Chapter 1: Spring Fever

The cash register chimed in the old country store.

No change was needed. Rex had brought the exact amount, including tax, as usual. Lydia Martin tucked the receipt into Rex’s saddlebag, alongside the small packages of oats, flour, and coffee that Rex had been sent to pick up. Lydia knew, of course, that it was Miss Auer who had worked out the right amount to send. Still, she found it was not much of a stretch to imagine the big collie doing the figures himself. He seemed capable of everything else. And if Rex decided to do arithmetic, Lydia felt certain he’d do it to the penny, scrupulously.

“OK, Rex. Take it home now,” she said. “Home.” He gave her a polite, affirmative wag, and she held the door for him as he headed out. She paused in the doorway. It was an early April day, warm, sunny, and dry. After a long, dreary March, the sunshine felt exquisite. There was color in the world. It would feel almost criminal to close the door on it and retreat inside again.

“Dad,” she called. “Can I step out for a few minutes? I’d like some fresh air, and it hasn’t been very busy in here today.”

“You may,” came the response from her father’s little office in the back of the store. She heard his chair squeak as he got up and came to the counter. He had his reading glasses on, and a seed catalog still in his hand. Though not a short man, he still had to look up slightly when he spoke to his daughter. “Maybe you could bring me back a little something from the diner, too, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure, I can do that.” Lydia understood that “a little something” meant “a little something sweet and freshly baked, which is not strictly in accordance with my diet, so let’s be discreet about it.” She knew how her father enjoyed an afternoon treat, and didn’t mind being part of a minor conspiracy. “I’ll be back in ... twenty minutes, OK? Thanks, dad.”

She stepped outside and turned west. In the distance, she could see Rex on the footpath. The path was mostly shaded, but here and there, dapples of sun shone through the trees, and when he walked through a patch of light, his coat gleamed. Lydia jogged off in his direction. She liked Rex’s company. He was easy to talk to, when she was in a mood to talk, and if she sometimes felt a little silly talking to a dog, she didn’t feel quite as crazy as she would have felt talking to herself.

It didn’t take her long to catch up. She slowed her pace to fall in line with him, and he looked up amiably. It wasn’t the first time she’d joined him for some or even all of the walk home, and he considered her a friend. His first duty was getting his bags home safely and promptly as was expected of him, but he didn’t see any problem with socializing along the way. He walked close beside her and quite deliberately made the top of his head available to her left hand. She smiled at the directness of the gesture and ruffled his ears with affection. “There you go, boy. I wish everyone could be so straightforward about what they want.”

She looked down at the dog, who still had his head turned up toward her. He was watching her intently even as he maintained his steady gait along the path. Rex had learned the importance of eye contact from Helen. It had been the foundation for everything else he learned with her, and he found it helpful in his interactions with other people when he was out and about as well. It wasn’t at all hard to figure out what people wanted, he found, so long as you kept your eyes in the right place. Sometimes you could even anticipate what a person wanted before she realized it herself.

Lydia picked up the pace to a jog again, and Rex matched her speed, always with his eyes up. There was a strong sense of connection as they moved together. She’d felt it once or twice before, as he read her moves, and this time it struck her that she’d been missing that feeling. His attention made her feel important, if only in a small way, and it felt nice. A thought occurred to her: “Does anyone else ever look at me like that? Like, really pay that much attention to me? Ever?”

Another thought followed: “He’s really handsome.”

That was a strange thought. It was true, certainly; anyone would agree that Rex was a handsome dog. That was just factual. So why had a blush come to her cheeks when she thought it?

Oh, the time! She’d been jogging away from the store all this time while her mind wandered. Allowing for a few minutes to run into the diner, too ... that meant she needed to turn around now. It still seemed like a pity to go back, with the sun so warm and the companionship so pleasant, but work was work, and there’d be other pretty days. She stopped, knelt, and gave Rex a hug around his shoulders, her hands sinking into his thick ruff. He leaned into the hug, pressing his weight against her. “Thanks for the walk, handsome boy.” Strange as the thought had been, it felt even stranger saying it out loud. “Come in to the store again soon, ok? See you soon?” She added a kiss on the top of his head, and ruffled his ears once more. “Now get on home.”

With, again, a wag to signify that he understood “home,” he continued up the path. Not too far ahead was the old millhouse that still stood on the creek, unused, and it wasn’t too much farther after that until the apple orchard. He was looking forward to the satisfaction of completing his job.

Lydia returned the way she’d come at a brisk pace, hardly feeling the effort. A spring day could be so energizing! She jogged back past the store to the Bread Board diner, dashed in, and selected a cherry turnover from the rack of bakery goods at the front. She forced herself to walk back to the store, rather than run. For some reason, she wanted to look composed as she walked in the door, not hurried or out of breath. She still felt buoyant, though, almost wanting to kick up her heels as she went.

