Must Love Dogs: New Leash on Life (16 page)

Chapter

Twenty

Michael grabbed my phone. "What the hell is going on, Phoebe?" he yelled into it.

"
Don't you dare hang up on me," he yelled a moment later.

He held the phone out to me.
"She hung up."

I bit my tongue so I wouldn
't say,
ya think?

"
What did she say to you?" he yelled at me. The woman with the trash barrel rolled by us again, looking like she might call security any minute. I smiled at her to show her we weren't crazy. Or at least not dangerous.

"Shh," I hissed at Michael. "She's pretty emotional right now, so I'm sure she didn't really mean it, but she's, um, thinking of staying in Savannah."

"
She can't do that. It's my turn to have the girls." He paused. "How long?"

"
Forever?"

Michael
's face turned ugly. Then he ran.

"
Michael," I yelled.

When I caught up to him, he was standing at the ticketing counter, but fortunately no one appeared to be working there at this hour. Or maybe they were sneaking in a nap out back. Just the thought of it made me yawn.

I reached for my brother's forearm. He shook me off and jogged over to one of the self-service kiosks. Given how long it took me to navigate those things, I figured I probably had enough time to call Carol to find out what to do.

I woke her from a sound sleep, but once she realized it was a true emergency, she clicked right into gear.

"No, no, no. Do not, under any circumstances, let him get on the next plane to Savannah."

"
Any thoughts on exactly how I might manage to stop him?"

"Okay. Walk me over to Michael and hand him the phone."

"
Oh, thank you," I said. "You're so much better at this stuff than I am."

"
Hurry up, before he buys a ticket. You can kiss up to me some other time."

I
'd been hiding just around the corner, so I made it over to Michael in three big steps.

I tapped him on the shoulder and handed him my phone.
"Carol," I said. "It's an emergency."

I was dying to hear both sides of the conversation, but I didn
't think it would go over very well if I asked Michael to put the call on speakerphone.

"
I don't care what it costs to get on the next plane," Michael was saying. "Really? That much? Okay. Okay. I'll hang tight, but hurry."

I wandered around until I found a relatively comfortable faux leather chair across from a bench I could put my feet up on. There was a chair right next to it for Michael. In fact, most of the other chairs were empty, too, and the only restaurant that appeared to be still open was a tiny Dunkin
' Donuts.

Michael ignored the chairs and paced. I followed him with my eyes until he dropped out of sight,
then picked him up again when he'd finished circling the pre-security side of the terminal. Then I watched him until he disappeared again. And reappeared. Once he stopped and punched a wall. A man, stretched out on the floor nearby and using his backpack for a pillow, startled awake then closed his eyes again.

The ring of my cell phone woke me. I jerked back to co
nsciousness, trying to locate Michael and make sure my shoulder bag hadn't been stolen at the same time.

I found my phone.
"Yeah," I said. My voice sounded like I'd been out partying all night.

"
Okay," Carol said. "I found a last minute vacation package."

"
What?" I said.

"
They buy out these blocks of airfares, and if they don't sell, they unload them dirt cheap at the last minute, so airfare and hotel combined are a fraction of what you'd pay for the airfare alone."

"
Fascinating," I croaked. When I blinked, my eyelids felt like they were lined with sandpaper. I squinted to see if Dunkin' Donuts was still open. I was definitely going to need some serious caffeine if I had to drive Michael's 4Runner all the way back to my house at this hour.

"
Mother Teresa," I said, as a new thought hit me. "Ohmigod, Michael didn't even go home after work. She hasn't eaten and she's probably peed all over my house—"

"
Dad fed her and took her out last night."

"
Oh, good. I'll take her out for a long walk when I get home. So, how is this going to work? I wait 'til Michael's on the plane and then drive his car home, right?"

"
Where is his car parked?"

"
In short term parking, on the second level. Row G. Or maybe it was J."

"
Grab Michael and meet me there."

"
When?"

"
Now. I'm just pulling into central parking."

"
Huh?" I said. "You're here? Why? And how'd you get here so fast?"

"
Come on, Sarah, get with the program. It's almost 4 A.M."

Mayor
Menino welcomed us to Boston again as we rode the empty moving sidewalk back to central parking. The elevator opened right away and I pushed the button for the second floor. When Carol called, Michael had been dozing in the chair next to mine. When I shook him awake, he'd jumped to his feet, pretending he'd been awake all along.

