Night Night, Sleep Tight Read Free Page B

wagged his butt where there was the stump of a tail. Baby, who was a little smaller and had a bit more golden brown over her eyes and around her muzzle, woofed and stood up, her front paws resting against glass smeared with doggie saliva. She was nearly as tall as Deirdre.
    Deirdre tried to slide open the door, but of course it was locked too. “Dad! Henry!” she shouted. “Would one of you please get out here and open a damned door so I can come in, preferably before one of the dogs has a heart attack. Come on! It’s hot as hell out here.”
    She waited. Someone had been out there not all that long ago: on the patio table sat a cut-glass tumbler with a bit of pale amber liquid at the bottom of it.
    The only vestiges of Gloria, who’d long ago walked out on Arthur, were barren terra-cotta pots surrounding the patio. Once they had contained her collection of scented geraniums. Now they held only dried-out soil and the skeletal remains of weeds.
    How her mother used to fuss over her prized specimens, as she called them, picking off dead leaves and pruning the branches into striking, bonsai-like shapes. Now she grew herbs and taught serenity and was well along on “the path,” as she termed it, in the midst of a Buddhist retreat that required her to shave her head and—something Deirdre could barely imagine—remain silent. Deirdre had known her parents’ marriage was over when her mother started carrying malas, prayer beads, that she fingered in quiet moments as she meditated and whispered mantras under her breath. When she’d moved to the desert commune near Twentynine Palms, she’d taken only one plant with her, a rare hybrid that smelled like smoked chili pepper, abandoning the rest to Arthur’s inevitable neglect.
    Deirdre turned back to the pool. Her mother had detested that pool and the chain-link fence that surrounded it. She’d tortured Arthur with plans for turning the entire backyard into a Japanese-style garden of raked stones and koi ponds. He’d wanted a sauna and hot tub. It made Deirdre wonder: If it hadn’t been for their success as a screenwriting team, would her parents have stayed together even long enough to have had Deirdre?
    That’s when Deirdre noticed Arthur’s favorite Hawaiian shirt draped over the chaise longue by the pool and his slippers on the ground beside it. She couldn’t remember him ever swimming laps in the morning.
    Behind her, the dogs quieted. She turned back. Henry was there on the other side of the glass, bare-chested and wearing a pair of drawstring sweats that rode low on his hips. The thick gold chain he wore around his neck reminded Deirdre of the choke chains he used to train the dogs. He yawned and rubbed his grizzled face, then unlatched and slid open the door.
    The dogs burst from the house and ran joyous victory laps around the yard. Bear leaped for the knot at the end of a rope Henry had tied to a tree branch and hung there wriggling and snarling. Baby circled back to Deirdre, who crouched and let Baby lick her face. She buried her face in the soft ruff around the dog’s neck. Whatever else you could say about Henry, he raised the sweetest dogs.
    “Yo, Deeds,” Henry said, offering his hand and helping her up. He gave her an awkward hug, then stood back and yawned, exhaling stale beer breath. “What are you doing here?”
    Deirdre forced a smile. She knew it wasn’t fair—after all, how could he have known she was coming if she or Arthur hadn’t told him—but the question annoyed her. “Dad asked me to come up and help him with the house.” She couldn’t resist adding, “He’s selling it, you know.”
    “Yuh.” Henry crossed his arms. “I know. Whyn’t you ring the front?”
    “I rang. I knocked. Whyn’t you answer?”
    “I was sleeping. And besides, Dad’s here. Why didn’t he—” He turned and bellowed into the house. “Yo, Dad! Where the hell are you?”
    Deirdre listened with him, but when the house remained silent, Henry said,