“Wait, she’s not wearing her collar?” Nails of panic shoot into my brain.
“She rolled in something stinky in the backyard,” Mom explains, “so I took her collar off to wash it.”
I take the damp strap of nylon from her. “Can you take me home, please? I need to see if she went there. If not, I’ll get on my bike and ride around to look for her.”
“Of course,” my mother says. “And I’ll drive around for as long as I can after dropping you off. I have an appointment, but I have some time to look for her.”
“I’ll keep looking here too,” Dean says.
“I’ll help, Daddy!” Jazzy says.
“Thanks, nugget.” He kisses her head, then sniffs it. “Why does your hair smell like apple?”
Mom and I gather our stuff and head for the car. Once buckled up, she keeps throwing me anxious looks. Although I’m turned toward the window, searching yards, sidewalks, and alleys along the way for a slim, glossy haired black and white beauty, I can see my mother’s worried reflection in the glass.
“Stevie, what happened with—”
“Mom, please don’t ask. Logan and I had . . . a disagreement. That’s all. We’ll be fine.”
She nods but doesn’t look convinced. “He’s never left like that, when you needed him. And he looked upset.”
“I know, I know. I’ll talk to him. Except I need to find Bean first.”
Mom is quiet. Let’s hope she stays that way. My tension grows the closer we get to home. Will Bean be there? Will Logan be there? What will I say to him? No, I can’t think about him right now. It’s bad enough wondering if I’ll ever see Bean again.
If I don’t find her in the next half-hour, I’ll email the neighborhood watch and friends I know between here and there to be on the lookout for her, and I’ll call the animal shelter and the Denver Dumb Friends League. At least she’s microchipped. Someone will find her, right? Please let someone find her.
Logan’s car isn’t there when we get to the house. Mom pulls in the driveway and lays a hand on my leg. “Let’s find Bean first, but then please call me. We need to talk.”
I glance sharply at her. She has her mom face on, the one that means she isn’t playing around. She’s got something to say, and I’m going to listen. Wonderful. I nod and hop out. “Thanks for helping with Bean.”
“Of course, Stevie. We’ll find her.”
Please, please let that be true. If I lose Bean and Logan . . . I can’t go there. Let’s just say life as I know it will end. While that’s probably terribly melodramatic, it’s true.
I search the house, the yard, and even peek into Rosa’s yard, but no Bean. No Logan, either. Where is he?
I have no time to ponder that. Instead, I extract my bike from the detached garage, pump up the tires and start riding. Up and down streets and alleys between our house and Tamara and Dean’s house. I call for Bean, over and over and over.
I see lots of other dogs and their humans as I go. I stop to show them pictures of Bean and give them my number to text or call if they see her. But no calls come in.
The family is silent, too, other than periodic check-ins. Lamar texts to say he’s taking up the search party when Mom has to go to her appointment. Hours go by with no good news.
Finally, at seven o’clock, I give up and go home. I’d stopped by our house a few times to check the yard, get water, and send out SOS emails. I’d called the shelter and the Dumb Friends League twice. Nothing.
Leaving the fence gate open for Bean—wishful thinking—I sink onto my bed, phone in hand but otherwise paralyzed with fear and fatigue and watch the evening shadows stalk across my Bean-less room inch by inch.
Sometime around midnight, I startle awake. There’s movement in my room. Bean whines.
“Bean? Beanie? Come here girl!” I pat the bedspread blearily, wondering if I’m dreaming. If so, don’t wake me.
She leaps on the bed, and I smother her with kisses and hugs, not even caring that she smells like manure and has what feels like dirt and dead grass in her fur. I tell her over and over how much I love her. And then, carrying her lest she escape again, I creep out of my room.
No lights are on, and as far as I can tell, no one is there. Not in the kitchen, the living room, or Logan’s room. The back door is locked, and the yard looks undisturbed. As I’m peering out through the window in the kitchen. A car starts out front.
I hustle that way as fast as I can with a forty-pound dog in my arms. When I finally get the locked front door open, Logan’s car is driving away down the street.
He’d found Bean and brought her home.
And left again without a word.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Logan
Okay, call me a complete and utter pushover; you’d be right. But I couldn’t let Bean go missing without doing anything to try to find her. Or let Stevie suffer over it.
As soon as I’d driven away from Tamara and Dean’s house, I’d changed my mind about leaving Stevie to deal with her own mess and gone looking for Bean. I love the dog, too, after all.
Ten hours and several texts to Dean to make sure Bean hadn’t turned up later, I hadn’t found her. I’d called shelters, posted in neighborhood Facebook groups, texted friends, drove around some more. Basically, I blanketed the neighborhood.
I’d known Stevie and her family would be looking too, and for some perverse reason, I’d wanted to be the one to find her. Wanted to be the hero, I guess. Maybe I wanted Stevie to owe me. I dunno.
But when I’d heard from a friend near midnight on Thursday that he’d gotten home to find Bean trapped in his yard in Park Hill somehow, I’d driven over to get her, slipped her inside the house with Stevie, and left. Another buddy had already said I could crash at his house that night. All I’d known was that I couldn’t face Stevie.
And now? It’s Saturday, and I still haven’t faced her. She’s called and left messages thanking me for delivering Bean to her, which I haven’t answered, and she’d texted yesterday morning that she wanted to talk, but she needed time to think and sort out her feelings. I’d planned to stay at my buddy’s house again, but Stevie surprised me by taking Bean to her parents’ house for the weekend. I appreciate that she’s giving me the house while she thinks this through.
I love Stevie. I want Stevie. But I’m pretty sure I can’t live with Stevie anymore and just be friends. It’s too painful. Either my note results in us working things out or I’m moving out. I won’t tell her that unless I have to. But I’ve decided.
It might be difficult to understand how a grown woman like Stevie wouldn’t know how she feels about me, her oldest relationship outside of her own family, but I believe her. She’s always had a hard time identifying her feelings.
When we were ten, she’d dumped an entire container of granola and some milk inside Tamara’s made bed after Tam ate the last of the sugary cereal Stevie had wanted.
Carol grounded her, made her vacuum up the mess, strip the bed, wash the sheets, and remake it. But when she interrogated Stevie about why she did it, Stevie simply said Tamara should have asked if anyone else wanted the Fruit Loops or whatever before she ate them. When we laughed about it years later, she told me she hadn’t been angry at the time. In that moment of granola-dumping, she just really wanted those Fruit Loops. Stevie acted first and felt later, always. That time she got revenge, this time she’s running away.