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“Adam, he’syourdog.”
“You said you wanted a dog and I know I didn’t give you much choice, but I volunteer at a dog rescue–remember? I know what to look for. This guy…I’ve been training him. He’s pretty well house-broken and he follows commands, but you have to be the boss. Be firm with him. Be his alpha.” I swallowed hard. I’d kind of fallen in love with the not-so-little guy in the last few months. So had Lucy. But if anything, this gave me another reason to visit her often.
“You got me a dog?” Her eyes were huge and dangerously watery.
“Well, yeah…” The way she was looking at me made me uncomfortable in a hot, itchy way. A way that could quickly, easily turn into something else, and it would mean at least one of us would end up on the floor with the other on top.
“You worry about me?” She was biting that soft bottom lip and I wondered if she knew that made me crazy.
I pushed quickly to my feet, afraid of what would happen if I leaned forward just a few inches. I couldn’t promise it would be anything honorable.
I held out a hand to her to help her up and I tucked her hair over her ear, unable to help myself. “I worry about you all the time, VanBuren. I was just about sick while you were gone, so take it easy on me next time, ok? Maybe pick something less dangerous…something shorter.”
Her eyes spilled over and I knew for some reason it had nothing to do with the dog.
“I have to fix it.” Her voice was just a whisper and I must have looked horrified, because she shook her head at me. “I can’t explain it yet. There’s something I have to finish–to fix. I can’t leave her there.”
I had absolutely no idea what that meant, but the thought of her leaving again scared me half to death.
“Fine.” My voice sounded angry. “Let me know when you’re going and he can stay with me.”
I leaned over and scratched his chin, rubbed his ear and then walked out of the house without looking back, because I felt like I’d just left all of my heart behind.
9
Madelyn
WhenAdamstormedoutof the house I let myself break down and cry. I hated myself for it, not knowing how else to get out the terrible emotions welling up inside of me.
Gratitude for the beautiful house they’d made for me.
Confusion over what had just happened between Adam and me.
Anger and sadness and gratitude over the fact he’d gotten a dog he’d trained just for me, and I’d felt his love for the puppy who was licking my face as I cried. I felt his heart break as he walked away from the dog.
He hadn’t been happy with me when he left, I was fairly sure of that, but I didn’t know why and I heard his truck start up, the noise dying off in the distance as the large puppy crawled right into my lap and flopped down.
I hadn’t begun to process the things I’d seen in our border camp, and they were things I couldn’t discuss with anyone else, since it was an ongoing investigation.
I’d witnessed atrocities against people who were treated like cattle by their own, herded and separated, with no regard for welfare or families.
I’d processed papers for hundreds of children, trying to determine which of the three aid agencies we were working with would provide the best care for each child. But mostly I was learning Spanish as quickly as I could, trying to calm the children who’d been separated from their families, comforting those who couldn’t be reunited, and most nights I cried myself to sleep after watching heartbreak and devastation all day long.
I hadn’t felt like I was of any use whatsoever.
There had been one family I couldn’t get out of my head. They were young, not even out of their teens. From what little I could piece together, since we didn’t have enough translators to go around, they’d walked for weeks to get from Venezuela. Fucking walked. With a baby strapped to the girl’s back that was little more than a newborn. The baby was sunburned and dehydrated, but her parents were in even worse shape. How they made it into our camp I’ll never know, because the boy had dysentery from drinking unclean water and the girl was so dehydrated, she was hallucinating, burning up with fever.
I was completely out of my element. I wasn’t parachuting into a combat zone to rescue a wounded soldier.
I wasn’t deploying tactical hydraulic equipment to pull men out of a bombed-out building.
I wasn’t making a seventy-foot dive into the sea to rescue someone in distress, fighting the churn of the water caused by the helicopter rotors, blinding me, making me work largely by touch to strap an injured person into the basket and attach the cable to have them lifted into the helicopter.
That shit was easy by now; second nature.
Instead, I was pushing papers. Trying to play the part of aid worker successfully while I tried to pinpoint the key players in our camp I knew were cartel members or high-ranking military. As far as I was concerned, the fact they had a joint interest in the mass of humanity crowded at the border made one no better than the other.
The weapon concealed beneath my loose-fitting shirt and the vest identifying me as a volunteer did little to reassure me, should things go to shit. I was surrounded by panicked people and wailing children, and gunfire would do nothing to restore order or peace.
