Save the Date(66)
Now, standing in the bright lights of the kitchen, I could see that none of us had escaped unscathed—I had grass stains all over my sweatpants, Linnie had a dirt smudge that ran the length of her forehead, and Danny’s sweatshirt hood had been half ripped off, though both Linnie and J.J. were trying to blame the other for it. Linnie got us all waters, and while I watched everyone argue about the fairness of a particular jailbreak and whether J.J.’s first capture should have been counted, maybe just by half, I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. Because this was why I’d wanted to play the game. This was what I’d been missing for so long. And it felt like, finally, things were getting back to how they should be.
“We wouldn’t have lost if Mike had been here,” J.J. grumbled. “I need a wartime consigliere out on the field, and he’s great at strategy.”
“Yeah,” Linnie said, her smile fading a little as she looked around. “Mike really should be here too.”
I was about to argue with this, but the truth was, for all the times he’d hung back and refused to go along with us, Mike had never done it with capture the flag. He really was great at coming up with plans, and he did a sportscaster-type play-by-play on the field that always cracked Rodney up to the point where he often had to stop running. “Yeah,” I agreed, but so quietly I wasn’t sure anyone else heard me.
The rest of the recap didn’t last too long—Linnie and Rodney peeled off first, and J.J. started yawning and headed upstairs, with Danny following, ruffling my hair on the way out of the kitchen. I waited a little bit longer—I stayed sitting on the kitchen counter, phone in hand, waiting to see if Jesse would reach out again, even though I had a feeling he probably had his hands full with Mike.
After a few minutes, I finally decided to pack it in, and headed up to the third floor, yawning. I had just reached J.J.’s room and was about to turn the doorknob when I heard voices coming from inside. J.J. and also—I leaned a little bit closer, and my eyes went wide—Jenny W. They were talking low, but I could hear Jenny’s laughter, and I backed away from the door quickly, getting the sense that they would not have appreciated me showing up just then. J.J. had clearly forgotten once again that I was supposed to be staying with him. As I headed downstairs, resigning myself to the couch, I wondered why I was even surprised. I tiptoed downstairs as quietly as possible—and practically tripped over Waffles as I made it to the front hall. He was sitting dead center in front of the bottom step, just staring at me. “Um. Hi,” I said as I headed into the kitchen to make sure the door was locked, feeling like of all the rescue dogs we could have gotten this weekend, we’d ended up with the weirdest.
I heard a click-clacking behind me, and I turned around to see Waffles standing in the kitchen, looking at me intently. “You okay?” I asked, even though I was all too aware that he wouldn’t be able to answer me. But the dog just kept looking at me steadily, until I started to get a little uncomfortable.
I looked around, like there was someone who could help me translate. How did people who owned dogs do this? You were basically inviting an animal you couldn’t communicate with to move into your house with you for years of confusion. “What?” I asked, but Waffles just tilted his head to the side a little, his eyes not leaving mine. He let out a soft whimper, looked over at the door, then back at me, and much too late, I understood what was happening. “Oh,” I said, feeling like I should have gotten this much sooner. “Um . . . sorry about that. I’ll take you for a walk.”
His leash was hanging up on one of the hooks by the door, and as soon as he saw me take it, he started running around in small circles and doing these little howly yips, like there was a real howl coming and he was just warming up.
“Shh,” I said, trying to calm him down. Even when I got his leash snapped on, the yips just seemed to be getting louder. “If you don’t stop, I won’t take you on a walk,” I said, then wondered why I thought the dog, who didn’t speak English, would suddenly understand blackmail.
Once Waffles realized that a walk was happening, he stopped running in circles and practically dragged me down the driveway. He seemed to go crazy for the first few minutes, running to smell as many trees and rocks as possible and then appearing to regret this and circling back to get the ones he’d missed. I hadn’t brought a flashlight, but it was light enough out that I could see—the moon peeking through the clouds gave me enough light to maneuver down the street. As I watched Waffles joyfully sniffing, I really started to feel bad that he’d been cooped up all day with us.
I walked him to the end of the road, and while Waffles seemed more than happy to keep going, it appeared that he’d pretty much done what he needed to and now just seemed to be sniffing for fun. Everything that had happened today was hitting me, and I was beginning to feel just how late it was. And it was also not warm out—I hadn’t noticed it as much when we’d all been running full speed across the yard, but in the last hour or so, it had gotten a lot colder, especially with the wind picking up. I crossed my fingers on both hands that this was just a fluke and I’d wake up tomorrow to perfect wedding weather. I pulled Waffles over to the other side of the road and started heading toward home.
Right away, I noticed the truck. It was parked on the road, about three houses down from ours. I don’t know why I hadn’t paid attention to it as I’d been walking away from the house—maybe I’d been fixated on the dog. But you couldn’t help noticing it—for one thing, it was the only car parked on the street. And on our street, where there wasn’t a commercial district nearby, everyone just parked in their garages or driveways.