“Jeb?” he asked, his hoarse voice pitched with fear. “Jeb?”
The dog. A Seeing Eye dog. Allie sat up. Less than fifty feet downriver she could see the animal’s small dark head.
“Where’s Jeb?” the man cried.
“It’s okay,” Allie said, “I see him.” She jogged along the shore, slipping and sliding all the way. The closer she got to the dog, the more she could hear its frantic yowling. It seemed to be caught on something, too, which had saved it from speeding down the river and out of sight. Fortunately, the dog was only a few feet from the shore and Allie was able to reach it by wading into the river up to her waist. The leather inverted U handle attached to the dog’s harness had snagged onto the forked tip of a deadhead, and the dog, struggling to keep its head above water, was treading water in a futile effort to reach shore.
It was a young chocolate-brown Lab, and Allie almost wept at its grateful whimpers as she struggled to release the handle. Her fingers were stiff and numb with cold, but after three attempts, she managed to disengage the handle from the end of the deadhead.
The dog barked twice and began paddling toward shore. Allie held on to the handle and was half-pulled along as she and the dog finally crawled up out of the river. Jeb leaped against her as if to thank her, shook himself briskly and then bounded along the strip of shore to his master.
By the time Allie reached them, she could hear the distant whoop of a fire-department rescue unit. Someone, she thought, must have spotted the commotion, probably from the condominium complex on the other side of the river. Exhausted, she fell back onto the muddy slope, half-aware of the dog’s excited yelps and licks as it leaped from master to rescuer, expressing an uninhibited gratitude that Allie sensed she’d likely never experience again.
She unclasped her helmet and let it fall to her side, sucking in deep, calming breaths as she wondered distractedly if she could count this unexpected incident as her workout for the day.
ALLIE PUSHED OPEN the screen door of Evergreen Natural Foods and paused, scanning the store for her stepmother, Susan. When she saw her bent over one of the flour bins, Allie headed straight for her.
“That fifteen-minutes-of-fame thing is highly over-rated,” Allie said, waving the rolled-up People magazine she held. “No sane person would want more than five.” Then she realized that Susan was struggling with a ten-pound sack of flour. “Want some help with that?”
The sack thudded onto the hardwood floor. Susan tried to straighten, groaning audibly. Allie dropped the magazine to help. Susan clutched at Allie’s extended forearm, pulling herself to a vertical position, and let Allie lead her to the stool behind the cash counter.
“You really should go to the doctor and talk about that back surgery again,” Allie murmured. A twinge of guilt that she hadn’t really been noticing Susan’s difficulty colored her face. She should have been more observant, instead of going on about the People magazine.
What was there about seeing yourself in print in an international magazine, anyway? she wondered. And how could she justify her own self-indulgence after bad-mouthing the phenomenon of instant celebrity ever since she’d pulled Harry Maguire and his dog Jeb from the Cataraqui River? The shameful truth was that she’d been irresistibly drawn to the magazine blurb about her rescue of the blind man and his Seeing Eye dog. Even if it had only been one paragraph in the sidebar of a larger article on heroic acts.
“Susan, why don’t you take some time off and stay at home to nurse your back?” Allie asked. “As soon as I’ve finished marking the last of my exam papers, I’ll be a free agent. Beth and I can run the store.”
Susan Matthews grimaced. “I hate to put you out, Allie. You’ve got that triathlon and all the training. And you deserve a break, too. You’ve been working hard this year, especially since your dad…”
Susan’s voice dropped off. A lump rose in Allie’s throat. She and Susan had seldom mentioned Rob Newman since his death ten months ago. It was too painful a subject for either of them, Allie supposed, though there’d been many times when she’d wanted to talk about him with the woman who’d been his constant companion for the past twenty years. Allie may have referred to Susan as her stepmother, but she was, in fact, the only mother Allie had really known.
Allie dropped to her knees in front of her. “Look, the papers will be finished by the end of the week. Beth can manage on her own with the high-school kids when I’m training. Take two weeks.”
Susan smiled. “One week will be all I need, trust me. I’d go crazy sitting around any longer than that. And yes,” she put in as Allie began to interrupt, “I promise not to do any more lifting or bending.”
Allie sighed, knowing the compromise was all she’d get from her. “Right—there’re plenty of young bodies around here to do the heavy labor for you.”
“Don’t rub it in,” Susan half laughed, half moaned. “I’m only fifty.”
“Well, I just want you to get fit so we can go dancing at AJ’s.”
That brought a real smile. “Yeah, right.”
It was an ongoing family joke. Whenever Allie had been late coming home, she offered the excuse that she and Beth had been dancing at AJ’s, a local Kingston nightspot. The line had become a catchphrase for Susan, Rob and Allie, and was always used for any lateness or absence.
“I’ll drive you home and come back here to close up. I could pick up a pizza or something and bring it over for dinner. Okay?”
Susan looked fondly at her. “That would be nice, Allie. We haven’t done that in ages.”
Another shaft of guilt struck. Allie had moved back home for a few weeks after her father’s fatal heart attack, but at Susan’s insistence, eventually returned to her own apartment. Now she wondered if she’d been wrong to assume that her stepmother was managing fine on her own. “It’s a deal, then. Why don’t you get your things while I finish this? Beth should be back from her dentist appointment any moment and she can take over.”
“All right.” Susan rose slowly from the stool, using the counter to brace herself.
Allie watched her walk gingerly toward the rear of the store. A rush of love for the woman who had meant so much to her, especially since her teen years, overwhelmed her. While Allie was just beginning to reclaim her life after the unexpected loss of her father, it was obvious that Susan was having more difficulty. And why not? Allie asked herself. She’d been his wife in every way but on paper. In fact, Allie had often wondered why the two had never made the relationship official.
“Excuse me.” A voice broke into Allie’s thoughts.
Swinging her head sharply to the right, Allie saw a man standing on the other side of the counter, holding up the People magazine.
“Is this yours?”
Allie blinked. She hadn’t even seen him come into the store, unless he’d come in earlier and had been behind the higher shelving units at the front. She flushed at the thought of someone overhearing her conversation with Susan.
“Yes,” she said, extending her hand for the magazine.
But he didn’t pass it over right away. Instead, he uncurled it, exposing the page she’d been looking at before she’d entered the store.
“Is that you?” he asked, pointing to the photo accompanying the paragraph about her rescue of Harry Maguire.
Still unaccustomed to the questions people had been asking since the local newspaper had featured her on its front page a month ago, Allie shrugged. “Uh, yeah,” she answered, making herself sound nonchalant as she again extended her hand.
He didn’t seem to get the message that he ought to give back the magazine. His dark-brown eyes continued to scan her face like a bar code. Allie mentally shook herself. She’d been putting in too many long hours