picked a flower and garnished the ham with it. “Do you think he’ll like it?” Ava asked.
“I’m sure,” her mother said, smiling. The sun crested the mountains and it filtered down through her dark hair and lit a halo around her head so that, when Ava looked up at her, she seemed to be floating above the earth, unattached to anything and yet connected to everything. She reached into her pocket and took out a small slip of paper. On it was written “Diner Hours: 7:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Closed Sundays.”
“The world doesn’t have to be cruel,” Heather said as she took her daughter’s hand. “Sometimes it can be whatever we want it to be.”
WASH’S GRANDMOTHER, BRENDA, had always had a way with animals—dogs in particular. She garnered the nickname “the Dog Lady” and, for the most part, didn’t think it was something worth getting worked up over, so long as people chose discretion over valor and never said it to her face. If there was a dog that didn’t have a home, or one that had a home and simply needed a place to mend, it was brought to her. And sometimes the animals were left for years and simply became a part of the household, with no questions asked and no complaints offered by the commanding old woman.
So when the years had stacked up around her and life unfolded in its unpredictable way—taking from her a husband and a daughter—cancer for one; a car crash for the other—and she found herself with a grandson named Wash, who needed everything a child needed, the notion of turning her home into a dog shelter and clinic was as good a way as any to help the ends stay met.
And because she was an old-fashioned woman appreciative of her solitude, she liked the way the dogs always let her know when someone came calling. This morning they were at full tilt.
Wash heard what sounded like a car door closing outside, followed by the slow swish-swish sound of his grandmother’s house shoes sliding across the floor as she approached his bedroom. “I’ll handle it,” she said, looking in at the boy. “Likely as not it’s some damned reporter. Most of them got the hint, but there’s a hardheaded one in every bunch. And sometimes you just got to give them both barrels.”
Wash hoped his grandmother was speaking metaphorically, but he couldn’t really be sure. She kept an unloaded shotgun by the front door—a habit that, as legend went, she learned from an ornery cousin who lived on the other side of the state. She kept the shells for the gun in the pockets of the flowered apron she wore around the house because, as she once told Wash, “The world likes to sneak up on you, so you may as well be as ready as you can.”
“Just go back to sleep and get your rest,” she said, leaving Wash’s doorway and heading down the hall. “I’ll get this situated.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wash said. He pulled the covers over his head and listened to the sound of the barking dogs out back as his grandmother moved to the front of the house. He heard the curtain in the living room slide back gently as she peeked out to see who had come so early in the morning. Then the knock came at the front door.
“Hell,” Brenda said, but Wash couldn’t discern exactly which “Hell” it was. She had a “Hell” for every occasion.
He heard the door open.
“Hell,” she said again.
“Hello, Brenda,” the voice said. It was a man’s voice, deep and even.
“I guess the creek done rose that high, huh?” Brenda said. “High enough to bring you back this way. Can’t say I expected otherwise. Not really.”
“How have you been, Brenda?” the man asked.
“Rose petals and beef Wellington,” Brenda replied. “I suppose the polite thing for me to do is to ask how you’ve been.”
Wash got out of bed and walked softly to the doorway of his bedroom.
“You stay right there,” Brenda said loudly.
Wash froze. “Yes, ma’am,” he answered. He’d lived with his grandmother all of his life, and he knew which commands to obey and which were elective.
“Well...” the man at the door said.
“Well...” Brenda replied.
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you, Brenda?”
“Give me one good reason why I should?”
The man sighed. It was then that Wash recognized his voice. Perhaps it had been the sound of the dogs barking that had made it take so long, or perhaps it was the early hour—the sun had only just broken the sky and the world was still gold and amber and sluggish in the new day—or perhaps it was simply that he had not heard the man’s voice in nearly six years.
“Dad?” Wash called, stepping out of his bedroom.
“Hell,” Brenda said.
Wash’s father was a tall man, tall and thin and with more wrinkles than Wash remembered. The scar on the side of his face—a memento from the car accident that took Wash’s mother—was still there, a stark and off-putting wound that seemed to twist and contort into a new version of itself whenever the man smiled.
“Hey there, son,” Wash’s father said as the boy entered the living room.
“What are you doing back here, Tom?” Brenda said. There was a mixture of civility and hardness in her voice, like snow draped over a wall of ice. “I suppose I could take a guess and, likely as not, that guess would be right, but I’d much rather hear you say it. I’d rather hear how you frame it, as folks say.”
“Don’t do this, Brenda,” Tom said. He shifted his stance, and continued to look past the woman and at Wash.
“How have you been?” Wash asked.
“Good,” Tom said. “Boy...you’ve gotten so big. Handsome, too. You’re thirteen now.” He declared the fact, as if to prove that he had kept proper count in the years since he had last seen his son. “I imagine you’ve got a girlfriend. And if you don’t, then you’re not far off.”
“No,” Wash replied, blushing.
“Keeping your options open, then?” Tom asked. He laughed awkwardly in the silence that fell between them. “You got your whole life ahead of you, son. A long time to find out about women.”
“I guess,” Wash said.
“You watch the news much, Tom?” Brenda asked. “Is that why you’re asking about Wash’s love life?” The smile on the man’s face receded.
“I suppose there was never any hope of this going smooth, was there, Brenda?”
“Can’t rightly say,” Brenda said. “I suppose it’s got to go the way you’ve set it up to go. This is the way you’ve made things.”
“Grandma...” Wash said.
“I’m trying,” Tom said.
“Of course you’re trying now,”
