30. Look Back At And Laugh

30

LOOK BACK AT AND LAUGH

" W hat's going on in here?"

"Just me trying to salvage some of my dignity."

"Are you bathing Frankie?" She moved into the bathroom to see her puppy shivering with the water up to his belly. Her hand went in and felt it. "It's cold."

"I didn't want to burn him," he said. "I take a shower with it like this."

"He doesn't like the cold," she said. She picked her puppy up and saw the hair all tangled up in his ear, almost sticking to his side. It had to be pulling too. "Oh, baby boy. What happened to you?"

"I couldn't get it out," he said. "I tried. He was crying and wouldn't sit still. I thought you'd kill me if I cut it out. I thought the water could do it."

"Maybe it would," she said. "If you were bathing him the way he was used to it."

"I don't know how he gets a bath," he said.

"In the sink," she said. "He's tiny yet. The tub is probably scaring him more. I'm surprised he didn't piss in it."

"He probably did," he said. "I felt it get warm for a minute and told myself it was just a hot spot of the water."

"Yep," she said, giggling. "It was a hot spot, all right. Probably pee."

She tried to gently pull Frankie's ear from his back and the puppy whined.

Not working. She didn't want to panic though she was darn close to it.

"There has to be an easy way to get it out," he said.

"Hold him," she said. "Dr. Google to the rescue."

She shoved Frankie into Van's hands and pulled her phone out of her back pocket and did a quick search.

"Find anything?"

"Oil," she said. "Coconut oil, which I don't have. I do have regular oil and cooking spray. To the kitchen we go. Want to tell me how this happened?"

"I let him out," he said. "I brought his ball with him and we were playing catch and fetch."

"He caught the ball?" she asked. "He doesn't do it for me. Doesn't bring it back to me either."

"As I learned," he said. "Maybe I threw it too hard and it went in the bush."

"Which explains why he ended up in there. I don't let him go near it. Boy, I guess you need to learn the rules."

"Guess so," he grumbled.

She found the whole situation kind of cute. Or she would once they got this mess out of Frankie's fur.

She put Frankie on the counter and got to work while Van put her groceries away.

After a few minutes she'd managed to get most of it out and grabbed Frankie's comb and attacked it that way.

"Thanks for putting the food away. Can you go to my bathroom and get my conditioner out of the shower? I'm going to bathe him now. I'll show you the proper way to do it. Then I'll put the conditioner on it and comb some more. Hopefully that gets the rest out."

She was pouring water over Frankie and soaping him up in the sink when Van returned.

"How many bottles of conditioner do you have?" he asked.

He put it down on the counter. "Two," she said. "One is daily and one is weekly. You don't think I've got this gorgeous mane by doing ordinary things, do you?" She shook her head and her hair floated around a bit.

"Should have figured," he said drily.

"Now watch how I do this. Notice there is only a little water in the sink on his paws. It fills up as I wash and rinse him. No more than that. If he's standing in it, he pees. You know, like putting your hand in a cup of water while you sleep."

"That's not true," he said.

"Sure, it is," she said. "We did it to a friend during a sleepover once. She woke up and said she swore she was going to pee her pants and ran to the bathroom. We were bummed she didn't do it before she woke up."

"You're making that shit up," he said when she was laughing.

"Maybe," she said. She poured the last of the water over Frankie to get the soap out and put conditioner in her hand and rubbed it all over her pup and in the area where the burdock was.

More water was used to rinse and finally after close to twenty minutes she thought she got it all.

"This is getting you used to having a child," he said.

"Yep," she said. "I think I handled it better than you trying to drown my dog."

"I didn't drown him," he said defensively.

He took Frankie out of her hands and gently towel-dried him.

Her puppy appeared to be in heaven with all the attention he was getting right now.

"Close enough," she said. "If he lay down or sat he might be under water."

"If he lay down or sat and put his head under and stayed that way then I'd say the term natural selection is there for a reason."

Her jaw opened. "That's not nice. Frankie is very smart."

"You forget how we first met, right? He was under the porch and then took off on you down the street?"

"That was just his playful nature," she argued.

"If you say so," he said.

"Bring him to my bathroom, please. I'm going to blow-dry him. It's cold outside and I don't want him getting sick."

"You blow dry his hair?" he asked incredulously. "Now I know who is the high-maintenance one in the house."

"At least it's not me," she said, strutting past him.

When Frankie was all dried and running around the house doing his version of the zoomies and racing from one end of the living room to another, she flopped back on the couch.

"It's been a long twenty-four hours," he said. "Not even that."

"Nope," she said. "Kind of crazy. But you know, all things considered, with everything you've gone through in your life, this is nothing. Or something we can look back at and laugh."

"I guess you're right," he said.

"You didn't sleep much," she said. "What's going through your mind? Or would you rather not share?"

She knew he didn't always open up.

She was trying to get him to do it more, but there were things she might never find out about Van and she had to learn to accept that.

He shrugged. "Trying to figure my shit out."

"The thing about life is you'll never have it all figured out. Are you feeling overwhelmed about what happened yesterday? It's like you want to disconnect now but almost can't, right? And then you have to work starting tomorrow and won't have the time."

"Funny how you figured that out," he said.

"Not funny," she said seriously. "I've watched my parents balance this for years. I own a business with my mother. My brother owns two. I come from a long line of business owners. There are no days off. Just like being a detective, there probably weren't either. Am I right?"

"Partially. The only time you were off was when you were on vacation. Even then I didn't shut it off completely. Days off I was called in all the time. Here, I just go in, punch a clock, and leave."

"And it's boring," she said.

"It is, but it's giving me the time to figure the rest of this out."

She scooted over to be closer to him. "You're asking yourself if you want that life again. If you want to work twenty-four-seven. That if you took control of your half of the business like you can do, that you'd want to be notified of what happened last night. And then you'd have no life?"

"A lot of that is going through my mind," he said. "I'm not one to shy away from anything."

"No one thinks that," she said. "Even if Christian was a dick about everything he said."

"He's threatened by me," he said. "I get it. What he doesn't realize is if he wasn't such an asshole and didn't get on my bad side, his job wouldn't change. I don't want the day-to-day things long term. I think in my mind that is what I'm coming to terms with."

"My father is the one to talk to about that," she said. "My mother has a different kind of career. She has some clients she only oversees but doesn't actually do all the work. Just some. Everyone else does the day-to-day things with her signing off or reviewing. The same with me now. But my father, he has people in place who oversee the day-to-day things. He spends more time overseeing those people and looking for more investments."

"I look at your father and see where I want to be. Where I see myself. I just don't know how to get there."

"He's the one you need to ask, Van. Don't compare though. You're your own person and will do things your way. Take it one day at a time. It's all you can do."

Just like he'd been sitting back about talking to her father about the last envelope in the bigger bundle.

She was dying to know what the heck her father knew or where this damn key he had went to.

It didn't seem Van was as curious as her.

Or he just wasn't ready.

She was positive it was that more than anything.

And one thing she learned, you can't make someone be ready when they aren't.