“Fun for you!” Brooke yelled, her voice going high and a little hysterical. “Did you think about if it would be fun for me? Of course you didn’t. You haven’t thought about how I would feel all day, so why should you start now?”
“That’s not true,” Danny said, taking a step closer to her, keeping his voice low.
“Why am I even here?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest—which, I couldn’t help but notice, just seemed to add more dirt to the dress. “Why did you even ask me to come if you don’t want me to be here?”
“Babe,” Danny said, glancing from Brooke to the rest of us. “Let’s not do this now.”
“I’m not doing anything,” she said, her voice breaking. She stared at Danny for a moment longer, like she was waiting for him to say something, but then turned on her heel and stalked across the lawn and into the house. A second later, I heard the door slam—but thankfully, the alarm stayed off.
“Um,” Linnie said, looking from Danny and back to the house again. “Should we . . . ?” She left the sentence dangling, a question at the end of it.
Danny looked in the direction Brooke had gone, his jaw set. And after a moment, he shook his head. “Let’s keep playing.”
“Really?” Rodney asked. I saw him exchange a glance with Linnie. “Because it’s no problem. We can stop. . . .”
“Nah,” Danny said, and it seemed like he was trying, with a great deal of effort, to sound cheerful again. He walked over to where J.J. had dropped the Anderson’s flag. “But that last one doesn’t count at all, J.J. I think we should start over.”
“Hey!” J.J. yelped, running after him.
I looked back to the house. It wasn’t that I wanted to stop playing the game—and Brooke had clearly seemed disgusted with all of us—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe someone should have followed her.
“Chuck!” Danny called, jogging back to our base, the Anderson’s flag over his shoulder. “You playing?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. Then I turned away from the house and ran to catch up with my brother.
* * *
An hour later, we all trooped inside the kitchen, most of us slightly worse for wear. We’d ended up playing best two out of three, which had led to the game getting dirtier and dirtier as it went on—both figuratively and literally. Linnie had held her arms out to Rodney for a hug, only to tag him when he got close; Danny had faked a twisted ankle to tag out J.J.; and Rodney had refused to grant a single jailhouse pardon, which we’d all agreed was a record. Once we’d restarted, we’d won the first round (Linnie and J.J. complaining that we had an unfair advantage, since they were down a player.) They won the second, but we managed to pull out a win for the third round, with Rodney running faster than I’d ever seen him to bring the Grant flag back to our base while Linnie, stuck in our jail, let out a very impressive stream of curses as she watched. After he’d made it back to base safely, Danny had whirled me around in the air as Rodney had thrown down the Grant flag in victory. “You don’t mess with Anderson General Life Insurance!” he’d yelled, doing a victory dance. “You don’t mess with us!”
Now, standing in the bright lights of the kitchen, I could see that none of us had escaped unscathed—I had grass stains all over my sweatpants, Linnie had a dirt smudge that ran the length of her forehead, and Danny’s sweatshirt hood had been half ripped off, though both Linnie and J.J. were trying to blame the other for it. Linnie got us all waters, and while I watched everyone argue about the fairness of a particular jailbreak and whether J.J.’s first capture should have been counted, maybe just by half, I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. Because this was why I’d wanted to play the game. This was what I’d been missing for so long. And it felt like, finally, things were getting back to how they should be.
“We wouldn’t have lost if Mike had been here,” J.J. grumbled. “I need a wartime consigliere out on the field, and he’s great at strategy.”
“Yeah,” Linnie said, her smile fading a little as she looked around. “Mike really should be here too.”
I was about to argue with this, but the truth was, for all the times he’d hung back and refused to go along with us, Mike had never done it with capture the flag. He really was great at coming up with plans, and he did a sportscaster-type play-by-play on the field that always cracked Rodney up to the point where he often had to stop running. “Yeah,” I agreed, but so quietly I wasn’t sure anyone else heard me.
