As it turned out, an hour-long stroll was not enough to tire Angel for the day, and before she finished her first file, Markie knew there was no way she would be able to work with all the fussing going on in the other room. By ten, she had been through half a bag of dog treats in an effort to bribe the animal into being quiet. She had stuck all of Angel’s toys through the metal bars, had reached in to pet her, and out of sheer desperation, had even sung to her.
Nothing worked, and Angel had gone from whining to crying to barking and, finally, howling. The windows were open, and Markie couldn’t help hoping the noise was disturbing Mrs. Saint, too. She was tempted to let the dog get louder to teach her neighbor a lesson. But she couldn’t afford another two-file day like Tuesday, so she clipped Angel’s leash on, opened the back door, and let the overly energetic animal drag them both to the tie-out.
“You have a time-out, young lady,” she growled as she switched the leash for the tie-out clip and stomped away.
She heard Bruce’s voice as she reached the door. “Sounds like someone’s not behaving well.”
“She needs way more exercise than we thought,” Markie told him. “And Jesse is physically incapable of getting up early enough to make that happen. I haven’t gotten a minute of work done since Monday. I don’t think Mrs. Saint realized how high maintenance she’d be. This breed is . . . something else.”
“Oh, she knows her dog breeds,” Bruce said, glancing at the dog, who was busy digging a deep hole in the middle of the yard. “I’ll take care of that hole later. And hey, I bet Patty could walk her sometimes. She could go way longer than an hour since she ain’t in no rush for school or nothing in the mornings. She’s fast, too. Got those long legs. Probably make a big difference.” He turned to Mrs. Saint’s house. “You want me to get her out here to talk about it? She could start today, I bet.”
For Markie, the notion of even more traffic over the fence was worse than the thought that Angel might keep her from ever reviewing another file. It made her chest tighten to think of it, and in her anxiety, her next words came out snappish.
“I thought she had a job,” she said.
She heard the irritation in her voice and was appalled at her own rudeness. Bruce wasn’t responsible for any of this. He didn’t appear offended, though, and Markie considered the fact that he seemed not to read social cues very well. Maybe his mess-ups on the job were more about not hearing the subtleties in communication than they were about not being a capable gardener.
But he deserved no less respect because he wasn’t easily offended. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve just had it with this today.” His expression showed he still didn’t follow, so she moved on. “Anyway,” she said, “I can’t afford a dog walker on top of her food and . . . everything else.” She gestured with the leash to indicate that it, too, had come at a price, along with the crate, the bowls, and the toys. But it hadn’t, of course, and neither had Angel herself. Mrs. Saint had provided it all. “Well, the food,” she corrected herself.
“Oh, you don’t got to worry about her food,” Bruce said. “I’m planning to stop for a new bag every other week when I’m over there at the nursery. Pet store’s right beside. And you wouldn’t need to pay Patty, neither. I’m sure Mrs. Saint would just make it part of her job. She’s always looking for ways to add, you know, variety. Patty’s not one for doing the same thing over and over.”
Markie shook her head. The last thing she wanted was for Angel to become part of Mrs. Saint’s master plan to keep her so-called Defectives occupied.
“I couldn’t let her walk my dog without paying her for it myself,” she told him firmly. “And I can’t afford to pay her for it. So Angel gets a time-out on the tie-out. And that’ll have to do.”
Four more time-outs and a lot of begging, chasing, and cursing later (but very little file reviewing), Jesse arrived home, dropped his backpack, and dove onto the area rug to unlatch the crate door. Angel leaped out, and he fell back dramatically, pretending to be pinned underneath her.
“How was she?” he asked.
Markie glared at him, but he was too busy with the dog to notice.
“How’d the walks to school and back go?” she asked.
“Not as bad as I thought. Lola isn’t one of those talker girls like I was worried she’d be. She’ll answer questions, maybe say one or two other things, but other than that, she keeps to herself.”
“Sounds like you.” She didn’t add “lately.” She wondered if he even remembered a time when he spoke in paragraphs, or even sentences longer than about five words.
“Even though she didn’t say a lot, I could tell she liked the company. I get the feeling she’s kind of lonely.”
Markie regarded her son. In the past few days, so much of the real Jesse had shown through the grumpy teen veneer. She would never say it to him, but it struck her that messing up in a major way was exactly what he had needed in order to reset himself. She thought about Kyle’s unexpected contrition at the coffee shop and wondered if he was going through a similar thing. She hoped so, for his sake and for their son’s.
“Are you going to help her with homework today, too?” Markie asked. “Or maybe that’s not every day? I can’t remember how much schoolwork you had at her age.”
“Every day. I guess she’s a really crummy reader, so there’s always that to practice. Plus, today she’s got a math work sheet.”
Markie pictured Jesse sitting at the table in Mrs. Saint’s kitchen, trying to explain math to Lola as their neighbor hovered nearby and attempted to pry information out of him about his mother or commented about his too-baggy jeans or his too-long hair.
“That’s a lot of time to be spending over there,” she said, trying for a casual tone. “Homework with Lola, and also the chores with Frédéric?”
“I think the stuff with him will be mostly on the weekends,” he said. “But maybe some afternoons, I guess. That a problem?”
“No. I’m just thinking that you and I aren’t the most social, and there are a lot of people over there. All the time. Just wondering if you’re up for that, or if maybe it’d be better for you if you and Lola . . .” She pointed to the dining room. “There’s a big table in there.”
He shrugged. “I guess we could bring her work sheets and stuff over here. Ronda was heading out to buy stuff for cookies, but I can just ask her to bring them over once they’re done. I’m sure she won’t mind.”
Markie envisioned the large cook coming across the yard with a plate of cookies, gripping it carefully in two hands as Bruce ran in front to help her, Frédéric walked behind with two glasses of milk, Patty tagged along to remind Lola to be back in time for them to head home for her secret evening plans, and Mrs. Saint brought up the rear, ready to supervise the correct placement of cookies onto plates, the wiping of milk mustaches off upper lips.