Barbara Hannay - The Man Behind The Mask

This was crossed out, but it seemed to him with a certain reluctance.

Brendan felt his lips twitching. He flipped to the next page.

Dear Confused,

Thirteen is very old for a malamute. Do you want to make such a weighty decision based on a dog who will not be with you much longer?

This, too, had been crossed out.

He flipped the page, looking for her answer, but instead found a different letter.

Dear Rover,

My dog, an English bulldog named Petunia, won’t come in the basement laundry room. She sits outside the door and howls and shakes. Do you think I have a ghost? —Haunted

Again, there were two replies. The first, with a big X through it, said:

Dear Haunted,

English bulldogs are known for many lovely traits, intelligence not being among those. Your laundry room is unlikely to be haunted so much as presenting a myriad of smells and sounds beyond poor Petunia’s ability to comprehend them. This situation is unlikely to ever get better, so you could save yourself a great deal of frustration by leaving Petunia upstairs while you go to the basement to do laundry. If you give her a chew bone before you go, there is a good chance she won’t notice you are gone until you get back.

The second response was measured, and made no comments about the intelligence of bulldogs. It explained that laundry rooms had strange sounds and smells, that Petunia needed to be introduced to the elements separately and slowly, and that dog treats would help.

Still smiling, Brendan set the papers back on the table.

It penetrated his exhaustion that something was different than when he’d arrived.

For a moment he couldn’t figure out what it was.

And then he did: it was absolutely quiet. He got up and went to the window. It wasn’t just that night was melting into daybreak. The rain had stopped. And on the horizon was something he hadn’t seen for forty days and forty nights.

He blinked like a man emerging from a cave.

Or maybe he hadn’t seen it since the night his wife and his unborn child had died.

On the horizon, the sun was coming up.

“Hey, sweetheart, what’s your name?”

Nora shook herself groggily. She stared up at the man looking at her, felt his hand on her shoulder.

“Not sweetheart,” she said, certain it was a dream and closed her eyes.

That hand on her shoulder, a light in her eyes, “what day were you born?” and then wonderful sleep claiming her again.

“Just for a second, follow my finger with your eyes.”

Nora awoke with a start. Sunshine splashed across her bed. Sunshine! The warmth of it was a delight.

All night she had had strange dreams that Brendan Grant was in her room, but now she glanced at the chair where she was sure he had sat, and could clearly see it had been but a dream. The chair was empty.

Sunshine! She looked at the clock. It was noon!

“Oh goodness! The animals!” She sat up too quickly and it made her feel dizzy. She was aware her head hurt, and other parts of her felt bruised.

How was it possible to feel so good, filled with wonderful dreams, and so bad at the same time? Physically aching, sick that she had slept through looking after her animals.

She lay back down, just for a moment.

“Hey.”

Brendan Grant was standing in her doorway. Despite the fact he was in the same shirt as last night, and it had been wet, and dried wrinkled, and his hair was rumpled and his face becoming shadowed with whiskers, he looked amazing. Handsome, oozing confidence, one of those superannoying guys who took charge.

Superannoying unless You happened to be in need of someone to take charge!

“Don’t sit up. Doctor’s orders. You have to rest. All day.”

She couldn’t let on for a single second that, in her weakened state, she found that take-charge attitude ever so slightly attractive.

“I can’t rest all day! I have to look after the animals.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

She scowled at him so he would never guess how much those words meant to her.

“You sat with me all night,” she said. She knew she should be appreciative. It came out sounding like an accusation.

“I did.”

“That’s an unexpected kindness to the stranger you think swindled your grandmother.”

“I was hoping you’d talk in your sleep.”

“Did I?” she asked, aghast.

“What are you afraid of? A confession? Don’t you remember? I asked you questions every time I woke you up.”

“Yeah, like what my name was. And my birthday.”

He slapped himself on the forehead. “Shoot. I didn’t take advantage.”

For some reason she blushed, as if he meant taking advantage in a different way. He lifted an eyebrow.

“I didn’t take advantage like that, either,” he said softly.

“I wasn’t suggesting you had,” she said primly. Feeling terribly vulnerable, she pulled her quilt up around her chin. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed. I need to look after my animals.”

“They’re all looked after.”

“But how?”

“Luke helped.”

“Oh,” she said uneasily. She didn’t really like the thought of Brendan being alone with Luke, interrogating him.

“Don’t worry, he didn’t tell me a thing.”

She didn’t like that she was transparent, either!

“Even though I shamelessly tried to pry information out of him.”

“About?” she asked, attempting a careless tone.

“I started small, building up to the big question. I asked where you were from, and he said from a nice place, not a dump like this. I asked how long you had been here, and he said too long, and I asked how old he was and he said nineteen.”

“We’re from Victoria, we’ve been here six months and he just turned fifteen.”

“Then I asked him who took the money from Deedee.”

She held her breath.

“He said lots of people open the mail. The place is practically overrun with volunteers. He said he thought some of those old ladies were pretty shifty looking.” Brendan was watching her way too closely. “Are they?”

She felt backed into a corner. Of course her volunteers were not shifty looking! But she wasn’t calling Luke a liar, either. She fidgeted with the quilt and didn’t answer.

“I thought I’d better find out for myself who looked shifty. So I had Luke call some of them to come help with morning chores. Funny, I can’t really see any of the ones who showed up stealing from my grandmother, but I interrogated them, anyway.”

“You did not,” she said skeptically.

“I did. They all admitted to opening mail. None of them looked guilty, though. None of them remembered a letter from my grandmother. Of course, I’m not sure any of them would have remembered what they had for breakfast this morning. Don’t you have a system for dealing with mail? It doesn’t seem very efficient that anyone who feels like it, or wanders by the mailbox, opens the letters.”

“Systems are not my strong suit.”

“Neither is volunteer selection. If the ones who showed up today are any indication, it’s kind of like having my grandmother for a volunteer. The old biddy brigade.”

Now he sounded like Luke!

“They are invaluable to me!” The truth was Nora needed some young, strong people to volunteer, but they just weren’t who showed up when she put an ad in the paper. She hated it that the weaknesses in her organization were so blatantly apparent to him after an hour or two.

“But you can’t let any of your current volunteers near a large animal. They can’t do any heavy work. One’s afraid of dogs and one is allergic to cats. They all hate the parrot. Who bites.”

“That’s Lafayette. Did he bite you?”

“Of course he bit me. Luke says he bites everyone. Before saying things that would make a sailor blush. In three languages.”