The rest of the recap didn’t last too long—Linnie and Rodney peeled off first, and J.J. started yawning and headed upstairs, with Danny following, ruffling my hair on the way out of the kitchen. I waited a little bit longer—I stayed sitting on the kitchen counter, phone in hand, waiting to see if Jesse would reach out again, even though I had a feeling he probably had his hands full with Mike.
After a few minutes, I finally decided to pack it in, and headed up to the third floor, yawning. I had just reached J.J.’s room and was about to turn the doorknob when I heard voices coming from inside. J.J. and also—I leaned a little bit closer, and my eyes went wide—Jenny W. They were talking low, but I could hear Jenny’s laughter, and I backed away from the door quickly, getting the sense that they would not have appreciated me showing up just then. J.J. had clearly forgotten once again that I was supposed to be staying with him. As I headed downstairs, resigning myself to the couch, I wondered why I was even surprised. I tiptoed downstairs as quietly as possible—and practically tripped over Waffles as I made it to the front hall. He was sitting dead center in front of the bottom step, just staring at me. “Um. Hi,” I said as I headed into the kitchen to make sure the door was locked, feeling like of all the rescue dogs we could have gotten this weekend, we’d ended up with the weirdest.
I heard a click-clacking behind me, and I turned around to see Waffles standing in the kitchen, looking at me intently. “You okay?” I asked, even though I was all too aware that he wouldn’t be able to answer me. But the dog just kept looking at me steadily, until I started to get a little uncomfortable.
I looked around, like there was someone who could help me translate. How did people who owned dogs do this? You were basically inviting an animal you couldn’t communicate with to move into your house with you for years of confusion. “What?” I asked, but Waffles just tilted his head to the side a little, his eyes not leaving mine. He let out a soft whimper, looked over at the door, then back at me, and much too late, I understood what was happening. “Oh,” I said, feeling like I should have gotten this much sooner. “Um . . . sorry about that. I’ll take you for a walk.”
His leash was hanging up on one of the hooks by the door, and as soon as he saw me take it, he started running around in small circles and doing these little howly yips, like there was a real howl coming and he was just warming up.
“Shh,” I said, trying to calm him down. Even when I got his leash snapped on, the yips just seemed to be getting louder. “If you don’t stop, I won’t take you on a walk,” I said, then wondered why I thought the dog, who didn’t speak English, would suddenly understand blackmail.
Once Waffles realized that a walk was happening, he stopped running in circles and practically dragged me down the driveway. He seemed to go crazy for the first few minutes, running to smell as many trees and rocks as possible and then appearing to regret this and circling back to get the ones he’d missed. I hadn’t brought a flashlight, but it was light enough out that I could see—the moon peeking through the clouds gave me enough light to maneuver down the street. As I watched Waffles joyfully sniffing, I really started to feel bad that he’d been cooped up all day with us.
I walked him to the end of the road, and while Waffles seemed more than happy to keep going, it appeared that he’d pretty much done what he needed to and now just seemed to be sniffing for fun. Everything that had happened today was hitting me, and I was beginning to feel just how late it was. And it was also not warm out—I hadn’t noticed it as much when we’d all been running full speed
across the yard, but in the last hour or so, it had gotten a lot colder, especially with the wind picking up. I crossed my fingers on both hands that this was just a fluke and I’d wake up tomorrow to perfect wedding weather. I pulled Waffles over to the other side of the road and started heading toward home.
Right away, I noticed the truck. It was parked on the road, about three houses down from ours. I don’t know why I hadn’t paid attention to it as I’d been walking away from the house—maybe I’d been fixated on the dog. But you couldn’t help noticing it—for one thing, it was the only car parked on the street. And on our street, where there wasn’t a commercial district nearby, everyone just parked in their garages or driveways.
It wasn’t until I got closer to the car that I realized it looked familiar. I could see WHERE THERE’S A WILL painted across the side of it—this was the truck that Bill had been driving.
