Love Is the Best Medicine Read Free Page B

appreciation.
    “Well, we can’t leave her here. She’ll die of cold out there.”
    Eileen had a point, Ben thought, but according to his sources it wasn’t as though the dog didn’t make this run to her favorite food bank on a regular basis. She was old enough to have weathered at least a decade of harsh winters far tougher than tonight’s. She would find her way home without difficulty. Then again, tossing her out to fend for herself after giving her this brush with warmth and affection felt all wrong.
    “What if someone’s looking for her?” he said.
    She didn’t hesitate.
    “But what if they’re not? What if they dumped her in the nearest parking lot who knows how long ago and kept driving. What if she’s been left to fend for herself?”
    Ben pensively bounced a clenched fist on his lower lip before turning in his seat to face forward, applying his seat belt, and sliding the truck into reverse.
    “What are you doing?”
    Ben stopped the SUV, slipped it into drive and said, “We need to make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
    T AKING his directions from the sous chef, Ben drove the half mile down a deserted rural highway in search of the nearest neighborhood, and when the vast, impenetrable woodlands of central Massachusetts suddenly gave way to a modern development, Ben hung a right into a rolling barren landscape peppered with McMansions.
    “This doesn’t seem right,” said Eileen.
    The homes were set back behind large, rectangular lawns topped by a blanket of frost so neat it looked as though it might have been applied by hand, a white bedsheet with perfect hospital corners. Two- and three-car garages ensured the sidewalks and driveways were empty and there was no one in sight, the occasional floodlight bursting into life as their curb-crawling vehicle set off another motion detector.
    “I agree,” said Ben, scanning left and right, unable to find a single stray leaf to spoil the efforts of professional landscaping crews. “With no disrespect to your little friend, I don’t see her making the annual holiday family photo for the kind of people living in these homes.”
    The road snaked through the neighborhood, ending at a stop sign where Ben elected to take a left in hopes of working his way back to the main highway. Eileen encouraged the spaniel to stand on her lap and look out the window, as though the dog might divine the correct route and signal it with her tail, like a tracking device.
    In the passing gleam from a street lamp, Ben checked in his rearview mirror and caught a flash of the two of them. Eileen, indifferent to the little dog’s smell and the horrors of what was decaying inside her mouth, was animated and encouraging, pointing out the passing sites as if they were touring a capital city.
    As the road narrowed, the houses changed—small Capes and ranches emerged, closed above-ground pools, picket fences desperate for a coat of paint. Ben slowed down as he spied one particularly ramshackle Victorian Colonial.
    A number of abandoned cars on blocks lay strewn across a front lawn more dirt than grass. The wraparound farmer’s porch was collapsing at the corner, tilting the floor at a perilous Hitchcock camera angle. Bluish television light filled the gap between half-drawn curtains, and last year’s unlit icicle Christmas lights still hung from dilapidated guttering. But what drew Ben’s eye to this particular property was the bottom of a one-car garage. Over to one side, cut into the peeling paint on the aluminum siding, was a black rubber dog door.
    Ben glanced over his shoulder at Eileen and the dog and wondered if the spaniel was the Goldilocks whose size fit the flap just right.
    “This house might match this dog,” he thought.
    “What is it?” said Eileen.
    She obviously hadn’t seen the flap cut into the garage. Then again, Ben could have been completely wrong. The dog appeared to show no sign of recognition, no tell, unless her sudden stillness was meant to be a