Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best summer books .TXT) 📗

Reva took a breath, then went quiet. After a second, she spoke. “Griffie says that it looks bad, and it feels bad, but he’ll be okay, so don’t worry. Just stop telling the raccoons they’re invited to dine on his patio.”

“I know.” An unexpected prickle of tears tickled Abby’s sinuses. She sniffed the tears back into submission and got hold of herself. Falling apart wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Griffin. “I’m sorry. I put food out for the stray dog. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why didn’t you put the food across the street? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing up until now? I’m getting a strange feeling that you’re not telling me everything. Not that I don’t trust you—of course I do. But are you okay? You’re not sick, are you? You don’t sound sick.”

“No, I’m not sick.” Luckily, Reva asked a hundred questions at a time instead of just one, so Abby could pick the ones she wanted to answer and ignore the rest. “I wanted to lure him closer to the house.” True, even if it wasn’t the actual reason she’d put the food on the patio.

“Good instinct,” Reva praised. “But he wants to earn his place. He won’t come to the patio until he knows you’ll welcome his presence.” Reva paused, and Abby heard her take a breath. “Aww. He’s been bringing you presents?”

Holy shit. The newspapers. The realization had come to her in a barely remembered dream: The newspapers didn’t contain a message; they were the message. “He’s been bringing me newspapers. I’ve been leaving the gate open, and he’s been putting them on the patio by the back door. Should I close the gate, though? I mean, because of the raccoons?”

“No. Gates don’t keep raccoons out. They can climb anything. Hang on a second.”

Abby took the opportunity to lay the phone on the scooter’s seat and push the contraption to the dark waiting room, where she sat on one of the dusty Victorian velvet sofas. She picked the phone up again and put it on speaker. “Reva, you still there?”

“Hang on,” Reva said, sounding a little irritated.

While she waited, Abby switched over to her texts and saw one she’d missed from Reva. Couldn’t find the mama deer’s babies, but met a nice farmer who sold me a runty baby goat that he was bottle-feeding. I didn’t get in trouble—my roommate (who is usually a pain) covered for me. Now everyone is wondering where the baby goat came from. And look! Abby scrolled down to see the photo of a spotted baby goat nursing from the mama deer.

She hit the !! button.

“Okay,” Reva said. “I talked to the wolf dog.”

Abby switched back to the phone-call screen, though it didn’t really make any difference; she could hear and respond either way. “And?”

“He wants to be useful. He wants to know the rules, because human rules don’t make sense to him, and even when he thinks he knows what people want, the rules keep changing.”

“Okay. So what am I supposed to do with that information?”

“He wants to know where he belongs. He is afraid you’ll chase him away again.”

“I won’t.”

“Well, he doesn’t know that.”

Frustration crawled up Abby’s throat and came out as a growl. “How am I supposed to let him know I won’t chase him away?”

“Tell him!”

Abby closed her eyes. “Okay, fine. Tell me how to do that.”

Reva’s huff of irritation sounded the same as Abby’s had. “How many times have I explained this to you?”

Starting when Abby was five years old? Maybe eleventy-million times by now. “Not enough, I guess.”

“Pay attention this time.”

“Fine.” Abby sighed. She had paid attention all those other times, too, but it didn’t make her any better at communicating with animals. Truth was, she didn’t trust herself. Reva had done her best to teach Abby to trust, but then she’d go back home and have that trust shamed out of her. What felt right at the farm felt silly everywhere else. “I will.”

“All right. Both feet on the floor, relax your body and let your breath flow through you, as if you’re an empty straw.” Reva took a slow, deep breath and let it out with an audible whoosh.

Abby did the same.

“Breathe up through the soles of your feet, then down through the top of your head,” Reva instructed. “Release anything that isn’t yours. Release your worries to the heavens, release your baggage to the earth. Clear yourself, clear the channel of communication.” Together, they did a few cycles of deep breathing over the phone.

“Ready?” Reva asked.

“Ready,” Abby responded. Her body felt energized with a pleasant buzz, oxygenated by the deep breaths she rarely took in her day-to-day life.

“See the wolf dog walk up and stand in front of you.”

With her eyes closed, Abby imagined what it would look like if Wolf came up to her, sniffed her hand, and sat, giving her his full attention. “His name is Wolf.”

“Good!” The approval in Reva’s voice stroked Abby’s ego, giving her a burst of confidence. “He’s giving you information you haven’t even asked for. Now you know you’re in. Tell him you won’t chase him away again. Tell him he is welcome to live at the farm. Ask him to come.”

In Abby’s imagination, Wolf turned away from her and looked down a hillside toward something she couldn’t see.

“He’s looking at something else.”

“Yes, he is. Ask him what he’s looking at.”

“Dogs. Lots of dogs. They’re everywhere, scattered all over the hillside, and none of them have people to belong to. They’re all separate, but they want to come together. They need a tribe to belong to.”

“Yes. But that’s not a literal image, right?”

Abby didn’t know how to tell the difference. “I don’t know.”

“Ask!”

She didn’t have to ask; suddenly, she knew. “He just wants to belong somewhere. He doesn’t care if it’s with a pack of strays or a human family.”

“Really?”

The scene of all the disconnected dogs scattered across the countryside changed, coalescing into a line of dogs, following the