I stopped walking and just looked at it for a moment, and Waffles stopped as well, sitting down at my feet and also seeming to regard the truck, his head tilted to the side. What was it doing here? I had assumed Bill had driven back to his uncle’s house after the rehearsal dinner.
I walked toward it, glancing in through the driver’s-side window and then taking a small step back when I realized that Bill was inside. He was in the backseat of the cab, curled up on his side, sleeping, his suit jacket pulled up to his neck like a blanket. Before I’d even worked out if this was a good idea, I was reaching out and knocking on the glass.
Bill shot up, sitting up straight and looking around, half-panicked, and I realized too late that I probably should have knocked more gently, or tried to get Waffles to howl again, something that would have maybe not startled him quite so much.
He looked around, blinking, and I waved as his eyes landed on me. “Hi,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to hear me through the glass.
Bill just stared at me for a second, like he was still trying to understand what was happening. His hair was flattened on the side he’d been sleeping on and standing practically straight up on the other.
“Charlie?” he asked, his voice muffled through the glass. He reached across and opened the door, and I leaned my head in. “Hey. Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, stumbling slightly as Waffles lunged in the direction of something he felt compelled to sniff at that particular moment. “Hi. Sorry—I was walking the dog and I saw your truck. . . .”
“Yes,” Bill said, rubbing his eyes briskly, like he was trying to wake himself up. “I . . . well, I stopped by the house after the dinner, just to drop off some of the decorations from the Inn, and then when I tried to leave, my car wouldn’t start.”
“Oh,” I said, wincing. “Jeez. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s probably my fault,” he said, not sounding particularly concerned about this. “I have a tendency to leave the inside light on.” He shook his head. “I was always having to get my battery jumped back in New Mexico. My stepdad used to say he had Triple A on speed dial.”
“So . . .” I looked around, like there was going to be a tow truck coming up the street at any moment. “Um . . . do you not have them on speed dial?”
Bill’s smile widened. “I know,” he said. “I was about to call them, but then I did the time math. And having to wait for them to come, give it a jump, then drive all the way to my uncle’s, then all the way back here in the morning when I have to be here first thing . . . It just seemed easier to stay. I have all my clothes with me anyway, since I had to change for the rehearsal dinner. I’ll just get a jump tomorrow morning.”
“But . . .” I bit my lip and looked around the empty street. It wasn’t like Stanwich was a hotbed for crime or anything, but I still didn’t think it was a good idea for Bill to be sleeping on the street like this. I knew my parents would have not been happy if they’d found out I’d slept in my car. “Aren’t you cold?” In just the time I’d been standing and talking to him, I’d felt myself getting colder, reminding me that some Aprils in Connecticut, it snowed.
“It’s totally f-fine,” Bill said with another smile, though he undercut this somewhat when his teeth started to chatter on the last word.
“It’s not fine,” I said, shaking my head. There was really only one solution here that I could think of—I wasn’t about to let Bill freeze sleeping in his car all night. “I think you should stay with us.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Bill said, giving me another smile, one that seemed to turn into a grimace, though, as he was clearly fighting his teeth chattering again. “Really. I couldn’t impose.”
“You’re not imposing,” I assured him. “We have a ton of people staying already. I promise it’s fine.” Bill just looked at me for another moment, his eyes searching my face, like he was trying to determine if I really meant it. He must have realized I did, because he nodded and climbed out. I could see that he was back in the jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt he’d been wearing during the day. He pulled a duffel bag out of the front seat, then carefully folded his suit jacket and laid it across the backseat.
“Are you sure?” he asked me across the hood of the truck as he lifted his duffel bag out. “I really was okay in there.”
“I’m sure. We can’t have the wedding coordinator’s assistant freezing the day before the wedding.”
“But then I could’ve been the something blue,” he said, and I laughed. We all started to walk down the center of the empty road together, Waffles leading the way. Bill nodded toward the dog. “I didn’t get to meet this guy earlier. He’s really cute. What’s his name?”
