AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Just behind your back?”
Russell laughed at that, and I felt myself fighting a laugh of my own as I tried to sort out what I was feeling. I had been so angry with him. And it wasn’t like that had all gone away. It was more like a burn that had faded to a dull ache—you can still feel the pulse of it, you still know it’s there, but it’s no longer the only thing you can think about.
Russell looked at me, right in my eyes, and took a deep breath. “I really am sorry, Darcy. About the phone—about not telling you the truth. About lying. About all of it.”
I nodded, finally letting myself take this in. I knew that he meant it. And most of all, I finally got that Russell not telling me the truth really wasn’t about me at all. It was about him.
And also, it’s what you were doing too, Didi pointed out.
I wasn’t about to tell Russell it was okay—because I didn’t think it was. But I wasn’t going to keep being mad at him about it, holding on to this, doing what I always did—deciding something once and never changing my mind. “I know you’re sorry,” I finally said. “Thank you for saying it.”
“Okay.” Russell gave me a half smile and I gave him a nod back. It felt like a beginning—like the first piece of a rope bridge across the canyon that divided us.
“Okay.” I started walking again and lifted my flashlight, sweeping it across the road.
“Do you think we could—start over?”
I shook my head. Even though I understood a little better now where Russell was coming from, I couldn’t just forget everything that had come before. “I don’t think so. I—” I stopped short. I’d just seen something run past my flashlight beam—a brown-and-white blur. “Did you see that?”
Russell nodded. “Andy!”
We started to run, sprinting across the road, both of us yelling for the dog who seemed to be gaining more ground than I would have thought possible in such a short time.
“ANDY!” Russell bellowed, the loudest I’d yet heard him. It seemed to work—Andy stopped in the middle of the road and looked back at us. He was still probably ten feet away, but he was there—the dog that everyone was looking for, just a few steps away, in the flesh. In the fur? Either way, he was there—not eaten by a coyote, not halfway to Reno—within our grasp.
Andy’s tail was wagging, and he started to walk across the road toward us. “Good boy,” Russell said, and I could hear the relief in his voice, exactly the same as I was currently feeling. “C’mere. I’ve got you.” Andy was trotting toward Russell—just as headlights swept across the road, followed by a car barreling down it.
Russell darted toward the dog, but I stayed frozen in my spot on the other side. I closed my eyes tight, my heart hammering hard as I braced myself for the worst—a squeal of brakes, a frightened doggy yelp, blood on the asphalt.
“Darcy?” I opened my eyes—the car was gone, and so was Andy.
“Is he…?”
“It’s okay,” Russell said, starting to run, gesturing for me to follow. “He ran out of the way in time—I don’t want to lose him again.”
“Right.” I was suddenly embarrassed by the way that I’d reacted when things had gotten scary. I hadn’t helped or even been brave enough to watch—I’d just closed my eyes and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.
I dashed across the road, and then started sprinting full-out, trying to catch up with Russell, hoping I hadn’t just cost us precious time.
“There,” Russell said, sounding out of breath as we approached the gates of a mansion. They were open slightly—it didn’t look like this was intentional, more like they hadn’t latched properly—and I saw Andy run through and tear across the pristine lawn.
“Are we allowed to do this?” I asked as Russell squeezed through the gap in the gates and I took a step closer to follow. “Is it trespassing?”
“I think that it’s okay in certain circumstances. In emergencies. Right?”
I wasn’t sure about this—but I followed him through the gates. I was doing my best to look for the dog, but I was honestly distracted by the house in front of me. It made Wylie’s house—which up until now was the biggest house I’d ever seen—look puny. There were a number of white marble statues placed across the lawn, but nothing as singular and striking as the balloon dog. “Who lives here?”
“Um. Well. You know Wyoming?”
“Yes?”
“This guy owns most of it.”
“What?”
“There!” Russell pointed across the lawn, and I saw Andy sniffing around a particularly large white marble statue—it looked almost like it was a copy of a Rodin. And then I realized a moment later, my stomach plunging, that it probably was a Rodin. “I’m going to grab him,” Russell said, pocketing his flashlight as he started to edge to the other side of the statue. “Keep him distracted.”
“Okay,” I said, even as I was internally screaming How?!
