Good Karma by Christina Kelly

Author:Christina Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

chapter 23

Ida Blue stood in her garage and looked down at the sleeping dogs. She’d watched enough Animal Planet to know the smaller one was either a French bulldog or a Boston terrier. The smushed-in nose and small head reminded her of a monkey, while the compact body resembled a baby hedgehog. The animal didn’t look threatening, just tired, with its paws curled under its head, and its breath like that of an asthmatic who has forgotten his inhaler. Though she didn’t know much about the breed, or dogs in general if she was being completely honest, this one didn’t interest her. It was the Great Dane that caught her attention.

There was no doubting it—the huge black-and-white form lying on the old comforters was the same dog that belonged to her neighbor, Fred Wolfe, and the mysterious old woman who had hovered outside her window. This animal, with its mustached smear of saliva, was her connection to another dimension.

Ida Blue stepped slowly toward the pair so as not to startle them, but neither stirred. She sat down beside the dogs on a pile of towels that had fallen from sagging plastic shelves. She’d meant to clean the garage for years, ever since she’d moved into the patio home, but had never found the time. Never made the time. Maybe this was what she needed to kick-start the organized life that Dr. Phil said would bring happiness and success. Maybe this was magic working in her general direction. Two dogs don’t appear out of a storm coincidentally. Don’t arrive in a stranger’s garage without a little push from fate.

She grabbed a towel and blotted her hair and dress, both still damp from her unfortunate swan dive into Fred Wolfe’s azaleas. She was sorry she’d worn the rather chic outfit to find Fred in the first place and felt mortified that she’d ended up upside down in a bush with a security guard asking her a hundred questions. She could just imagine the conversation going on back at the gatehouse.

If the Dog Whisperer were here, he’d tell her to be the pack leader, to offer the sleeping creatures water and food. So she went up the back stairs from her garage to her kitchen freezer. A few years ago, she’d bought a package of deluxe pigs in a blanket. At the time, she had a vision of hosting a few new friends at a neighborhood cocktail party, offering appetizers stuck with frilled toothpicks and drinks with unfurled paper umbrellas. Of course, no party or friends ever materialized, so now she plopped some frozen mini hot dogs on a paper plate, zapped them in the microwave, and brought them along with a large Tupperware bowl of water back to the dogs.

When she lifted the water bowl to them they both opened their eyes and stared at her as if they’d been drinking all afternoon. Then she did the same with a hot dog. Again neither moved, so Ida Blue brought the first mini dog to her mouth and made a dramatic show of how delicious it was.

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