The Jezebel Remedy by Martin Clark

Author:Martin Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

The Saturday following the Stone and Stone stockholders’ meeting, Lisa was at the kitchen counter working on a favorite strawberry cake. Earlier, Joe had fixed them breakfast. He’d fried ham in the black skillet and cut the first honeydew melon of the summer—mushmelons, he called them—scraped away the center seeds and pared the rind from the fruit and then sliced the wet, green strips into fat chunks. She’d saved a bite of the salty ham and a piece of the honeydew and nibbled on them between cracking eggs and measuring flour and reading the recipe off a stained index card, written in her great-aunt’s cursive, ruler-trained hand. She could see her lilies and snapdragons at the corner of the patio, giddy spreads of pink, orange, yellow and white atop yeomen green stems. Even though they’d agreed the Primland trip would be their anniversary present to each other, Joe had mail-ordered a Tiffany necklace and given it to her last night, a sterling silver key on a delicate chain—the key to his heart, he’d said, kind of silly and kind of sincere—and when she leaned over the recipe card, the key would swing forward and hang in the air. She’d surprised him with a custom-stitched saddle blanket, a bold “S” embroidered on each side, and she could tell he was happy to have it.

Almost every Saturday, Joe loaded Brownie into the farm truck and hauled trash and recyclables to the dump, the dog ecstatic in the truck bed, riding with stuffed garbage bags and large tubs of magazines and empty plastic containers. Joe carried the last bag to the truck and filled his travel mug with coffee and kissed her cheek. She was looking forward to some time alone in the house, baking and piddling, a foot-loose morning, but a few minutes later he returned to the kitchen and told her he couldn’t find Brownie. The dog had been there for breakfast. He’d eaten, ambled outside and climbed into the sturdy house—shingled, insulated, and now with an orthopedic pad—Joe had built for him when he was a pup.

“He’s not in his box, and I’ve looked all over the yard and the barn.”

“Huh,” she said. She was dressed in shorts and flip-flops, her hair gathered away from her face. She’d started beating batter for the cake, and she tipped the KitchenAid mixer back from its silver metal bowl. “Did you check the basement?” Pink batter coated the blades, and dollops dripped into the bowl. “Maybe he used the pet door.”

“Yeah, the basement, the barn, under the vehicles. Everywhere. He’s gone. Pancho and Lefty are in the hayloft. I even cranked the engine so he could hear me. Blew the horn. Yelled.”

“Yeah, I heard the horn. Was he okay at breakfast?”

“He was stiff and slow, but no more than usual. I gave him his pills in a ball of cheese. He wanted to go out, and he went straight to his box. I saw him while I was cutting the mushmelon, right before you came down.

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