“He’s afraid of birds,” I informed him. “He jumped and cried when we went past the parakeets.”
“Quite the guard dog, huh, bud?” Cary asked, rubbing his big head.
I knew I would always be child-free in my life. And I’d never really had that little uterus squeeze thing when I saw a cute baby. But when Cary was loving on the puppy? Yeah, all the squeezes.
“Do you have any name ideas?” I asked, watching as Cary mused that for a minute before turning to look down at me.
“What about Kent?” he asked. “Like…”
“Like Kentwood Penitentiary,” I said, feeling the smile pull at my lips.
“Where we first, for lack of a better term, met.”
It was perfect.
He was perfect.
Life, it seemed, might just end up perfect too.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cary - 2 weeks
“Baby, he’s not mad at you,” I said, trying like hell not to laugh.
Because Abigail was absolutely fucking hysterical, curled up in a ball on the couch next to the dog, stroking his little snout and begging him to forgive her.
“You don’t know that! He doesn’t understand that it was an accident. I can’t tell him I’m sorry,” she added, sniffling.
She’d tossed her phone toward the couch, not realizing Kent was sleeping there, and whacked him on the head with it.
He’d let out a little whimper.
And that was all it took to make Abigail completely lose her shit.
I didn’t want to tell her that there were sure to be many situations in the future when she accidentally stepped on him, bumped him, or hit him with phones or remotes. I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to help the situation.
“I know. You had a hard day, and then you come home and mommy hits you in the head. I’m so sorry. I’m gonna get you a treat. Do you want a treat?”
Kent’s hard day involved his first puppy training class where he was barked at and charged by a chihuahua with a Napoleon Complex. And then a walk home where a seagull flew off a bench post and startled him.
I was starting to question A’s judgment if this puppy supposedly came from great guard dog genes.
Not that we needed a guard dog.
There was nothing left to fear from the cartels.
Once word got out that Raúl was dead, A swept right in to take over this operation, which, in turn, made Abigail even safer than before. If anyone had been left who had continued loyalty to Raúl was… dealt with.
It almost felt surreal that it was all over, that there was nothing else to worry about.
Not that we hadn’t been through enough, but I guess since the original plan that involved going down to Mexico had been so complicated and risky that not having to do any of that but having the situation handled was hard to come to grips with.
To be honest, I’d wanted more time with Raúl.
I wanted to get him somewhere quiet.
And then I wanted to spend hours, or days, giving him a taste of the terror and pain he’d inflicted on Abigail for years.
Granted, I’d gotten some good damage in thanks to a tiled bathroom full of hard surfaces, but I’d been too aware of being not only in a semi-public place where strangers could overhear, but only a room away from Abigail who didn’t need to overhear that kind of violence either.
It may not have been as satisfying as I’d wanted, but it was done. That was the most important part.
It was done and she was free.
To cry about accidentally tossing her phone on the dog.
To have nothing else to worry about in her day than that.
“Okay, you can have two. But don’t go telling your Aunt Andi on me, okay? It’s our little secret.”
Abigail - 8 months
It was strange how easily things just… fell into place.
It seemed like there should have been a lot more drama following the demise of Raúl and his empire.
I mean, to be fair, it could have been an all-out war going on in Mexico for all I knew, but that was Andres’s problem, and no longer had anything to do with us.
It was all just… over.
Six and a half years of my life. All that fear, pain, uncertainty, and hopelessness that seemed never-ending.
It was all over.
All because of one man.
One man I’d gotten a wild hair to write while he was in prison many years before.
I’d had a crisis of faith for many years. But as the weeks stretched on, it seemed like the whole thing was less and less like happenstance, and more and more like pieces in a big design.
What were the chances that I ended up writing to the one man who would have the ability and connections to save me from the man who’d tormented me for years?
And it wasn’t just Cary, either.
It was the perfect combination of Cary and Chris from Hailstorm and Andres and Hope. And, really, all the others who’d been involved, who’d helped.
And all those pieces that brought those people together to this one town, to make connections with one another before I even came into the picture, well, I don’t know, it just seemed too perfect to be anything other than by design.
Maybe all the terrible things in the world were due to the evil so many people harbor in their hearts. But the good? Maybe that was some divine way of trying to make everything better.
I mean, I wasn’t saying I was going to fall back on all my old beliefs. I never wanted to put my faith to rest in a system that was built on shame and fear.
But it felt good to have some faith in the universe again, in something possibly bigger than myself.
Even if it never became more than that. Just a little faith.
It was the way Cary approached it too. He believed in “something” and tried not to do anything to deliberately hurt someone who hadn’t hurt him first. Other than that, he said it brought more stress than peace to his life.
I liked that.
That said, there was very little about Cary that I didn’t like.
Okay, his penchant for putting spinach in literally anything he cooked? That could get a bit absurd. Just let me enjoy my plain pasta sauce in peace. But I also had to appreciate why he was doing it. He took his health seriously. And because I was important to him, he took mine seriously too. So while he encouraged me to eat two pounds of pasta by myself because he knew I was still trying to put on weight, he wanted to make sure I got some vitamins in me as well.
It was sweet.
“I know, buddy,” I said, listening to Kent whine at the window because I’d put up window boxes in the spring and a small family of nuthatches had moved in to nest.
I, of course, thought it was sweet.
But Kent saw it as an enemy invasion.
“They’ll be gone in a few weeks,” I assured him, patting his giant head. He was growing too fast. I suddenly understood why Andres had so many dogs. The puppy stage was so cute, yet fleeting. “Do you want to go see Uncle Dezi and Lola?” I asked, watching as he flew off the couch to zoomie around the room for a minute before landing at the front door, paws down, tail-end up, waiting for me to get the leash.
Because he was in love with Dezi’s little Lola.
Who wanted absolutely nothing to do with his big, clumsy self.