I
'd told him we had to meet Carol in the garage, and neither of us had said a word since then. We'd walked right past Dunkin' Donuts, the smell of brewing coffee whispering to me like a drug dealer, but I hadn't been able to function enough to decide whether or not we had time to stop and get some.

The elevator stopped with a bump. Michael rubbed an eye with one hand and reached to hold the door open for me with the other.
"Hey, why is Carol here anyway? Couldn't she have just sent me everything in an email?"

I tried to get my fuzzy brain to put the pieces together.
"Maybe to drive your car home?" I shivered in the damp, pre-dawn air.

Michael squinted.
"Then who will drive
her
car home?"

I yawned.
"Me?"

Michael yawned back.
"Doesn't make any sense."

I yawned again.
"Like anything does these days."

Carol was waiting for us next to Michael
's 4Runner. She not only looked wide-awake, but my guess was that she had a clipboard in her minivan holding everything Michael would need in the exact order that he'd need it. Carol was an event planner, a job that suited her extreme bossiness as well as her anal tendencies. Even though she was my sister and could drive me absolutely crazy, I'd hire her in a second. Not that there were any events in my foreseeable future.

"
Hurry," she said. "We're going to have to move this shitbox to long term parking so it doesn't get towed."

"
Huh?" I said.

"
I don't get it," Michael said. "And don't call my car a shitbox."

Carol gave him her big sister glare.
"When you wake me up at midnight, I can call anything of yours anything I want to."

"
I didn't wake you up," Michael said. "Sarah did."

"
Thanks," I said. "Throw
me
under the bus. I needed that right now."

"
Shut up, you two." Carol held her hand out. "Give me the keys, Michael."

"
What the hell is going on?" I said as I shoved my net equipment bag over and climbed into the backseat.

"
Yeah," Michael said. "This better not be a trick."

"
What kind of trick?" I said. I was so tired I had a crazy urge to put my Ace bandage back on again, as if it might somehow help me hold myself together.

Michael shrugged.
"You know, like to try to keep me from going to Savannah."

I hadn
't even thought of that. Probably because my brain hurt when I tried to think. Maybe Carol should just park Michael's car somewhere so we could all take a nap. Then once we were rested, we could get some breakfast and a cup of coffee or twelve. Things would start to make sense again, and before we knew it we might have an actual plan.

Carol drove up a level. I rolled down my window, hoping the dank morning chill might keep me awake. Short-term parking had been almost empty, but this end of the garage was more heavily populated. I kept an eye out for her red minivan so I could shout it out if I saw it first. It wouldn
't be the world's biggest contribution, but it was all I could come up with in my current condition.

Carol screeched around a corner and pulled into an empty par
king space.

My father was leaning back against his sea green Mini Cooper.

"Whoa, Nelly Belle," he said. "Drop the anchor on that boat before you take someone out. I'd like to live to see Savannah."

Chapter

Twenty-one

"Dad?" I said after I'd clambered out of the backseat. "What are
you
doing here?"

He winked.
"You don't think I'd let a perfectly good hotel room bed go to waste, do you now? It'll be a grand vacation. We'll have a boys' room and a girls' room, just like the good old days."

"
Wait," I said. "I'm going? But I don't have any luggage." As if this was the only thing that was totally insane here.

My father opened the back of his Mini Cooper. The back seats were folded down and four almost identical black carry-on suitca
ses with rollers took up every square inch of space. "Tah-
dah
," he said as he gestured with both hands.

"
I packed a suitcase for both of you," Carol said. "In my spare time."

"
What about Mother Teresa?" Michael said.

"
You're welcome." Carol reached in for a suitcase. "She's at my house. Dennis is going to work remote, and I bribed Siobhan to help out with the younger kids. Hurry, we're going to miss our flight."

Mayor
Menino welcomed us to Boston yet again as we entered the pedestrian walkway.

Carol stopped. "What the hell did he just mumble?"

"Uh-uh-uh," our father said. "We'll have no making fun of His Honor the Mayor on my watch."

The rest of my family strode quickly along the moving wal
kway, but the combination of movement on top of movement plus exhaustion made me dizzy, so I jumped off and jogged along beside them.