“Oh—that’s right.” While we’d been getting temporary dogs dropped off, Bill had been fixing the rehearsal dinner decorations. “His name’s Waffles.”
Bill stopped walking, which meant I stopped walking, which meant Waffles got yanked back by his leash. “Like in the comic strip?” he asked, his voice going high and excited. “You guys actually have a dog named Waffles?”
I hadn’t realized Bill read the strip—or that he’d known who we were. But if you read the strip, it was pretty obvious. “I guess you’re a fan?”
Bill started walking again. “Oh yeah. I didn’t get it at first—I mean, that you guys were those Grants. But I kept feeling like I’d been in your kitchen before. It was the weirdest feeling, and then I finally put it together.”
“Well, he’s not really our dog,” I said, then explained Waffles’s temporary nature. “I don’t suppose handling temporary canines is anything you’ve dealt with before?”
Bill laughed. “It’s a first.”
We rounded the curve in the road and reached the house—and as soon as it was visible, Waffles pulled me forward, straining against the leash to go in. And it hit me that this dog hadn’t even been in our house a full day but already knew it and wanted to get back inside. That even if it was just temporary, he wanted to go home again.
* * *
“All set?” I asked as I came into the family room. I’d arranged one couch with blankets and pillows for myself and another for Bill. When we’d come in, I had told Bill I could get him set up in the family room before it hit me that I would also be sleeping in there. Somehow, this hadn’t occurred to me until that moment, that inviting him to stay meant we’d be sleeping in the same room. Normally, there would be other options, but we were, for the first time in my memory, totally out of rooms.
Since I didn’t want to interrupt whatever might be happening in J.J.’s bedroom, I had just decided I could sleep in the sweatpants and T-shirt I’d played capture the flag in—my sweatshirt was muddy and grass stained, but the T-shirt had been protected and was fine. I’d taken out my contacts and found a pair of glasses floating around in the kitchen, so I could at least see.
The couches in the family room, thanks to the GMA crew, had ended up at right angles to each other, and looking at them now, they suddenly seemed very close. But I really didn’t think I could move them apart at all without being totally obvious.<
br />
“Yeah,” Bill said, looking up from where he was lying on the couch, the blankets pulled halfway over him.
He gave me a smile, and I realized there was nothing to do except turn off the lights and start what was certainly going to be the weirdest sleepover of my life. “Um,” I said, reaching for the lamp but then pulling my hand back. “Okay if I turn off the lights?”
“Fine by me,” Bill said.
I snapped off the light, and the room was thrown into total darkness for a second, and then a moment later, moonlight started filtering in. I blinked, letting my eyes adjust as I looked around.
I’d always loved the family room. There was a big stone fireplace at one end, surrounded by built-in bookcases filled with books and board games, most of which were missing at least one crucial piece. Unlike the kitchen, where we all hung out by chance, while eating or passing through, the family room was where we chose to hang out. This room was the best of us. It was where we watched movies, passing bowls of popcorn back and forth. It was where my parents had faculty parties, where the Christmas tree was always set up, and where we all found ourselves after Thanksgiving dinner, fighting off our food comas. It was having movie marathons with my siblings on rainy afternoons, all of us wrapped up in blankets. It was playing high-stakes games of Pictionary and kids-only games of Cards Against Humanity. It was where most of my favorite memories in the house had happened.
As I looked around now in the moonlight, I felt a wave of loss hit me, even as I was still sitting right here. But ever since my parents had sold the house, a countdown clock had started ticking in my brain—how many more times would I sit in this room? How many more times would we gather here? How many times would I push through the door, hang my keys on the hook, an unthinking motion I’d performed a thousand times?
And it made me furious that I’d ever dared to complain about the fact that the family room floors were always cold and the hot water in my bathroom took too long to heat up. What did I have to complain about when this was my house, before I’d had any inkling that wouldn’t always be the case?