Her father was at the counter when she walked in, and she slid the turnover to him covertly, hiding it under her hand and letting her eyes dart to the door as if someone might be spying on the transaction. “Ah, well done,” he said quietly, “mission accomplished.” Then he put an end to the espionage fantasy by unwrapping his pastry from the napkin and polishing it off in a few bites, openly and unconcernedly. “Thank you. Did you have a nice walk?”

“Mm, yeah. The sun felt good. I wish I could be out the rest of the afternoon.” To herself, she added silently, “ ... with Rex.” She wished the hug had lasted a little longer, at least.

“Well, it looks like there’ll be plenty of sun over the weekend. By the way, your old teacher was here. Miss Knox. She said to tell you hello.”

“Dad, Miss Knox isn’t old!” Jennifer Knox was twenty-four, in fact, and easy to recognize. She had moved to Great Cross to take the teaching job, and her black hair stood out in a town that mostly ran a spectrum from buckwheat blonde to corn silk blonde. She taught classics, and had encouraged Lydia’s interest in languages in her last years before graduating the previous spring. Lydia was thinking of looking for work as a translator, work which she might be able to do from home. Over the past year, she had spent a lot of her evenings by herself, studying.

“Deine ehemalige Lehrerin, habe ich gemeint.” Her father’s German wasn’t anywhere near as good as hers had become, but he had been delighted with her decision to begin studying the language. He made his best effort to learn what he could as well, and took any opportunity to show off a new word.

“Ja, Vati, ich habe dich verstanden. War nur ein Witz.” Her father beamed at having been understood.

“Yes, well ... as I said, she says hello. Other than that, though, it was pretty quiet. I think we can get things tidied up for the day soon, and leave on time today. We’ll still get some sun on the way home. I could use it too.”

“Sounds good.” It did sound good, but Lydia’s mind was beginning to wander from the conversation. Not much of her father’s subsequent talk about seeds and inventory and fertilizer sank in past the surface, but it probably wasn’t too important anyway.

Distraction proved to be more of a problem that evening as she tried to study. Usually, the time flew by and the only problem was that there wasn’t enough of it to do all the work she wanted. She had signed up for an exam in German which would be a big step toward working as a translator. The exam was intimidating, and also not cheap; she didn’t want to have to repeat it. Until recently, it had given her tremendous motivation. She would squeeze every bit of study she could into her evening hours -- usually an hour and a half, to be accurate. Once she was immersed in her texts, the rest of the world blurred, and she worked in a small, private universe of her own, limited to the warm bubble of light from her desk lamp.

Lately, though, her mind had been wandering, and it was annoying. It was embarrassing, too, because the problem was -- it was hard to admit this, even to herself -- that her mind was turning to sex. She’d had an unpleasant experience a few years earlier with a boy from school whom she had been seeing, and since then, sex had been almost entirely a non-topic for her; she just didn’t think about it. But this year, during the tail end of winter and the early spring, when things had been terribly dull, certain longings had begun to creep into her thoughts, increasingly often. When she should be concentrating, she found herself daydreaming about how she’d like to be touched. And with her laptop at hand to help with research, there was a constant temptation to pull up what she would classify as a “saucy” story and waste time getting wrapped up in a fantasy ... but that was frustrating, too, because she’d get worked up without getting any relief.

This particular evening, she felt especially scatterbrained. When her mind wasn’t thinking up interesting new combinations of words to try typing into the search engine, it was flitting back to her walk with Rex. It had just been a short jog, but it gave her such a warm feeling; he was such a good companion. She imagined him in her room, lying on her bed, watching her while she worked. When she needed a quick break from studying, she could give him another big hug and bury her face in his ruff. Or they could go out for a walk after she was finished; there was plenty of moonlight, and it would be shining on the creek. Cuddling up with him would feel even better in the cool night air.

She realized she’d doodled a collie on a page of notes about Schiller’s neologisms, which meant it was probably time to take a break and clear her head. After brewing a cup of tea and sipping it on the porch, she felt more focused, and returned to her desk with a renewed sense of purpose. There was still a muddle of thoughts churning at the back of her mind, but she was able to keep them in the background and concentrate on the pages in front of her long enough to call it a passable evening’s work. She bound up her notes, returned her books to their shelf, washed up for bed, and lay down.

Thoughts forced to the back of the conscious mind have a tendency to come to the fore at night, however, and Lydia woke in the dark shortly past one in the morning with a vivid dream still fresh in her mind. It had been about Rex, and they weren’t just taking a walk together. The dream had broken off, and she had woken up, just before the moment when ... She closed her eyes and tried to picture it again. She wasn’t sure if she wanted the dream to continue or not. Well, some corporal parts of her definitely wanted it to continue, that was clear, but another part of her felt troubled, and wished for dreamless sleep to finish the night.

Stilling the clamor of conflicting feelings and getting back to sleep wasn’t easy, but eventually her eyes got heavy, and as it turned out, the rest of the night did pass dreamlessly; she didn’t get to return to where she’d left off. When she woke again in the morning, it was with a pang of disappointment. The truth was, she really had wanted the dream to go on, very much.

