Nelson DeMille - Spencerville

"Don't tease. I was a wreck. I don't know what's wrong with me. I've never felt like this... well, once. I used to be insanely in love with this guy years ago."

"Was he faithful?"

"Faithful as a puppy."

"Was he good in bed?"

"Best lay in Ohio."

"Who dumped who?"

"We'll never really know."

"That's a sad story."

She nodded, then looked at him. "So the government wants you back?"

"They do, and I had to go there in person to say no..."

"Keith, if you want to go back to Washington, don't let me stand in your way..."

"I don't want..."

"Listen. You can go back, and if we decide to be together, if you want me there and if I want to come, then I'll come to Washington."

"You wouldn't like it. Believe me."

"I might."

"Annie, if I'm asking you to leave your world, then I have to leave mine. I have no regrets, and I hope you won't, either."

"No, Keith, you listen to me — this was your world here, and it could have been again. But you can't stay here because of me, and I won't be responsible for you not going back to Washington."

"Are we both through being noble? Good. Let's be selfish, because I think we both want the same thing."

"Maybe. I have to go."

"Where are you supposed to be?"

"Nowhere. He could be home anytime. He does that. Whenever he bothers to tell me when he'll be home, he always shows up a few hours earlier, like he expects to find me in bed with the milkman or something."

"How about a farmer? Let's go to your house and give him something to get annoyed about."

Again she suppressed a smile, then said, "I just stopped by to see you before you left, and I wanted you to meet Denise."

"Who?"

She called out to the dog, who came running, licked Annie's hand, then sniffed at Keith and put her paws on his knee. Keith knelt down and played with the dog, who was friendly and who looked like a wire-haired terrier.

Annie watched a moment, then asked, "Do you remember?"

He looked at her, obviously not remembering.

She said, "This is actually Denise number four."

Then it came back to him — he had given her a mongrel puppy in the summer of '63, and they'd named her Denise after the Randy and the Rainbow's hit song of that summer. He stood and looked at Annie. "This is?.."

"This is Denise's great-granddaughter. Denise died about 1973, but I'd kept one of her pups and named her Denise Two, then she had a litter, and so on... I... it was just sort of a connection, I guess... really sentimental and silly... you know how us country girls are..." She looked at the dog, who was pulling on Keith's shoelaces, then at Keith, and she said, "A dog's life is short, but... they don't make problems for themselves."

Keith contemplated the dog awhile, realizing that this dog represented an incredible display of love and loyalty, faith and remembrance over the years. "I can't believe you did that."

"I didn't have much else..." She tried to smile and said, "If only Cliff knew... he has dogs of his own, but this one is mine, and this one hates him. In fact, they all hated him. Old Denise bit him once." She laughed.

"The dogs all had good judgment."

She smiled again. "He asked me once where I'd gotten Denise, and I told him my guardian angel gave her to me."

Keith nodded but didn't reply. The dog bolted off in chase of something she smelled or heard near the barn, and as Keith watched, a flood of memories came back to him, and he couldn't trust himself to speak.

He recalled the day when he'd first noticed Annie Prentis in school, then remembered the summer they'd begun courting, the long walks, sitting with her family on their porch, ice cream sodas in town, holding hands in the movies, the feel of her skin and hair, the smell of her, the first kiss. The sexual tension had almost driven him out of his mind, and in those days the chances of actually doing it were somewhere between nil and zero. Yet, one night, when her family was out of the house and he'd come over, they sat on the porch together, and she said almost nothing for about half an hour. At first he was annoyed at her distraction, then somehow, in some manner that to this day he didn't quite understand, without a word or a touch or an obvious look, she let him know she wanted to have sex. He recalled being so frightened by the thought that he almost went home. But he didn't, and he'd said to her, "Let's go to your room." His world and his life were never the same after that night.

He recalled, too, his decision to take a puppy from a friend's litter and give it to her a few days afterward. He didn't know about flowers after sex then, and since then his gifts to women had been more substantial, as had his gifts from women. But the puppy was the first thing he'd ever given to a girl, and more important, what she'd given to him — herself — was as good a gift as he'd ever gotten.

He said, "You never wrote to me about Denise."

"I was... I couldn't think of a way to mention Denise without sounding like I was being soppy and lovesick." She took a breath and looked at him in the fading light. "So... these dogs were a daily reminder of you." She smiled. "Are you insulted?"

"No, I'm speechless."

"I'm too sentimental for my own good... I'll tell you another secret — at my sister's house I have a trunk full of Keith Landry... love letters, prom photos, our high school and college yearbooks... valentines, birthday cards, a teddy bear... I had some other things, too, and I was stupid enough to keep them with me when I got married. He found the box of things — no letters or photos or anything like that, but little gifts and souvenirs that you'd bought me, and I guess he figured they weren't from my girlfriends, and he threw them out." She added, "I didn't say anything to him, because I wanted to be a loyal wife. But I knew then, if not before then, that I'd married the wrong man." She stayed silent a moment, then said, "I have to go now."

"Did you leave your things at your sister's house?"

She looked at him. "Yes... I was afraid to bring anything home in case he was there. Why?"

"Good. Let's go."

"Where?"

"To your sister's house. We're leaving. Now."

"No, Keith..."

"Now, Annie. Not tomorrow, not next week or next year. Now. Does your sister like dogs? She just got one." He took her in his arms and kissed her.

She pulled away. "Keith, no... I mean... are we really going? Now?"

"Within the minute. Leave your car here. My car is still packed. Call the dog. Sit in my car." He went into the house, got his keys, and turned off the lights. He took a piece of paper from a pad in the kitchen and wrote, "Cliff, Fuck you." He signed it, then went outside to the Blazer and asked Annie for her keys, which she gave him. He asked, "Do you want to leave him a note in your car?"

She glanced at the paper in his hand and replied, "No. He doesn't leave me notes."

"Okay." He jumped into her car and drove it to the barn, got out, slid open the doors, and drove the Lincoln inside. He left his short explanatory note to Cliff on the driver's seat, slid the barn doors closed, and went back to the Blazer. He handed her keys back to her and started the Blazer. As he pulled down the driveway, she asked him, "Did you leave a note for him in my car?"

"Yes. It was petty and childish."

"What did it say?"

"Two words, not 'Happy Birthday.' "

She smiled but said nothing.

He pulled out of the driveway, Annie beside him, Denise in the backseat, and his luggage in the rear.

Keith turned south, toward Chatham County. Neither of them spoke for a while, then Annie said, "I can't believe this is happening."

He glanced at her and saw she was staring straight out the window, looking a little dazed, or perhaps frightened. He asked her, "Are you all right?"