Nessa sat up and gazed out the window across from her bed, which looked out on the fields beyond her property. She’d been right. John had jumped into the river, drowned, and the police must have found his body, and it was unrecognizable. The carp and catfish must have stripped most of his flesh off his bones, and now the only way they could make sure it was him was with DNA.
What had she expected? Had she really expected for John to live that long after he started using again? No, she hadn’t. But this reality, the idea that he might really be gone, made her realize her little girl’s heart had hoped for a storybook ending, where John would clean up, sober up, grow up. Come back to her, never to use again. What an idiot she was. That’s not how this worked. She’d read all the literature. Only about twenty percent of crack users were able to stay clean, it was that addictive. It ate holes in the brain, destroyed the pleasure center, made life without it seem colorless and joyless.
Nessa wept, imagining John’s torment. Unable to fight off the insatiable predator that had subjugated his life, surrendering to the river’s current.
She had to stop picturing it, had to turn her mind away from it. She took three deep, slow breaths and forced herself to get up and drink a glass of water. She didn’t know anything for sure yet. It was possible she was imagining it all wrong. Maybe the police wanted DNA in case they found anything. Or because he’d committed some crime. She preferred this line of thinking, because anger was energizing, and she needed energy to keep functioning.
The sun shone into the kitchen windows, and the very presence of light straightened her posture and helped her breathe more deeply. Maybe they’d go to the park today. After a cup of coffee, Nessa went out back to feed the dog.
“Declan MacManus!” she called.
He didn’t run for her, didn’t bark his “I’m coming, I’m coming, hold on, be right there” bark. He must be way off the property chasing pheasants or something. He’d be home when he was hungry or wanted to play ball.
She turned back toward the door when a large clump of crabgrass caught her eye, annoying her—-John wasn’t here to maintain this sort of thing, and she wasn’t going to do it. But as she got closer, she saw it wasn’t a clump of grass, but a mound of fur.
She ran.
Declan MacManus lay on his side, not breathing, flies on his open, milky eyes. Dead.
Nessa fell to her knees and the flies scattered momentarily before going back to business. She looked him over, looking for blood, cuts, wounds, and noticed the remnant of a foamy substance on his mouth and nose. For a moment she wondered if it was rabies. But she’d played with him yesterday, and there’d been no sign of the disease. It wouldn’t have killed him this fast.
Maybe it was one of the plants in the woods or he’d eaten something off the ground that was poisonous to dogs.
Nessa raised her head, tears rolling down her face, and looked around. These woods had always seemed friendly and welcoming to her, but now they appeared to be full of dark shadows and predators and poisonous plants. Even in the sultry morning, a chill covered her.
She went in and woke Isabeau, who, when she heard the news, ran outside in her underwear and cried over Declan MacManus’s body.
“Oh, poor baby,” she said, and then before Nessa could stop her, Isabeau was hugging her into her shoulder. This was the first hug she’d received from someone other than Daltrey in months and it loosened something inside her.
Daltrey would be destroyed by this news. Declan MacManus had watched over the boy since birth, always a gentle presence, cuddling with him on his bed, picking up whatever Daltrey dropped, and returning it to him—-even food, like Nana the nursemaid dog in Peter Pan. Two huge losses in less than two months for a three--year--old would definitely have consequences.
“Isabeau, I need you to be here when Daltrey gets up, but I’ll break the news to him when I get back from the vet, okay?”
“Nessa, he’s dead,” Isabeau said. “There’s no point in—-”
“We need to find out what killed him,” Nessa said.
“He was such a good dog,” Isabeau said, crying and ruffling his fur.
Nessa picked Declan MacManus up and put him in the Pacifica, and drove into town to the vet’s office.
She waited for almost an hour before the vet came out, shaking her head. “It was antifreeze,” she said.
“No way it could’ve been rabies or anything like that, then,” Nessa said, her hopeful denial ebbing away.
“No. He must have found a spilled puddle in your garage.”
“Our garage has a dirt floor,” Nessa said.
“Do you have a fence?”
“No,” Nessa said. “We live on sixty acres. We just let him roam.”
“Do you have neighbors within running distance?”
“Yes.”
“He might have wandered into one of their garages. A lethal dose for a dog of Declan’s size is only about a third of a cup. That’s one of the reasons to keep your animals fenced. I’m so sorry for your loss. We can cremate the remains for you here, if you’d like.”