Charlotte didn’t dare let her out of the truck.
“Yes?” Ada came to the door, her sightless eyes focusing somewhere over Charlotte’s head. “Can I help you?”
“Good morning, Ada. It’s Charlotte—remember me from last week? Charlotte Moore?”
“Surely I do! Come in, dear.” The older woman held the door open wide. “I’ll put on the kettle.”
“Thanks, but I can’t stay. I wanted to speak to Liam, if I could.”
“He’s not here. He’s, uh…” His mother had a confused look on her face, as though trying to remember just where her son was. “Let’s see, it’s Monday, isn’t it? He’s away this morning, miss.”
“I see.” Charlotte frowned. That was disappointing. “I wanted to talk to him about boarding my sister’s dog for a few weeks.”
“Oh, heavens yes, of course you can leave your puppy here. I haven’t even met her, have I? Why don’t you bring the little sweetheart in for a few minutes?”
Maggie obliged, leaping gracefully out of the Suburban and following Charlotte back to the door of the house, where she gently nosed Ada’s knee. “Oh, my. Isn’t she a dear little thing?” Liam’s mother bent to pat Maggie’s glossy black coat. At nearly seventy-five pounds and fully grown, Maggie wasn’t exactly a “little thing.”
“You bring her on into the kitchen, why don’t you. I’ll get Jamie to see to her when he comes home from school, if Liam’s delayed.”
“Are you sure?” This was a break! She couldn’t do an end run around the absent son to get what she wanted—an agreement to board Maggie—from the mother, but it was a start. Charlotte had no doubt that Ada would fall in love with Maggie once she was on the premises, and so would Liam if he gave the dog half a chance. Charlotte would come back later and discuss the details.
“Oh, yes!” Ada waved her hand in a throwaway gesture that was becoming familiar. “Don’t give it a thought. My son’s growl is worse than his bite, you know. This is a lovely dog, Charlotte. A lovely, lovely girl!” She smoothed Maggie’s broad head, and Maggie responded with that happy confident Labrador look Charlotte knew so well. “She can stay right here by the fire with me and Chip!”
Chip must be the cat. Luckily, Maggie tolerated cats well. Laurel’s horse barn was always full of them.
“If your son objects, I’ll have to make some other arrangement.” Charlotte closed her eyes in silent prayer. Please, let that not happen!
“Nonsense! This is the perfect place, next door to where you’ll be working. Why didn’t I think of it the other day? You can visit her anytime you want. Have you been over to the estate yet, dear?”
“I’m planning to do that this afternoon or maybe tomorrow,” Charlotte said, taking a step backward toward the path that led to the house. “I’ve been busy. I just found somewhere to live and—”
“Where’s that?”
“A place they mentioned at the store—”
“Not Clara Jenkins’s!”
“Yes, as a matter-of-fact.”
“Oh, that won’t be suitable, not at all. She just has bachelors staying there, folks who aren’t a bit fussy. She’s certainly no cook. Why, I hear all she puts out for breakfast is a pot of porridge and a spoon.”
Charlotte had noticed that the room she’d taken for the week was very sparsely and boringly furnished, with a worn lino floor, sagging single bed and a monstrous television in the corner, which she had no intention of using. Lucky she’d only be in Petty Cove a month, because she didn’t think she could stand the color of the walls for too long, either. They weren’t periwinkle or aqua or even last year’s seafoam but a plain all-out fifties-or-bust turquoise. She hadn’t enquired about the meals, which were included.
“I’ve taken the room for a week,” she said. “I’ll give it a try.” If worse came to worst, she could always find something in Charlottetown, although a commute of an hour everyday, both ways, didn’t appeal.
“If only I’d known,” Ada said fretfully, looking rather lost again.
Perhaps it was the empty stare of her sightless eyes, but Ada’s expression often took on a vague, bewildered look.
“I just hope you’re comfortable there, dear. And you put your foot down about the breakfast. You can always come to us if you’re not happy.”
“You mean—” Come to us?
“We’ve got all kinds of rooms upstairs,” the older woman said, brightening. “Nice rooms, too, all with their own plumbin’ and lovely sea views. It’d be like old times!”
It was rather sad, really, Charlotte thought as she drove back down the lane. Ada had obviously loved playing hostess in her own little guest house. With her sight gone and her husband dead, those days were past. And with a son who didn’t seem to care about anything but his dogs, they would most likely never return.
“I WON’T HAVE that damn dog here.” Liam poured milk over the cornflakes in his bowl, his regular evening snack, and carried it to the table. Ladling sugar onto the crisp cereal, he looked up. “You hear me, Ma?”
There was no answer from the corner, where his mother sat knitting, her needles clicking noisily. The Labrador at her feet gazed at him, sighed and put her big head down on her paws again.
“Look, will you, Liam? Even Maggie thinks you’re rude. Of course I hear you!” She leaned down and patted the Labrador’s shoulder. “There’s a sweet girl.”
Liam began eating. The sound of the spoon hitting the bowl added to the click-click of knitting needles, the tick-tick of the kitchen clock on the wall and the occasional crisp snap-snap of the wood fire in the parlor stove.
“I don’t have a good feeling about it, that’s all. Plus, that bitch is bound to come into heat while she’s here, according to Laurel Moore’s reckoning, and I’m not prepared to deal with that. It’s nothing but trouble. Her sister should’ve left her home.”
“But she’s no trouble at all. She’s beautifully trained—look at her! She hasn’t moved a muscle all afternoon, just stayed by my chair, good as gold. Liam, I want to do that poor girl a favor,” his mother said stubbornly. “Travelin’ all that way, arriving here plumb tired out, and then nowhere to leave her puppy while she works? Even Chip gets along with our visitor, don’t you, Chippy?” The cat, sleeping in a basket by the stove, didn’t move.
Liam stood and took the bowl to the sink, where he rinsed and dried it and put it back in the cupboard. He was in jeans and a plaid work shirt and stocking feet. The pendulum clock on the wall struck eight chimes.
“Damn sneaky, if you ask me, coming around this morning when I was away.”
“She has a name, you know. It’s Maggie. And the girl’s name is Charlotte. And you weren’t home. How was she to know? And besides, the sign out there on the road does say boarding kennel, doesn’t it?”
“Matter-of-fact, it doesn’t, Ma. It says, Training and Boarding.”
“Well, there you go—”
“That means the only dogs I board are dogs I’m being paid to train. This dog isn’t here to be trained.” He glanced over at the Labrador, who had raised her noble head again to give him an injured look. “She probably wouldn’t know a pheasant from a stick of firewood. Labs like this have had all the starch bred out of them. They’re show dogs!”
“Old Jimbo’s a Labrador,” his mother shot back. “And a darn fine one, too. One of the best dogs you’ve