Maya opened the door, and then there was a scramble, with the dogs all barking at once, everyone trying to get out the door first. I handed her the leashes, she snapped them on collars, and then we were standing on the side of the road, with four dogs trying to go in four directions. I had ended up with Jasper, even though he was by far the biggest of the dogs. Maya had a pug, some kind of shaggy mutt, and something that looked like a small collie. “Are you okay with him?” she asked, as she arranged the leashes so that all three were in one hand. “Jasper always seems to get tangled with the other dogs, so it’s easier if he walks by himself.”
“Sure,” I said, a little uncertainly, wrapping the leash around my wrist once, then once again. I was pretty sure I’d walked a dog before. I had to have, right? I was struggling to remember if I’d ever walked my ex Nathan’s dog when Maya started walking and Jasper, clearly not wanting to be left behind, lunged after her. I ran in my heels to catch up, feeling my feet already protesting.
“Great day, right?” Maya asked, looking over her shoulder at me as I caught up with Jasper.
“Uh-huh,” I said, barely listening as I tried to get a tighter grip on the leash, but I pulled a little too hard, and Jasper was yanked back by his neck. I was worried that he would be mad and would lunge again, or worse, start growling or snapping, but he seemed to forgive me instantly, just going back to sniffing the ground. I didn’t know how this was going to work with all these dogs, if they’d start to fight with each other or something, but they all seemed pretty well behaved, trotting along in a line. One of them would want to sniff a tree or a rock, and the others would either join in the sniffing or simply sit and wait. Jasper, despite his size, seemed pretty easy to control, responding immediately when I pulled back on the leash.
“Here’s what I was thinking,” Maya said, looking over at me with an easy smile as I glanced up at her briefly before returning all my attention to Jasper. I didn’t understand how she was able to do it—wasn’t this taking all her concentration? She had three dogs in front of her, after all. “We walk them around this loop, and then there’s a little grassy area. It’s not quite a park, but the dogs love it.”
“Actually,” I started, taking a breath to tell her that we should probably wrap this up quickly, since the job wasn’t for me, when all the dogs started barking as one. I looked around, wondering if maybe there was a squirrel or something, when I saw there was another dog and owner coming toward us.
“So, here’s a moment for a lesson!” Maya said brightly, though I could tell there was a tiny bit of stress in her voice. “When you have a bunch of dogs together like this, they kind of form a pack mentality and can sometimes scare the other dog. Everyone’s trying to make friends; they just don’t know the best way to go about it.”
“Okay,” I said, tightening Jasper’s leash around my wrist again, feeling my heart pound when the barking got louder as the other dog got closer. I squinted against the sun, which was right behind the dog and his owner, blurring them out. When they came into view a moment later, though, I realized I knew them—both of them. It was the guy and his runaway dog—Bertie—from two days before.
The guy must have recognized me at the same time, because he smiled and held up his hand to wave—the same hand that was holding his leash. His dog clearly saw his opportunity and took off at a run toward us as the guy grabbed for where the leash had been but only got empty air.
“Okay,” Maya said now, her voice raised over the barking of the dogs, who were going into a frenzy, all of them straining against their leashes, “I’ll try and grab him while you—”
But whatever she’d been about to say was lost as Bertie ran right up to me, barking and tail wagging wildly. He tried to jump up on me, which honestly would have been okay—it would give me an opportunity to try to grab his leash—but Jasper seemed to take this as some kind of threat, because suddenly his bark changed from what had been a hi, other dog! bark to a get the hell away from me and the girl with the leash bark. In between barks, there was now a low growl at the back of his throat, and the other dogs, sensing this, started to bark as well, with a definite note of back off in their voices.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to put myself between the two dogs while feeling this was really not where I wanted to be. “Just—”
“Andie,” Maya said, and I could hear the anxiety in her voice, even as it was masked by a layer of cheerfulness. “Stay calm and—” Whatever came next was lost in another wave of barking, as she tried to get closer to me while simultaneously holding back her three dogs, who were all straining against their leashes, trying to get closer to the excitement.