When we got to security, Carol handed me an empty Zip-lock bag and I transferred my makeup and the rest of my potentially dangerous items into it. Then I chugged what was left in the water bottle I
'd been carrying around for about a day now. Carol handed out our boarding passes and we breezed right through security, no big surprise since it was not quite 4:30 A.M.

Even Carol hadn
't been able to get the four of us seats together. Or a nonstop flight. I spent the first half of our trip in a middle seat in the back of the plane, wedged between two strangers. Before I turned my phone off, I thought about sending a text to John, just in case. But what would I say?
Hope Horatio is happy now? Sorry we crashed and burned before I crashed and burned?
My sleep and caffeine-deprived brain couldn't come up with anything better, and what's the point of leaving an in-case-of-crash message if it's not going to be memorable, so I gave up.

We deplaned in Charlotte and rolled our bags to the next flight, following single file behind Carol, like a human twist on one of our favorite picture books growing up,
Make Way for Ducklings
. By popular request, our mother would read it to us practically every night. One or two of the younger kids would curl up in her lap on the sofa, while our dad and the rest of us would slide the coffee table out of the way and act out every scene. We'd fight over who got to be Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, Quack, and. . . .

I counted the ducks on my fingers as we merged with the throng of people already boarding the plane for Savannah.
Jack
. Jack was the name of the eighth duckling, the one I'd forgotten. I sighed.

I was wedged between two different people on the flight from Charlotte to Savannah. To make matters worse, apparently they weren
't even going to serve us water since the flight was so short. The coffee I could have had on the first flight was just a fantasy now. My stomach growled at the thought of the over-salted pretzels I'd never taste. The guy to my right was hogging the entire armrest. I leaned in, hoping he'd take the hint. He didn't. Finally I just elbowed him out of the way. Sometimes you can't take it any more.
I hope John Anderson is happy now
, I thought randomly, as if it had been his elbow.

When we touched down at the Savannah/Hilton Head Intern
ational Airport, it felt like I'd been struggling to stay awake for centuries.

I rolled my carry-on to the end of the
jetway and found my family clumped together, waiting for me. "What time is it?" My voice came out as a rasp, like it was dying of caffeine withdrawal.

"
Eight forty-eight A.M.," Carol said way too cheerily. There's nothing worse than being sleep-deprived in the company of someone who's a perkier version of Julie from
The Love Boat
.

I groaned.
"How long till check-in?"

"
Seven hours and twelve minutes." Maybe I wouldn't hire her for an event after all. "Can you believe this is the first time I've been away since Maeve was born? I've barely even gone to the bathroom by myself."

"
We'll have no bathroom talk on this trip," my father said.

We rolled our suitcases behind Carol and I looked around for a place to nap. It was a cute little
airport, charming and so beachy it even had a flip-flop store. The atrium was scattered with rocking chairs. They looked pretty damn comfortable from here. I pivoted to the left and started to roll my way toward one.

Michael grabbed my arm.
"Come on, you don't have time to rock. We need to find a rental car."

"
We just have to pick it up," Carol said. "It's already reserved. It's part of the package."

"
You got the car thrown in, too?" I said.

Carol nodded.
"I most certainly did. When you add it all up, it turned out to be cheaper to go than to stay home. At least that was the angle I pitched to Dennis."

Carol talked the guy behind the rental car desk into upgrading us from an economy car to a compact.

"We bought a vacation package for four," she said. "So it's your responsibility to make sure we have a car that will actually fit four people
and
their luggage without charging us one cent more. Otherwise, you'll be reading all about it on Trip Advisor." He gave in just to get rid of us.

"
Not much of a bucket of bolts," our dad said when we finally set eyes on our no frills, white Ford Focus. "I was hoping for something more along the lines of the little deuce coupe your mother and I drove on our honeymoon. Salmon and white, brushed chrome fins. Holy mackerel, that car had some fins on it."

"
Not now, Dad," Michael said. He grabbed the keys from Carol. He clicked the trunk open and we managed to cram our suitcases in. Michael and I climbed into the back seat, sitting sideways so our knees could fit.

Carol tapped
breakfast
into the GPS and before we knew it we were settled in at a table at Back in the Day Bakery on Bull Street in downtown Savannah.

