The Darkest Evening Of The Year

Chapter 26

The Land Rover left while Amy and the kids were enjoying the meadow. Later, when she drove to the south-county animal shelter to keep an appointment, no one followed her.

“What was that about?” she asked the dogs, but they had no idea.

At the shelter, she locked her kids in the Expedition, leaving four windows down a couple of inches for air circulation.

Neither Fred nor Ethel, nor Nickie, expressed any desire to accompany her. They knew what kind of place this was. All three were subdued.

Her accountant, Danielle Chiboku, also a Golden Heart volunteer, waited for her in the dreary reception area.

“You bought that rescue last night for two thousand bucks?” Dani asked first thing.

“Kind of, sort of, if you want to see it that way, I guess you could say maybe I did, in a manner of speaking.”

“What am I going to do with you?” Dani asked.

“Gee, Mom, I guess you’ll have to send me to a military school to straighten me out.”

“If I were your mother, you’d know the value of a dollar.”

“You’re only five years older than I am. You couldn’t be my mom. You could be my stepmother if you married my father.”

“Amy-”

“But since I’ve never known who my father was, I’m not able to introduce you. Anyway, the two thousand bucks wasn’t Golden Heart’s money. It was mine.”

“Yes, and every year when the organization doesn’t quite raise enough donations to cover its work, you make up the difference.”

“I always expect Batman, in his Bruce Wayne identity, to write me a check, but he never comes through.”

“If you keep this up, you’ll be broke in five years.”

“You’re my accountant. You can’t let that happen. Put me in some investment with a two-hundred-percent return.”

“I’m dead serious, Amy. Five years.”

“Five years is an eternity. Anything could happen in five years. The dogs need me now. Did I ever tell you how much you look like Audrey Hepburn?”

“Don’t try to change the subject. Audrey Hepburn wasn’t half Japanese and half Norwegian.”

“How did your parents meet, anyway? Working on a whaling ship? Blubber and ambergris and love at first sight? Hey, did Mookie meet with Janet Brockman yet?”

Mukai Chiboku-Mookie to his friends-was Dani’s husband and Golden Heart’s attorney.

“He’s going to handle her divorce pro bono,” Dani said. “The little boy and girl half broke his heart.”

Mookie, specializing in real-estate law, had offices in a plain two-story building in Corona del Mar. Few passersby would imagine he had six clients whose combined holdings exceeded a billion dollars.

Dogs were welcome in his office. He went to work every day with his golden, Baiko, who had been named after a master of haiku, and he always greeted Fred and Ethel by exclaiming “Sweet babies!”

“You ready for this?” Amy asked.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

The shelter workers knew them well. She and Dani walked this facility at least once a week.

An animal-control officer named Luther Osteen led them out of reception, past the shelter offices, into the kennels at the back of the building.

Small but clean cages flanked a concrete run, and all of them contained dogs. Larger animals were housed one to a space. Sometimes the smaller individuals shared a cage.

A few were so depressed, they lay staring at nothing, and did not raise their heads.

Most came to the doors of their cages. Some appeared forlorn, but others wagged their tails and seemed tentatively hopeful.

Occasionally one of the smaller dogs barked, but most of the inmates were quiet, as if aware that their fate-adoption or death-depended in part on their demeanor.

The majority were mutts. About a quarter looked like purebreds. Every dog here was beautiful, each in its own way, and the clock was running out for all of them.

Because the volume of abandoned and abused dogs far exceeded the resources of all the rescue groups combined, each organization had to limit itself to a single breed.

The shelter worked hard to place the mixed breeds, the mutts. Yet thousands every year would have to be euthanized.

Amy wanted to stop at every cage, scratch and cuddle each dog, but raising their hopes would have been cruel, and leaving them behind after making their acquaintance would have devastated her.

Luther Osteen had two dogs for their consideration, the first a pure golden named Mandy. She was a sweet girl, nine years old, her face mostly white with age.

Mandy’s owners had retired. They wanted to spend a few years traveling through Europe. Mandy no longer fit their lifestyle.

“She’s got some arthritis,” Luther said, “and her teeth haven’t been so well cared for, but she has a few good years in her yet. Hard for us to place an older dog like her. She’s probably given back ten times the love she’s gotten over the years, so it’d be right if she had a chance to be with someone who’d give her a better deal.”

“We’ll take her,” Dani said.

The second orphan was a male, part golden, part something else not easily identified, perhaps Australian shepherd. He’d been running loose in an industrial park, wearing a collar with no license.

“Looks like he was abandoned there,” Luther said, “must’ve been fending for himself a couple weeks, he’s so thin.”

The nameless dog stood at the cage door, pressing its black nose through a gap in the wire grid.

“How old, you think?” Dani asked.

“Figure he’s maybe three or four years. No obvious disease.”

“Fixed?” Amy asked.

“No. But you take him, we’ll pay for that. He’s got some ticks, but not a lot.”

Finding forever homes for hundreds of purebreds a year was hard enough. The mixed breeds were more difficult to place.

The tail moved continuously. The ears were raised. The brown eyes pleaded.

“The boy’s housebroken,” Luther said, “and he knows some basic commands like sit and down.”

That the dog had some training made him easier to place, so with relief, Amy said, “We’ll take him.”

“You go deal with the paperwork,” Luther said. “I’ll bring them both out to you.”

Returning along the kennel run, between the rows of cages, Dani took Amy’s hand. She always did. Her eyes were full of unshed tears, which Amy saw before her own vision blurred.

Coming in past all these dogs, most of whom would be euthanized, always proved to be a tough walk, but the return trip, leaving them to their fate, was brutal.

Sometimes, Amy despaired for the human race, and never more so than on those days when she visited the county shelter.

Some repay loyalty with faithlessness and give no thought to their own final hours, when they might have to ask another to grant them the mercy that they withheld from those who trusted them.