What a Dog Knows by Susan Wilson

Author:Susan Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

23

The Hitchhiker noses the fragments of china that Ruby has laid out on the table. A spout. A handle. This piece looks like the miniature masterpiece of a portrait of a violet. There’s the bulge of the teapot; there’s the finial from its cover. Ruby doesn’t know whether to feel sad, or maybe relieved. Has this object been the long lingering reminder of a most painful moment? Surely there have been times when she’s used it without thinking of Madame Celestine. Without thinking about the hurt inflicted when the woman she had come to think of as a mother betrayed that affection. Surely over forty years the teapot has become just a teapot. But looking at the shards of the thing, Ruby knows that a kind of spell has been broken. She collects the pieces. She has a square silk scarf she used to wear around her head, turban-style. She’s had it almost as long as she’s had the teapot. She places the pieces into the scarf and gathers the ends together to tie it. None of the shards will fall out. Done, Ruby folds back the table, climbs into the driver’s seat of the Westie. She knows just the place to ceremonially inter these remnants of her second oldest decision. If she was anywhere near the ocean, she’d given them a burial at sea where the porcelain shards would be smoothed into beach glass, eventually heaved up on the shore to be found by a delighted beachcomber. Lake Harmony will just have to do.

The morning sky is hazy with the promise of a good hot summer day. It is still early enough that the parking lot is empty except for a yellow-vested town worker stabbing litter with a stick, stuffing his booty into a plastic trash bag. Ruby doesn’t particularly want to be observed tossing her bundle into the lake, so she makes like she’s just there to walk her dog, ostentatiously dangling a ready poop bag from the hand not grasping the silken bundle. They are quickly away from the sandy beach, following a well-trodden trail up and through the skinny woods. On this, the public side of the lake, the trail will double back, respecting the boundary with the very much private side. Ruby has been along this path enough times with the Hitchhiker that she has figured out how to boldly trespass. Just look like you belong there.

They come to a low pier, a flotilla of tiny sailboats bobbing alongside. Ruby has seen these little craft out on the lake, children who look too young to be sailing alone piloting them in varying degrees of ability. The Harmony Farms Yacht Club learn to sail program. There is always a motorboat in the vicinity and she’s never actually witnessed a capsizing.

Ruby strides to the end of the pier, the dog right at her heels, her little brown eyes fixed on Ruby’s face, wondering what’s going to happen next. Before she launches her bundle into the drink, Ruby reconsiders losing the scarf.

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