She ate a moody breakfast, keeping a bland expression on her face and making the minimum amount of conversation at the table while her mind turned over the facts as objectively as possible: she’d had a dream about dog dick, and fundamentally, she hadn’t been bothered by it. Quite the contrary. She’d wanted more. Questions arose: How much more? With a dog? Really? Was it something her waking self would actually consider, or just something to leave in the dream world? She crunched a piece of buttered toast, and washed it down with tea.

Was it even possible? Well, she read widely enough to know the answer to that one for a fact: Yes, it was possible. That was a thing that people, and dogs, actually did. Would she? No, she thought, not with just any dog, anyway ... but Rex wasn’t just any dog. He was gorgeous, he was smart, and above all, she trusted him. With Rex, maybe she might be willing to try a few things. However, she decided -- as she polished off her egg and excused herself from the table -- it wasn’t even practical to consider. He wasn’t her dog. She had no chance to be alone with him. She only ever walked with him along the footpath on his way home from the store, and she knew how devoted he was to doing his job. He wouldn’t stop to play with her.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t hope for some more nice dreams, though.

While Lydia was cleaning up after her breakfast, Rex had long since finished his, and was lying in a patch of white clover with his head on his paws. He had accompanied Helen as she planted radishes and peas during the cool early hours, and got to fetch the cart of mulch from the shed, which was fun, because it was heavy and tricky to pull around the corner of the lane to the garden without tipping it. That was good work. But Helen was inside painting now, and wouldn’t want his help with anything for hours.

He had checked the orchard for unwary ground squirrels snoozing in the morning sun, but hadn’t found any. A walk around the fence line hadn’t turned up any interesting tracks or unexpected smells, just the usual birds and small rodents, none of whom were in evidence at the moment. He had startled a muskrat on the bank of the pond, but it disappeared into the water and didn’t surface again even after a long, patient wait. The spotted goat who sometimes liked to play chase was grazing and not in a mood to start a game, no matter how he tried to entice or provoke her. He considered opening the gate to let the goats out so that he could round them up and put them in again, but that had gotten him in trouble once before, and it wasn’t worth it.

One furry ear twitched as a beetle buzzed up out of the clover. A trip to town would be ideal. The girl at the store who loaded his bags might walk with him, especially if he did a little pleading. He was sure that she’d wanted something from him on his last visit, and another walk together could afford him the chance to be of some service, perhaps. However, he never left the Auer property without Helen’s permission, and there was little hope that she would send him to town again the very next day after he’d just been. Store visits didn’t come that often.

His ear twitched again. He stood up and shook off the wetness from the clover patch. No sense lying around there any longer.

As he padded up the slope toward the house, he weighed the options for what to do next but came up with nothing better than going inside to get a drink from his water bowl. Pestering Helen while she was painting was never a good idea, but it was possible that she might be doing something else by now. Or she might hear him come in and decide to take a break. He nosed open the swinging door at the back of the house and squeezed through into the mud room, where his bowl sat on a neat blue floor mat. After drinking his fill, he shook himself again and went to the kitchen to lie down and think.

The bag of coffee that he had brought back yesterday was on the kitchen counter, he noted. That was out of place. The coffee had such a strong smell that he was always aware of its location in the kitchen, and it was supposed to be up in the top of the tall cabinet next to the refrigerator. It only came out of the cabinet twice a day: first thing in the morning and then once more, later in the morning, when the sun was much higher in the sky. Each time, it was put away again properly in its place, leaving the counter tidy. Rex approved; he did not like leaving things out of place.

He knew that he wasn’t supposed to take things from the counter; that was basic kitchen law. But he was bored enough that the misplaced coffee nagged at him, and his mind wouldn’t turn away from it. He was about to go outside again, when something else sparked faintly in his collie brain. What happened when the smell of coffee in the kitchen dwindled, or disappeared?

Somewhat against his better nature, Rex put his paws up on the counter and grabbed the bag, which smelled overpoweringly strong so close to his nose. He couldn’t put it up in the kitchen cabinet, but he knew another, similar cabinet with a door that he could open, outside in the shed. There were a lot of other strong-smelling bags and packages there. The coffee would be neatly off the counter and put away in the right kind of place, even if it wasn’t exactly the right place. He shouldered through the mud room door and trotted out to the shed with the bag in his jaws, stowing it there among the bags of potting soil, lime, and cedar chips.

Satisfied that a problem had been solved, Rex took another lap around the fence line. A strange dog had come through the fence at some point that morning, but it was long gone, the tracks departing into the hardwood grove to the east. He left a mark on the fence, then headed back to the house again. As he approached the back door, he could hear that Helen was in the kitchen. Good. He could probably convince her to give him something to do, or at least exchange a few tricks for a biscuit.

Rex’s tail was wagging as he came into the kitchen. Helen stood by the sink, and he pressed happily against her legs. “Hi there, boy,” she said, giving him a scratch between the shoulder blades. “Busy morning?” He leaned his weight against her, angling for some continued backscratching.