Love Shadows

Sarah grabbed his collar and yanked him toward the house. She remembered now that on the way back, Beauregard had paused and looked back at the fence. It wasn’t until she shouted his name and gave his collar another tug that he followed her obediently.

Sarah knew now that Beauregard had started plotting his strategy for retrieval at that very moment. She wondered if he’d thought about it all night.

Sarah looked back at Mrs. Beabots, who was patiently holding her arms at her sides, the skirt of her black-and-white-polka-dot dress fluttering around her legs. “That house has been vacant for two years. I didn’t think anyone would mind,” Sarah said glumly.

“You shoulda buried the squirrel out of Beau’s sight.”

“Why?” Sara asked.

“Because, pumpkin. That critter was his prize. Dog’s always gonna go for his prize. He’s a retriever.” Mrs. Beabots smiled her thin smile and nodded.

Sarah watched after the little bird of a woman who’d always been not only observant but wise, and somehow invariably managed to make certain she had the last word.

* * *

LUKE BOSWORTH WAS lost in thought as he drove his children—Annie, his eight-year-old, freckle-faced, redheaded daughter, and his six-year-old son, Timmy, with the bright blue eyes—to school.

“Can we go all the way down Maple Avenue, Dad?” Annie asked.

“Why?”

Annie looked out the window and gazed at the majestic, hundred-year-old sugar maples for which the street was named. “I love it. It’s so beautiful this time of year, with all the tulips blossoming. My favorites are the pink ones.”

Timmy gave her a dismissive wave of his hand. “Aw, Annie. All the tulips on Maple Avenue are pink.”

“I know.”

“It’s okay,” Timmy said, sitting up straighter as they turned off Main Street and onto Maple. “I like all the big houses. I bet the people who live here are really rich.”

Luke heard his children’s chatter as if their words were being spoken under water. They were playing one of their favorite games, where they picked out the “happiest” house.

He barely glanced at the tall “Painted Ladies,” the historic Victorian houses painted in pinks, purples, yellows and bright greens. These houses were painted in bright colors during the era when heavy smoke billowed out of the factories in Chicago and steel mills in Gary. The prevailing winds coated the huge homes in Indian Lake with soot, and the bright colors became subtle from grime and pollution.

He frowned and rubbed his aching forehead as they drove past a three-story Italian stucco house with French doors and huge windows.

“That’s my favorite,” Annie said, pointing at the windows. “Do you like it, Dad?

Luke wasn’t exactly paying attention, so he grumbled, “Hmm.” He continued diving deeper into the sea of thoughts about his wife, Jenny.

It had been two years, three months and six days since Jenny died, and Luke felt as if he’d died with her.

The autumn when he and Jenny had first discovered Indian Lake on a weekend trip from their home near Chicago, Jenny had walked up and down Maple Avenue pretending she was house shopping. She chose over half a dozen houses that she liked. She would have loved to raise their children in one of these fine, old homes.

But that was then, Luke thought as he glanced back at the Italian stucco house. Whoever these people are, they’re better off than I am.

Luke worked as a construction supervisor at a midsize company in town. For four years, since their move to Indian Lake, Luke had been making good money. Because Luke was a former Navy SEAL, with more than one decoration for valor in combat in Iraq, Jenny had urged him to apply for the GI Bill loan to go after an architect’s degree at Indiana University-Purdue in Fort Wayne. All their plans were dashed in a single day when Jenny got sick. Very sick.

The doctors told Luke and Jenny that the tumor in her brain was malignant. Inoperable. Terminal. The words still sounded like shotgun blasts. Each time he thought about that day, those words, Luke’s head jerked back from the onslaught.

The doctors gave Jenny four months to live. Neither he nor Jenny believed them. They fought back with chemotherapy. They enrolled in an experimental program that administered a new drug right to the brain. It didn’t work. Jenny lived six months. She had bought two more months than the doctors had predicted, but their prognosis was still the same. Jenny’s time with Luke was flat-out too short.

It was entirely his fault that Jenny died. If he’d been wealthy, he could have flown her to Europe, where doctors were open to alternative treatments for brain tumors. He should have insisted on seeing an herbalist and nutritionist who might have bought them another six months or a year to find a cure. But the cancer overtook Jenny with a vengeance until it finally took her away from him.

