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There was only one pup she had any worries about, and her concern centered more on his looks than his behavior. The little mutt reminded Katrina of another dog she knew, one she hadn’t seen for a while.
“Hey, the brown-and-white one looks just like—”
“I know.” Cutting off Suzie in midsentence made her feel mean, but she didn’t want to have this conversation in the middle of a workday. If she started to have the conversation Suzie
wanted, she’d inevitably get upset. The little dog she was thinking of and its owner meant too much to her, and, anyway... “Whoa. Bulldog emergency.” Katrina was glad of the distraction.
Drummond, the English bulldog, unable to keep up with his speedier classmates, had decided to slow them down by sitting on them.
“After a count of three,” Katrina said, then she and Suzie lifted the muscle-bound little guy. Their actions released a Yorkshire terrier and a bichon frise, both of whom barked delightedly and tried to encourage Drummond into a repeat performance of sitting on them. As if wounded by the affront to his dignity, the bulldog ignored them and strutted away to gnaw on a fence post.
Minutes later, Katrina brought the session to a close. As they cleared the training ground and set up for the advanced obedience class after lunch, she was conscious of Suzie sending troubled sidelong glances in her direction.
Eventually, she sighed. “You’re right. The little brown-and-white mutt reminded me of Dobby.”
She sensed Suzie relax slightly. They’d worked together for nearly four years and had become good friends. Until now, there had never been any tension between them. And Katrina didn’t have enough friends to let it become an issue. “Have you heard from Eliza recently?” Suzie asked.
“That obvious, huh?” Katrina asked. “I thought I was doing a good job of covering up how worried I am about my troubled twin.”
“Maybe someone who doesn’t know you well wouldn’t have noticed,” Suzie said. “But you don’t usually check your cell phone every two minutes. And, now and then, I’ve had to call your name twice because you’ve been lost in your own world. But your reaction to the Dobby look-alike was what clinched it for me.”
“Poor Dobby.” Katrina managed a smile. “With looks like his, I always found it doubly sad that he had such a fondness for the ladies.”
Dobby was her twin sister’s dog. With his big, floppy ears, sparse hair and lopsided jaw, he would never win a beauty contest. What he lacked in looks, he made up for in charm. Dobby was the happiest, most self-confident dog Katrina had ever known. But Dobby wasn’t the problem...
“I hadn’t heard from Eliza for months prior to the earthquake. That wasn’t unusual. She’s never been great at keeping in touch.”
Suzie knew all about Katrina’s sister’s checkered past. There was no point in trying to hide it. Not when Eliza could turn up at the training center at any time, either down on her luck, or high on drugs...or both. Or when Katrina might get a call from the police or a hospital and have to drop everything. Eliza claimed to have been clean for over a year, but that was a familiar story.
Then, two months ago, Mustang Valley had been hit by an earthquake. The area was rural and spread out, limiting the overall impact, but many homes and buildings in the small downtown district had been damaged. Since she hadn’t known where Eliza was living at the time, Katrina had fired off a series of increasingly frantic messages to her sister, hearing back from Eliza after a few days.
“I didn’t know if she was even in Mustang Valley when the quake hit.” Having finished setting up for the afternoon session, they went through to the small staff area to clean up before snatching a quick lunch. “I considered reporting her missing again, but this time I had no evidence that she was.”
Suzie shook her head. “I wish you’d told me you were dealing with all of this.”
Katrina shrugged a shoulder. “This is what it’s been like all our adult lives. And it was the same with our mom when she was alive.” She sucked in a breath. Although she didn’t talk about it, she figured Suzie could guess how hard it had been for her. Her mother’s drug and alcohol dependency had shaped her life, and Eliza’s, in different ways. In Katrina’s case, it had made her view close relationships as something to be avoided.
“Addiction makes people selfish. Eventually, after a day or two of almost constant messaging on my part, Eliza replied to say she was fine. She was still drug-free. Her apartment had been destroyed, but I was to stop worrying because she’d found a wonderful relief organization called the Affirmation Alliance Group. They had given her somewhere to stay and were helping her find her best self.”
“I’ve seen the AAG out and about since the earthquake,” Suzie said. “They seem to be doing some wonderful relief work. Everyone in town speaks highly of them.”
“I know.” Katrina moved toward the coffee machine. “They have a guest ranch about ten miles outside of the town center and, from everything I hear, it’s very warm and welcoming. At first, I was pleased that Eliza had gone there.”
“At first?”
“She hasn’t answered any of my other messages. And...” She wrinkled her nose. “‘Find my best self’? That just didn’t sound like Eliza.”
“Why don’t you drive out there and see how she’s doing?”
When Suzie put it like that, it seemed so simple. With anyone other than Eliza, maybe it would have been. But Katrina had always handled her twin with caution. Eliza was volatile and vulnerable. It would only take one wrong word to turn their fragile relationship into a nonexistent one.
If she took action and things went wrong, it would be her fault. Remaining passive had become her default position, her approach to life. So what if it was a dull, lonely place to be? Having friends, relationships, a social life... Those things were overrated.
“Yeah. Maybe one evening—”
“No.” Suzie took her gently by the shoulders and turned her toward the door. “I meant, why don’t you go now?”
“Because we have a class in twenty minutes?” Katrina dug her heels in like one of her own problem pups.