I saw the guy finally catch up with his dog, and then everything seemed to happen at once. Bertie jumped up at me again, just as he grabbed the leash to pull his dog back, and Jasper tried to follow. I held on to Jasper’s leash as hard as I could, and he was pulled back, making a kind of gagging cough sound, and I silently apologized to him while I wobbled on my heels but managed to regain my balance, thrilled that I’d somehow remained upright. I looked over and saw that the guy was not so lucky—he was on the ground, trying to push himself up to standing, while his dog made matters worse, running in circles around his feet and tangling the leash even further. All the dogs were barking like crazy now, though I was relieved to hear it was back to happy excitement barking and not angry, territorial barking.
“Hey!” Maya yelled, and then she let out a piercing two-finger whistle. All the dogs stopped barking immediately, and the sudden silence was surprising, like I’d forgotten what it was like not to have that sound track. “Sit,” Maya said firmly, and her three dogs sat simultaneously. Maya gave Jasper a stern look, and he sat too. She looked at the other dog, who just wagged his tail back at her. “Sit,” she said, but the other dog tried to jump up, like he was under the impression it was opposite day.
“I’m sorry about that,” the guy said. He pushed himself to standing, wincing slightly. He straightened his glasses and looked over at me, and his ears turned bright red again. The guy hadn’t gotten any less cute since I’d last seen him, and I was glad he was the one who’d wiped out this time, and not me. However, there was now the fact that I was walking dogs in a dress and heels, which I had no doubt looked beyond strange. “Hey,” he said. “Nice to, um . . .” But there didn’t seem to be anything to follow this, and his cheeks flushed and he gave me an embarrassed smile. I realized I was staring before I made myself look away. Dimples like that should honestly not be allowed.
“You guys know each other?” Maya asked, shooting me a smile.
“No,” I said at the exact same time the guy said, “Yeah.”
There was an awkward pause that I was about to jump in and fill—it wasn’t like it would take all that long, and then we could get back to walking the dogs—when the guy said, “We—uh, the other day. Bertie got loose, but he was rescued by . . .” There was an expectant pause, and I realized he was waiting for my name.
“Andie,” I said quickly, then shook my head, since Maya was starting to look impressed. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“It was,” the guy said emphatically, though mostly to the asphalt, not to me. “I would have been in serious trouble if anything happened to him.”
“Bertie, huh?” Maya asked, leaning over to scratch the dog’s ears. “Nice to meet you, buddy.”
“And I’m Clark,” the guy said.
I looked up at him as he said his name. It seemed to hang in the air between us, like I could see it in a cartoon bubble, inked and shaded. I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone with that name before, and it echoed in my mind for a moment, calling up dark-haired reporters with secret identities and handsome movie stars in black-and-white. Clark. I decided it fit him, which I realized a second later was ridiculous, since I didn’t even know this guy.
“I, um, thought you said you didn’t live around here,” he said, and I could tell that he was nervous, his voice fading out at the end of the sentence like a radi
o station getting fainter.
“I don’t,” I said, looking down at Jasper and trying to mentally communicate that now would be a great time to start walking again, but Jasper just yawned and scratched his ear with his back paw. “The thing is—” I took a breath to start to explain, then stopped when I realized I didn’t know what to say. That I was on a job interview for something I wasn’t even sure I wanted?
Maya jumped in when the silence threatened to stretch from thoughtful to awkward. “We’re taking these guys on a walk.”
“Are you . . . I mean, are you a dog walker?” he asked, crossing his arms and then uncrossing them. “Or do you just have a lot of dogs?” He was wearing another T-shirt with a slogan on it; this one had what looked like a picture of a British phone box, but blue, and it read THE DOCTOR IS IN. This made about as much sense to me as his other shirt had, but I figured Tom or Bri would know what it meant.
“The former,” Maya said, surprising me. I guess I hadn’t expected super-proper language from her. It seemed to go against the tattoos. “Dave and Maya’s Pet Care. I’m Maya.”
“Wow, that’s—” Clark said, and then fumbled with the leash again as Bertie tried to run in the direction of the pug.
