have ballet at three.”
“Bring them afterward.”
“Not today,” Rory says firmly, and straightens, brushing a lock of her mother’s hair over her shoulder. “I think Maya needs a chance to get her bearings without two wild girls.”
“Fair enough.”
I offer my cheek and Rory kisses me, her keys still in her hands. She’s thinking of her own family; the dinner that’s no doubt in the Instant Pot or the oven or the fridge; and the long antique dinner table she found at a garage sale, one that her husband refinished and distressed; and a meal with just the four of them, mom and dad and two girls, talking about their days. All the things we didn’t grow up with. We ate plenty of spectacular food and sat around a table often, but never just as an ordinary family unit doing an ordinary, everyday supper. “Call me if you need anything at all,” she says.
“I will.”
She looks me hard in the eye. “Promise?”
I draw a cross over my heart and raise my hand, palm out. “I swear.”
“Okay. I’ll be back tomorrow.” In my ear, she says quietly, “Don’t let her bully you into anything.”
“I won’t,” I say, but I’m not one for making my wishes known, which is probably why I took an axe to thirty-six barrels of painstakingly handcrafted wine. As my therapist pointed out, maybe it would be better to speak up before things get so dire. The puppy wiggles against me and I kiss his face.
“Including this adorable creature,” Rory says.
When Rory leaves, Meadow swings around. Everything swings with her, lightweight skirt, hair, earrings. She’s over fifty, but you’d never know it unless you got close. “I made the beds, all of them. I wasn’t sure where you’d want to sleep.”
I think of my old bedroom with all the posters and high school tchotchkes. Anxiety rises, too many things I don’t want to deal with just now, not to mention the depressing aspects of returning to a childhood bedroom, even if it is because I inherited the house.
“How about the primary?” Meadow asks. “It’s cleared out completely. Or you can sleep in the old guest room. Or Rory’s room. Whatever you want.”
“I haven’t been here in so long,” I say instead of making a decision, and carry the puppy to the long line of french doors that look out toward the tiled pool and the ocean beyond. Puppies can drown, I think, and hold him a little closer. “I thought it might be creepy, but . . .” I look around. The round table in the breakfast nook is the same, and the floors, and the big kitchen. “It’s not.”