Thirty-two
The excitement of the evening, culminating in the chase upstairs and down, inspired in Merlin a need to pee. He informed them of his condition by the intense and insistent look that Grady called his “flood warning.”
No doubt Puzzle and Riddle also needed to toilet, but in the kitchen, as Grady was about to open the door for the trio, Cammy said, “Wait, we need to take pictures of them, in case they don’t come back.”
“I thought you said they were moving in.”
“They are. I’m pretty sure of it. But just in case.”
Pointing to a digital camera on the kitchen table, Grady said, “I took a slew of pictures before you got here.”
“You’re sure they’re clear?”
“Yeah. I’ve reviewed them. They’re great. But you haven’t seen their eyes in the dark. I want you to slip through the door first, go out on the lawn, watch them come toward you.”
When told to sit and stay, the wolfhound obeyed, although he grumbled.
As if they understood what was wanted, but more likely following the dog’s example, Puzzle and Riddle sat flanking their new playmate.
Grady let Cammy out and closed the French door, watching as she descended the porch steps. She went into the yard, turned toward the house, and knelt on the grass.
“All right, gang. Last chance till morning.”
When Grady opened the door and released Merlin from the sit-stay, the wolfhound and his posse raced out of the house.
Grady stepped onto the porch in time to see the dog bound past Cammy as she let out a wordless cry of astonishment at the spectacle of the other animals’ color-changing, lantern eyes.
Puzzle and Riddle gamboled around her for a moment, giving her an opportunity to admire them, and then they sprinted after Merlin, toward the place where yard met meadow.
Remaining on her knees, Cammy said, “Oh, my God. Grady. Oh, my God. Their eyes!”
She laughed so merrily, she sounded like a young girl. Grady sat on the porch steps, grinning at her.
When the animals returned from their toilet, Merlin sat beside his master. But in a playful mood, Puzzle and Riddle rejoined Cammy, swarming around her and over each other. They appeared to understand that they enchanted her, and they were in turn pleased by her admiration.
Their eyes lustered, as though reflecting the memory of the most spectacular aurora borealis ever to grace the northern sky.
Grady had never before seen Cammy laugh with such joy. She had always seemed too cautious to delight unreservedly in anything.
Each man or woman was a mansion in a condition between grandness and disrepair, and even in a grand palace, sometimes a room existed in which no one but the resident would ever be welcome. Cammy’s heart contained more than one forbidden room, contained an entire wing of doors locked with bolts of guilt or grief, or both. Grady sensed that she denied even herself the power to open them, to let in the light.
Nevertheless, she was his best friend. He had never known her to lie or to deceive by omission, or even to finesse a matter to her advantage. Parts of her life were off limits not because she wished to deceive but because, right or wrong, she judged the architecture of those rooms to be so inconsistent with the design of the rest of the structure that they added nothing to an understanding of it.
Grady valued her judgment, admired her commitment to animals, respected her standards as a veterinarian, cherished her kindness, which he sensed came from an experience of cruelty, and loved her because in this world of whiners and self-declared martyrs, Cammy Rivers never complained and never portrayed herself as a victim, though Grady suspected that she had more reason than most to claim that status.
Cammy in the night, on the lawn, playing with Puzzle and Riddle, astonished by their eyes, enraptured by the mystery of them, laughing with delight: Grady had never known a finer moment in his life.