“Try looping it,” Maya said, holding up one of her wrists. “It helps you get a better grip.”
“Thanks,” he said, doing this immediately and then straightening his glasses. “I haven’t had a ton of experience . . . you know, with dogs.” Jasper jumped to his feet suddenly, looking directly across the road. Since I couldn’t see anything, I wondered if it was just a squirrel—or the hope of a squirrel. Either way, I tightened my grip on his leash, just in case.
“We should get moving,” Maya said with a smile, as she made a noise partway between a clicking and a kissing sound, and her three dogs jumped to their feet. “See you around,” she said cheerfully, and started to head down the street with the dogs.
Clark looked at me, and I met his eyes for a moment, then looked away. Under normal circumstances, I would have been flirting with him—or at least saying full sentences like a competent human being. But under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been walking dogs in a fancy dress. I wouldn’t have been spinning out, with no idea of what I was going to do with my summer. And until I figured it out, I knew I shouldn’t be flirting with random dog owners, no matter how cute they were.
So I gave him a quick nod, then tugged on Jasper’s leash, and we turned and walked in the other direction. And even though I was pretty sure I could still feel his gaze on me, I didn’t let myself turn my head, or even look back.
• • •
“Dog walking?” Toby asked, her jaw dropping open. “Like, with actual dogs?”
“Actual dogs,” I confirmed as I looked around the museum courtyard, all marble and palms and a gentle, trickling fountain. “It surprised me, too.” When Maya had asked me if I wanted the job, I’d only hesitated for a moment before saying yes. After we’d left Clark and Bertie, we’d walked the dogs for another twenty minutes, and halfway through I’d given up and taken off my shoes, holding my heels and walking barefoot on the pavement. Maya slowly gave me more leashes as we walked, until I was handling all four dogs by myself. She’d been cheerful and encouraging, even though I had a feeling that my complete lack of experience with dogs had been evident. But I’d been surprised by how peaceful it had been, toward the end—when all the dogs had done everything they needed to and sniffed every available tree—when we were all walking in silence and I could feel the sun on my arms and shoulders. I realized that I’d been so focused on making sure the dogs were okay—which was minute-to-minute work, with dangers of cars or squirrels or other dogs around every corner—that I hadn’t really been able to think about my own situation. And how nice it had been to get a break from the inside of my head.
Toby had seemed thrilled to see me, in person and unkidnapped, and once she verified that I was fine, started complaining about how bored she was. Apparently, it had been a slow day, and since she was still memorizing her docent script, she wasn’t able to give any tours, so she had walked around, familiarizing herself with the paintings and sculptures.
“So,” Toby said, tilting her head as she looked at me, “is this a formal dog-walking service?”
“Ha ha,” I said, glancing down at myself. I’d changed into flip-flops but was still wearing the dress—it seemed easier than going home and changing, and it was going to need to be dry-cleaned anyway.
“I like it,” Toby said, gesturing to me with a flourish. “Andie Walker, dog walker.”
I hadn’t even put that together until now, and I groaned. “Oh no,” I said, shaking my head. “That sounds like something from one of your romantic comedies.”
“Don’t knock the romantic comedies.”
I looked around the courtyard of the small museum, more than ready to change the subject before Toby could start lecturing me about the merits of Sleepless in Seattle again. “Want to give me a tour?”
Toby grinned and straightened her blue blazer. I noticed there was a crest with a P on it sewn over one of the lapels. “Certainly,” she said, in her most grave and serious voice—it had dropped about an octave—and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “If you’ll follow me, miss . . .”
I followed her past the courtyard and into the museum itself, bracing myself as a wave of memories hit me hard. I actually didn’t need a tour at all, since I knew the Pearce really well. My mother had been an artist by training and had volunteered there for years, organizing the kids’ art program. I’d spent hours there when I was younger, listening to my mom talk through her art-appreciation class, her holiday ornament-making class, her intro-to-sculpture class.
