Anything for Her(25)

Nolan explained that they were here to look at dogs and they were allowed to go in back.

Rows of sparkling clean kennels were filled with dogs of every size and shape, half of them barking. The racket was astonishing. He hoped the cats were adequately insulated from it, or they’d be even more scared.

Sean seemed to shrink, and Nolan had the thought—yeah, a little late, huh—that possibly he would identify too closely with the abandoned animals that had become sucked into the maw of an authority they didn’t understand. He hadn’t gone to an institution, thank God, but how had he felt at having strangers look him over as they tried to decide if they wanted to take him into their home? The call to Nolan had undoubtedly been his attempt to grab back some element of control. He’d have told himself he had chosen Nolan.

And I wanted to think we’d recognized something in each other, Nolan thought ruefully. Self-delusion.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best place to start,” he said. “There’s a small, no-kill place in Arlington.”

“No,” Sean said with unexpected force. “These dogs, um, they need someone to take them home.”

Oh, yeah, he was identifying, all right. Good or bad? Nolan worried, as they wandered.

Allie tried to rejoin them, but Sean snubbed her so obviously she dropped back again. Once she exclaimed in delight, as she had at the zoo, and called, “Sean! Look at this guy. No, girl.”

Nolan turned. She had squatted, and was getting her hand thoroughly bathed by a scraggly creature of extremely mixed breeding. There had to be some terrier in there somewhere to explain the wiry hair. The tail was waving wildly.

“I saw it,” Sean said disagreeably, and turned his back.

Nolan was this close to announcing there’d be no dog. But, damn it, there were so many dogs that did need homes. There’ll be as many next week, he told himself, staring down at a heap of plump, brown-and-black bodies that writhed as the puppies wrestled.

Puppies were bound to get homes. Weren’t they? But he saw a number of litters when he looked around. And they were all going to be big dogs, mostly Lab or shepherd mixes. Really too big for the average city dweller. Down the row he saw the family he’d spotted in the parking lot now trying out a dog on a leash. Medium-sized, maybe a corgi mix, not one of the hapless black Labs.

Nolan’s mood deteriorated further. Allie became more and more closed in, her face showing little. When he tried to drop back by her side, she flapped her hand at him and said, “He needs your attention.”

“He doesn’t deserve my attention,” he said grimly.

“No, but...this won’t help matters.”

Sean glanced back, his expression hateful. Nolan ground his teeth some more and positioned himself halfway between woman and boy. They completed the circuit.

“See any that interest you?” Nolan asked.

The boy shrugged with clear insolence.

Nolan’s anger might be slow to catch fire, but enough was enough. “That’s it,” he declared. “Time to go home.”

Sean faced him, expression shocked. “What? But I haven’t...”

“You’ve had all the chance you’re getting. We’re leaving. Now.”

“That’s bullshit!” His voice rose. “Why’d you suggest this at all, when all you wanted was to be with her?”

Nolan gripped his arm. “We’re going now.”

Sean stumbled beside him. “I didn’t do anything!”

Feeling as if his face had become as stonelike as a carved monolith—an Easter Island moai, or a grim-faced pre-Columbian warrior figurine—Nolan stalked past Allie, half dragging Sean.

“Stop,” she snapped to their backs.

Nolan did, letting his hand drop from his boy’s arm. He turned reluctantly.

“You shouldn’t have set us all up for this,” she said quietly to him. Her eyes glittered gold with something that might have been rage, or incipient tears. Or both. Then she looked at Sean. “And you. Think! Any dog you saw today might be euthanized by next week, instead of going home with you. All because you’re mad at Nolan, or me.” Her head was so high, she had to be stretching her neck painfully. “I’m going outside to wait. You two do what you want.”

She brushed by them and pushed through the swinging door.

Nolan breathed an expletive under his breath. He’d deserved that. Sean wasn’t the only one behaving very badly. And to think he’d congratulated himself not that long ago on how even-tempered he was.