Force of Nature Read Free Page B

laurels, though.
    “He’s over by the garbage pails,” the younger girl announced. “Alongside the garage.”
    “It’s a barn, dimwit,” her older sister loftily corrected her.
    “Yeah, but we keep our car there, so it’s also a garage,
stupid.
”
    “Girls,” their mother chastised.
    Annie was already heading—slowly, carefully—around the side of the barn. “Pierre,” she whispered, very softly.
    Pierre had had a painful past, Pam had once told Annie as she snuggled the little dog in her arms, his head possessively on her shoulder. Long before Pam had met Pierre at the animal shelter, someone had neglected and even beaten him. It was hard for him to trust anyone, but he’d finally bonded with Pam. She’d told him, every day, that no one was going to hurt him, not ever again.
    “Pierre, it’s me,” Annie whispered now. Not that he’d ever deigned to give her his attention before. Of course, back then, Pam was always there—his goddess, his all.
    She heard him before she saw him—the tinkling of his tags as he shifted and then…He poked his head out into the dim light, wariness in his brown eyes.
    He was almost unrecognizable. His hair was matted and dirty. And he was skinny. Skinnier. And shivering from the cold.
    “Hey, puppy boy,” Annie said softly, using Pam’s pet names for him as she crouched down and held out her hand for him to sniff. “Hey, good dog. Everything’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you…”
    To her complete surprise, he didn’t hesitate. His tail even wagged slightly as he came out of his hiding place and licked her outstretched hand. Looking over his shoulder, as if to make sure that she was going to follow him, he trotted out onto the driveway and over to her car.
    Annie stopped short. Did he really want…?
    “Wow, she likes you,” the littler girl said, admiration in her voice. “She doesn’t like us very much.”
    “
He
doesn’t like
you
,” her older sister pointed out. “Probably because you can’t tell the difference between a girl dog and a boy dog.”
    Pierre looked at Annie, looked at the car, and then back at Annie, as if to say,
What are you waiting for?
    “I can’t have a dog in my apartment,” Annie said, as if he could actually understand her words. “Plus, I work full-time…”
    Celeste opened the screen door. “Why don’t you come inside?” she invited Annie. “Both of you. It’s too late to drive back to Boston tonight. You can stay over on the couch and we can figure out a plan of action in the morning.”
    The thought of going into Pam’s house was both appealing and dreadful. But it
was
late, and Annie was exhausted. “Thanks,” she said.
    Amazingly, Pierre didn’t protest as she scooped him up. She followed the smaller of the girls inside, and…It was beyond weird.
    Because it wasn’t even remotely Pam’s house anymore.
    They’d repainted the walls, muting Pam’s bright colors. And their furniture was vastly different from Pam’s wicker and white painted wood. It was faux Colonial now—all dark veneers and copper drawer-pulls.
    It smelled different, too.
    “Bathroom’s down the hall, second door on the left,” Celeste said. “Of course, you know that. I’ll be right back with some blankets.”
    She disappeared, shooing her daughters along to bed, leaving Annie and Pierre alone in the living room.
    “I can’t have a dog,” Annie told him again, but he put his head down, right on her shoulder, the way he used to do with Pam, and he sighed. His entire little body shook with his exhale, and the crazy thing was that Annie felt what he was feeling, too.
    If it wasn’t quite contentment, it was pretty darn close.
    It was oddly familiar.
    Vaguely normal and very right, in spite of the freaky abnormality of their surroundings, in spite of Pierre’s unfortunate aroma.
    It was far more normal and right than she’d ever felt in her cubicle in Templar, Brick and Smith. Even before Pam got sick.
    Celeste came back with an