Catherine Lanigan - Love Shadows

It didn’t take long after her breakup to realize she didn’t miss James. She recognized that their long-term romance had been habit more than love, or even like. She wished him well, but he seldom entered her thoughts. That was why she found it odd that she ruminated on him today.

You’re just lonely, Sarah! she scolded herself, grabbing a bag of salad out of the refrigerator. She stopped midmotion as the fridge door slowly closed. Her stomach roiled as if she was hungry, but she’d just consumed a power bar and slugged back a few sips of coffee. The churning she felt was the same reaction her body always foisted upon her when she was assaulted with the truth.

Since Ann Marie died, Sarah had come to the awareness that she had a fear of being alone. All her life, Sarah had family she lived with and friends she filled her afternoons and evenings with. Even her romance with James, to a great degree, was a convenience for her. She told herself that her life was just ducky. Dandy. Because she had somebody. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the right guy for her. It mattered that they were a couple. These past months, her loneliness had grown longer, darker and more infinite, like a great yawning abyss that frightened and immobilized her. Though she had many friends in town and most she’d known since high school or even longer, she now had new friendships with her coworkers. It was easy to convince herself that her life was functioning properly.

“I don’t have time for all that today,” she shot back at her reflection in the small, gold-framed mirror on the wall.

Sarah shoved her emotions back into her mental hiding place and put the salad in her insulated lunch sack. On the kitchen table sat her purse, cell phone, car keys and her battered leather portfolio containing the blueprints and very detailed architectural drawings for the renovation of a strip center on the north side of Indian Lake. Sarah had worked painstakingly on this project, pushing herself nearly to the point of exhaustion with late nights at her drafting table. She should have been excited about this morning’s presentation to Charmaine, but she wasn’t.

She was worried.

Charmaine was an architect and interior designer whose perfectionist and exacting, creative eye saw shadows and light in spaces that most of her competition routinely missed. Charmaine saw potential for greatness everywhere she went. Broken houses, dilapidated commercial centers and desecrated public buildings were her favorite challenge because she believed she could fix anything. Sarah had never met anyone like Charmaine. Even when Sarah was in college at Indiana University, her design and art professors had not exhibited the kind of peerless inventiveness and vision Charmaine possessed. Sarah could only hope to be half the artist and designer that Charmaine was.

Sarah had just taken a huge gulp of her coffee when the telephone rang. She checked the caller ID and smiled.

“Hello, Mrs. Beabots. How are you this morning?” she asked cheerily of her octogenarian next-door neighbor.

“Fine. Fine, dearie, but you better corral that dog of yours.”

Sarah instantly looked over to Beauregard’s breakfast bowl and saw that it was still full. Her one-hundred-and-twenty-seven pound golden retriever had not touched a bite, which was very unusual. Frowning, she glanced at the back door. It was still open halfway, just as it was each morning when she let the dog out to do his business. Beauregard always let himself back in, finished off his breakfast and then plopped himself down on his green-and-blue-plaid doggie bed.

Sarah looked at the empty bed. “What about Beau?” she asked, going to the door and opening it all the way.

“I’m looking at him from my bedroom window,” Mrs. Beabots continued, “and he’s digging a hole at your back fence. From the looks of it, pumpkin, he’ll hit Shanghai in less than an hour.”

“He’s doing what?” Sarah went to the back porch, leaned over the railing and nearly dropped the cordless phone. “I’ll call you back, Mrs. Beabots. And thanks.”

“Anytime, pumpkin,” she said and hung up.

Sarah nearly flew down the back porch steps and across the lawn. “Beauregard Jensen! What are you doing?”

Clumps of mud and dirt sailed into the air and dappled Beauregard’s copper and golden fur in a crazy quilt pattern.

Sarah raced up to the golden retriever, still yelling his name, but he paid no attention. If anything, he dug harder and faster.

A dollop of mud went slinging through Beauregard’s hind legs and smacked Sarah in the forehead.

“Beau! Stop it, this instant!” she shouted, wiping the mud off her face.

Beauregard kept digging. He splattered Sarah’s freshly dry-cleaned camel-and-black silk suit. Sarah dodged the mud rain and went around to the left of the dog and tried to grab his collar and pull him out of the deep hole he’d dug. Though she tried to steady herself in her tan pumps, she slipped on the grass, which she’d been far too prideful about, and fell rump-side down. She knew she should change out of her business suit in order to avoid serious damage to her clothes, but she’d be late for work if she didn’t get Beau out of the hole and back into the house.

“Of all the days in my entire career, did you have to choose today to act like a dog?”

Beauregard paid no attention to her and kept flinging dirt.

“What are you doing? And why are you doing this?” she asked, frustration spiking the edges of her words. Another clump of dirt hit her on the cheek.

“That’s it!” Sarah pulled with all her might and hoisted Beauregard out of the hole and away from the fence.

Beau snarled at Sarah.

She snarled back.

Beau glanced back at the hole and Sarah knew he was thinking about defying her, just like a misbehaving child. “Don’t even think about it, Beauregard Jensen. Just look at you! You’ve made a terrible mess of yourself. It will take me hours to clean you up and I have to be at work.”

Dragging Beau behind her, which was a serious feat of strength and adrenaline, Sarah trudged toward the driveway. “You have to have a bath and there’s no time left. It’s off to the groomers for you!” Sarah pulled on Beau’s collar again, but the dog had relented to his fate and now walked, head forlornly hung, next to his master and supposed superior creature.

Sarah ordered Beauregard to sit on the driveway next to her Envoy as she went to the garage, got an old plastic tarp and draped it across the passenger’s seat. She stood aside as Beauregard jumped into the SUV.

“The tarp will hopefully keep my car clean, but believe me, it’s going to take professional fumigation to get your dirty dog smell out of here!” Sarah slammed the car door.

She went back to the kitchen, grabbed her purse, portfolio and lunch and locked the house.

As she walked around the flagstone path to the front yard, she saw Mrs. Beabots standing on the front sidewalk, hand up to her forehead to shade her eyes from the brilliant morning sun. “Showed him whose boss, din’t cha?” Mrs. Beabots asked.

Sarah had lived on Maple Avenue all her life, and for as long as she could remember, Mrs. Beabots had not only lived next door, but she had also felt that whatever was happening in the Jensen household was her prerogative to know. Mrs. Beabots was not a gossip, and blessedly, she didn’t share the information. She simply believed she could not help the ones she loved if she didn’t know their business.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Beabots never understood that Sarah despised being late to work—or late to anything, for that matter. Mrs. Beabots loved to talk. Talking helped whittle away the hours of her very lonely life.

“I have to get Beau down to Puppies and Paws and then I have to be at work...”