Luke had been more than angry at the universe since that day in the hospital when he yelled and sobbed and shouted at the nurses to leave him alone with Jenny’s body. He’d held her for hours, watching her turn gray in his arms. He’d been inconsolable. He still was.

He went through his days in a fog, unable to think or respond to his own children. There were times he wished he and Jenny had never had kids. They were always coaxing him back to the present, to the place he wanted to deny. As long as he lived inside his memories of Jenny and the magical love and life they’d shared, he believed he would be saved. She was his savior and his lifeline to sanity. Luke was as helpless and hopeless without Jenny as he’d been two years, three months and six days ago.

Even now, he could hear Annie’s voice, prying its way into his inner sanctum of memories, but he didn’t know what she was saying. He should pay better attention, but when he did, a burning in his gut ignited and visions of Jenny beckoned him back to the peaceful past.

“Did you say something, Annie?” Luke finally mumbled.

Annie’s face was pressed against the glass. “Yeah,” she said with a whisper of reverence in her voice. “That’s the house I want.”

“Me, too,” Timmy chimed, looking at his father’s mournful expression in the rearview mirror. It was like always. His father wasn’t listening to them. Half the time when he did listen, he just growled at them.

Nothing had been good for any of them since Mom had died. Timmy watched out the back window as they drove past the stucco house. I wish we could live in that exact house someday.

Timmy realized he’d been making a lot of wishes lately. He wanted a big golden retriever and he wanted a home where everyone hugged each other a lot and always smiled and never frowned as if something was wrong. Timmy didn’t think such things were impossible.

That’s what wishes are for, aren’t they? Timmy thought. To make dreams come true.

CHAPTER TWO

LUKE PARKED HIS Ford F-150 smack dab in front of Cupcakes and Coffee Café and turned off the engine. “I’m going to get a quick cup of coffee,” he said, turning to his children.

“Okay, Dad,” Annie said, unbuckling her seat belt.

“Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?” Luke asked sternly, throwing his hand over the buckle.

Annie’s eyes flew open with her customary dramatic flair. “To see the puppies. The only thing good about this whole day is that we are going to see the puppies. Right now,” she said in that intractable tone that revealed conviction without disrespect. “If we have to go to boring school all day, then we can at least see the puppies.”

Luke chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully and rubbed his scruffy, unshaven cheek.

“Please, Dad,” Timmy said earnestly.

Peering at both his children, Luke wished he didn’t see so much eagerness in their eyes. It dumbfounded him that dogs could mean so much to them. He’d told them a hundred times that they could not afford a dog. Luke was overwhelmed with all the medical bills that had piled up in the wake of Jenny’s illness and death. Luke didn’t see how he’d get them paid off even if he had a decade to do so. To make matters worse, both Luke and his boss, Jerry Mason, were very concerned about the slowdown in the construction sector. Jerry had laid off all his full-time crews and used them only on an “as-needed basis.”

Luke was the only employee left on salary, and his paycheck had gotten smaller. Still, Luke was lucky to have a full-time job. In order to make up the difference, Luke had been looking for weekend work and had cut back on extra household expenses. One of the first luxuries to be eliminated was cable and DSL. In order to use the internet to search want ads, he’d resorted to visiting the public library. So far, he’d come up empty.

Somehow, Luke had managed to keep the family afloat over the past year, even with the cutback at work. Although there was some equity in the house that would relieve most, but not all, of Jenny’s medical bills, Luke knew that if he were to sell the house, it would be like burying Jenny all over again. He couldn’t go through that kind of pain ever again. It was hard enough to live in the hollow space he called his “life” as it was. He had left the house Jenny had turned into a home for them all just as it was on the day of her death. Her clothes were still in the closet, her sweater hung over the back of the kitchen chair and the kids knew never to move it. The house was a time warp, and inside its walls, Luke could pretend that Jenny was alive.

Luke was right, he believed, to deny the kids a dog. A dog required shots and veterinarian visits. They got sick just like kids. There were bills for the groomer. Special diet foods. He knew from his friends and coworkers that owning a dog was as costly as a child, minus the education.

Scratch that. I forgot obedience school.

“You can go look as long as you remember that I’m not buying a dog.”

“We know, Dad,” Annie answered.