It had never seemed fair to me that I had no artistic talent whatsoever, whereas my mom could conjure whole worlds with just a paper and pencil, or a tiny bit of clay. I’d seen her turn squares of paper into cranes that could fly and packing peanuts into hippos. It was like she was the one person who knew there was a unicorn waiting to be set free from the paper clip. In addition to her framed pieces, which had been all over our old farmhouse, she’d done drawings everywhere—directly onto the walls. She would sketch absentmindedly while she was on hold on the phone—rabbits and huge fire-breathing dragons sharing a beer while a grizzly bear tended bar. Tiny pink mice chasing one another around the walls of my room, keeping up a running commentary about my snoring. An abstract series of lines that turned into waves, that turned into a town, then a city, before the waves came back and everything went back to lines again and then disappeared. That one had been by my mother’s bedside, and I’d wondered ever since if she’d drawn it years ago and I’d only noticed it after she got sick, or if she’d done it after her diagnosis. Although her bigger and more polished pieces had been the ones she was proudest of, it was the farmhouse drawings I thought about first when it came to her art. But the fact that my dad hadn’t told me we were moving, just had me dropped off from camp at our new house in Stanwich Woods, had meant that I hadn’t been able to see them one last time. I hadn’t gotten once last glance at the bashful bear peeking around the corner of the study. He’d always been there, so it was like it had never occurred to me to really look at him, not realizing that one day he might be gone.
I hadn’t been to the Pearce in years, but most of the pieces were still the same. It was a small museum, only five galleries splitting off from a central courtyard. It housed the collection of Mary Anne Pearce, who had been acquiring for decades and had donated her whole collection—to the apparent dismay of her heirs—to the town of Stanwich, along with a grant to build the museum. She and my mother had been close, and Mrs. Pearce had died the year after my mother did. I remembered seeing her at the funeral and thinking how wrong it was, since it was my mom who was supposed to be at Mrs. Pearce’s funeral and not the other way around.
One thing I’d always liked about the Pearce was how eclectic it was. Mrs. Pearce had collected based only on what she lik
ed, which meant it was a little all over the place. There were lots of impressionists, some medieval tapestries, modern sculpture, and Roman statuary. But somehow, it all worked.
“And through here,” Toby was saying, motioning me ahead, and I realized I hadn’t been listening to her, “we have our contemporary gallery. . . .”
“Do lead on,” I said, imitating her serious tone as we walked into the last gallery. A guy wearing an identical blue blazer had been leaning against the wall, blocking a description of the work of Mark Rothko, and he jumped when we walked into the room, standing up straight and pulling a white earbud out of his ear.
“Hey,” he said, as we passed, his eyes landing on me briefly before returning to Toby. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” Toby said with a shrug as she kept walking, not even looking back at him. “Quiet, you know?”
“Totally,” he said, raising his voice, clearly trying to continue the conversation, even as Toby kept walking away.
“He was cute,” I said to her in a low voice, glancing behind me once to verify this. He was, too—light-brown hair, blue eyes, tall enough for Toby, even with her heels on.
“Gregory?” Toby asked, sounding surprised. “He’s okay, I guess.”
I took a breath to say something about this—when I saw the wall in front of me and stopped short.
Toby walked a few more steps before she realized I wasn’t with her and came to stand next to me. We both looked at the painting in silence for a minute, while I fought down the lump in my throat.
It was a big canvas, taking up most of the wall. I stared at it, drinking it in like I’d never seen it before, when it was probably the painting I was most familiar with—not just in the Pearce, but anywhere. It was of a field at night—overgrown grass and wildflowers and an explosion of stars above. Twelve-year-old me was in the bottom left corner, lying on my back and looking up, one hand reaching toward the sky. It was incredibly detailed, in a way that still took my breath away. I could see the broken and double-knotted lace on my dirty yellow Converse, which had been my favorite that year. I could see the slight tear in the sundress pocket, the dress that was still in my closet somewhere, even though I hadn’t been able to fit into it in years. I could see my crooked bangs, the ones I’d cut that summer myself when I’d gotten annoyed they were in my eyes. The only thing I didn’t recognize was my expression, peaceful and smiling at something just beyond the frame.