"Wow," I said. "It's like we just time travelled back to the '50s." Our mid-century chairs circled a funky rustic table made out of reclaimed wood. Two old-fashioned bakery cases just across from us were filled with every mouth-watering thing people used to be allowed to eat. I tried to guess the flavor of the cupcakes: red velvet, milk chocolate, coconut something or other. . ..

A sign on one of the robin
's egg blue distressed walls said:
If you're afraid of butter, use cream—Julia Child
. There was a huge chandelier-like mobile hanging over us made entirely out of marshmallows and white kitchen string. Either that or I was so tired I was hallucinating.

Carol decreed that it was too early for cupcakes, so we ordered four large coffees and four savory ham and cheese
biscones, which turned out to be a Southern-style fusion of biscuits and scones.

"
I hope all y'all enjoy 'em all," a pretty blond waitress said as she put our plates down in front of us.

"
All y'all?" I said after she'd walked away. "And wasn't there another one in there, too? Can you actually have three
alls
in one sentence?"

Our father
's eyes followed the departing waitress. "You're darn tootin'," he said.

"
Ohmigod," Carol said as she bit into her biscone. "This is the most amazing thing I've ever tasted. Let's just stay here the whole time and eat."

I pointed a finger casually over my head.
"Does anyone else think those might be real marshmallows?"

My father winked at the waitress, who was now safely behind the bakery case.

"Dad," Carol hissed. "Knock it off. She looks about twelve."

"
Sorry about that, chief," he said. He took a sip of his coffee. "This décor is taking me back. For a second there, I might have imagined I was a young whippersnapper again. 'Tis one of the true joys of getting older—you have a tendency to drift."

Michael pulled out his phone.
"Shit, I'm supposed to be remote today."

"
Ha," I said. "You couldn't get much more remote than this."

"
Shh," he said. "I have to send a bunch of emails ASAP so it looks like I'm working."

Carol pulled out her phone, too.
"I need to look busy, too. I've got three events next week."

I took another sip of my coffee. I should probably email John
's boss to quit, just to make a clean break, but then again, I had almost a week before I had to show up at Necromaniac the next time. And even though Carol had found us an amazing deal, it probably wouldn't really turn out to be quite as cheap as staying home. Maybe I could post something to tide me over, and then I'd reassess after I'd slept on it.

I yawned and reached for my phone. I logged into our private work chat.
Keli was living up to my confidence in her. She'd started several new threads and the Gamiacs had jumped right in. But it was important for me to add my expertise as long as I was officially involved. I was a teacher through and through, and a good teacher can always come up with an assignment, even on zero sleep. I thought for a moment.

Let
's talk about unrequited love, the one who broke your heart. The one you haven't thought about in years. Or minutes.

I logged out again. My father opened his laptop. I moved his plate and coffee mug out of the way to give him some space.

"Why, thank you kindly, sweet Carol—"

I shook my head.

"ChristineSarah." He looked over his shoulder. "You don't see any of that wire fire whosamajiggie around here anywhere, do you?"

Michael looked up.
"You mean Wi-Fi?"

"
Doubtful," I said. "It doesn't look like the computer was even invented yet around here."

"Of course they have Wi-Fi." Carol slid her chair over so she could see the laptop screen. She ran her finger along the mouse pad. "Look, it's right here. Okay, all set, Dad." She slid her chair back and reached for her biscone.

Our father looked over his shoulder again.
"Where do I plug her in?"

"
It's Wi-Fi, Dad," Michael said. "The whole point is that it doesn't need to be plugged in."

"
I should have stuck with my Smith Corona." He ran his hand through his mane of white hair, then pulled one finger back and hit the mouse pad. "A gentleman's messages are his alone. They're not intended for sharing with the whole wide wireless world."

I scooted my chair a little closer and squinted at his laptop screen.
"Ohmigod, Dad. You have a date."

Carol leaned over.
"Savannah Sweetie?"

Our father grinned.
"'Dear Billy Boy,'" he read. Maybe it was because I was so tired and we were in a bakery straight out of
Ozzie and Harriet
, but it was almost as if we were kids again and he was reading us a bedtime story.

He cleared his throat.
"'Meet up with this Cray-Cray Lady tomorrow at high noon at the Crystal Street Beer Parlor for a Slow Ride. Your Sugar Butt.'"

"
Whoa," I said. "I don't think we should let you go alone, Dad."