Maureen shifted her chair a bit farther away from Duke and my mother, then asked Richard a question about a stock she was considering buying. She wasn’t a dog person, she explained, though she’d gamely given Duke a pat.
After I served the cheesecake, we all went into the living room to open gifts. Richard opened mine first. I’d gotten him a framed Rangers hockey jersey signed by all the players—and a matching Rangers collar for Duke.
My mother presented Richard with the new Deepak Chopra book. “I know you work so hard. Maybe you can read this on your commute?”
He politely opened it and flipped through a few pages. “This is probably exactly what I need.” When my mom went to find the card she’d left in her purse, he winked at me.
“I’ll get you the CliffsNotes version in case she asks you about it,” I joked.
Maureen gave him two floor seats to a Knicks game the next night. “We’ve got a sports theme going here,” she laughed. She and Richard were both basketball fans.
“You should take Maureen to the game,” I said.
“That was my plan all along,” Maureen replied lightly. “I remember Richard tried to explain goaltending to you once and I saw you zone out.”
“Guilty as charged.”
My mother’s eyes flitted from Maureen to Richard, then they landed on me. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m up here. Otherwise you’d be left home alone, Vanessa. Why don’t you and I go into the city tomorrow and we can have dinner with Aunt Charlotte?”
“Sure.” I could tell my mother was surprised Maureen hadn’t gotten three tickets. Maybe she thought I felt left out, but the truth was, I was happy Richard’s sister wanted to be with him. He had no other family.
My mother stayed for two more days, and although I braced myself for her usual unfiltered declarations, they never emerged. She came with me whenever I took Duke on his walks, and she suggested we give him his first bath. Duke submitted to it with his usual dignity, though his brown eyes seemed reproachful, and he got revenge by shaking water on us after he stepped out of the tub. Laughing with my mother then was the highlight of her trip for me. I think it may have been for her, too.
When we said good-bye at the airport, she hugged me for much longer than she usually did when we parted.
“I love you, Vanessa. I’d like to see you more. Maybe you could come to Florida in a month or two?”
I’d dreaded her visit, but I found myself surprisingly comforted by her embrace. “I’ll try.”
And I intended to. But then everything changed again.
I quickly grew used to Duke’s solid presence in the house, to our brisk morning walks, to chatting with him as I cooked dinner. I brushed his fur for long stretches while he rested his head on my leg, and I wondered how I’d ever been frightened of him. When I took a shower, he waited like a sentry just outside the bathroom. Whenever I came home, he was stationed in the hallway just inside the front door, his ears perked up into triangles. He seemed relieved when I was back in his sights.
I was so grateful to Richard. He must have known that Duke would provide more than security. In the absence of the baby we so desperately wanted, Duke was my companion.
“I love Duke so much,” I told Richard one night a few weeks later. “You were right. He really does make me feel safe.” I recounted the story of how Duke and I had been strolling down our sidewalk, a dozen yards from our house, when the mailman suddenly emerged from a gap in the hedges surrounding a neighbor’s yard. Duke had quickly positioned himself between the two of us, and I heard a low rumbling in his throat. The mailman gave us a wide berth and continued on his way, and so did we. “That’s the only time I’ve seen that side of him.”
Richard nodded as he picked up a knife and buttered his roll. “It’s good to remember it’s always there, though.”
When Richard left for an overnight business trip the following week, I brought Duke’s bed upstairs and placed it next to mine. When I awoke in the night, I looked down to see that he was awake, too. I let my arm drape over the side of the bed so I could touch his head, then I fell back asleep quickly. I slept deeply and dreamlessly, better than I had in months.
I’d told Richard I was doing tons of walking with Duke to get rid of the extra pounds I’d put on since moving to the suburbs. It wasn’t just the fertility pills. In the city, I could easily trek four miles a day, but now I drove even to buy a half gallon of milk. Plus, we ate dinner so late. Richard had never commented on my weight, but he stepped on the scale every morning and worked out five times a week. I wanted to look good for him.
When Richard returned, I didn’t have the heart to move Duke back downstairs, to our cold, sterile kitchen. Richard couldn’t believe how quickly my attitude toward Duke had changed. “Sometimes I think you love that dog more than me,” he joked.
I laughed. “He’s my buddy. When you’re not around, he keeps me company.” The truth was, the love I felt toward Duke was the purest, most uncomplicated affection I had ever known.
Duke was more than just a pet. He became my ambassador to the world. A jogger we often ran into during our daily walks stopped to ask if he could pet Duke, and we ended up chatting. The gardeners brought him a bone, shyly asking me if it was okay. Even the mailman grew to love him, once I told Duke the mailman was a friend—another of the words Duke understood. On my weekly calls with my mother, I gushed about our latest adventures.
Then, on one of those early-spring days when every tree and flower seems about to burst into bloom, I took Duke to a hiking trail a few towns over.
Looking back, I would think of it as the last good day—Duke’s, and mine—but as we sat on a big flat rock, my fingers absently weaving through Duke’s fur, the sun warming us, it just seemed like a perfect afternoon.
When Duke and I returned home, my cell phone rang. “Sweetheart, did you get to the dry cleaner’s?”
I’d forgotten Richard had asked me to pick up his shirts. “Oh, shoot. I just need to pay the gardeners and then I’ll run out.”
The team of three had grown especially fond of Duke, and sometimes if the weather was nice, they would stay a little late to play fetch with him.
I was gone thirty, maybe thirty-five minutes tops. When I returned home, the gardeners’ truck was gone. The moment I opened our front door, I felt a coldness rush through my body.
“Duke,” I called out.
Nothing.
“Duke!” I yelled again, my voice trembling.
I ran to the backyard to look for him. He wasn’t there. I called the gardening service. They swore they’d closed the back gate. I ran around the neighborhood, calling for him, then phoned the Humane Society and the local vets. Richard rushed home and we drove through the streets, shouting Duke’s name through the open car windows until our throats were raw. The next day Richard didn’t go into work. He held me while I cried. We put up posters. We offered a huge reward. Every night I stood outside, calling for Duke. I imagined someone taking him or Duke jumping the fence to go after an intruder. I even googled wild-animal sightings in our area, wondering if Duke could have been attacked by a larger animal.
A neighbor claimed she had seen him on Orchard Street. Another thought he’d spotted him on Willow. Someone called the number on our poster and brought by a dog that wasn’t Duke. I even phoned a pet psychic, who told me Duke was in an animal shelter in Philadelphia. None of the tips materialized. It was as if the ninety-pound canine had vanished from my life as magically as he had appeared.
Duke was so well trained; he wouldn’t have just run off. And he would’ve attacked anyone who’d tried to take him. He was a guard dog.
But that wasn’t what I thought about at three A.M. when I crept down the hallway, putting distance between me and my husband.