Free Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes by Carol Lea Benjamin

course, being a dog, she always had a little time in her busy schedule for affection, both the giving and the getting. And maybe sometimes, at night, when everyone was safe in bed, there’d be time for those long snuggles, the sort Dashiell specialized in.
    Dashiell was different. You could see the difference in their body types—one built for speed, the other for heavy lifting. No wonder Dashiell was performing miracles here. He started cautiously, waiting for the invitation to press in closer, an invitation that would come in the form of a slower heart rate and deeper respiration, things that told him he was welcome, oh, so welcome, and that he, too, could let go. And when he did, he was just what the doctor ordered—a squeeze machine.
    I watched him sleep, his sides moving slowly in and out, his face distorted by his own weight, which seemed to flatten him against the cool earth. I waited until 5:15, then gave him some water, and we headed for the gym and the continuation of Venus’s story.

Chapter 10
    I'd Never Heard His Voice

    I got to the gym before Venus, tied Dash to the bench, and signed in. Serge put down his newspaper and went for the green water basin.
    I took the comer treadmill, putting the power on, starting the belt, and slowly increasing the speed. In front of me, outside the window, which was covered with a taupe shade to keep the sun from blinding anyone working out, the orange-and-white striped barrels that blocked off areas of construction, yellow tape strung between them, kept traffic off the newly paved lane closest to the broken sidewalk. The men in their orange hard hats and vests we had seen on our way to the pier had gone home by now, construction work starting and ending earlier than the average workday. How else could they make all that noise, jackhammers, earthmovers, and cranes clanging away when the rest of the world is still trying to sleep?
    I hadn’t seen Venus arrive, coming from the north, signing in, and going straight to the ladies’ locker room, then appearing on the treadmill to my right. I had questions about the kids—David, Jackson, Charlotte, and the twins—and I wanted to know who had made all those pictures of the tree, the one with the unfinished squirrel. But I didn’t know how long she’d have today, and I needed to hear her story, find out why she thought her life was in danger, figure out what to do if it was.
    “Did you keep writing him?” I asked, as if she’d told me a minute, not a day, ago that the man she’d met on-line was married.
    “I did,” she said, fiddling with the buttons on her treadmill.
    I looked out the window, the hook hanging from the crane parked across the highway dark and ominous looking against the sky. What was the hook here, I wondered, wasting time caring about a man who was married to someone else?
    “She was ill,” he said.
    Uh-huh, I thought. Companion piece to “My wife doesn’t understand me,” or, more nineties, “We have an arrangement.”
    “She had cancer. There had been a remission. But after four and a half years, the disease came back. It had gone from the breast to the bone, and she was dying.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    “When she was in the hospital, he was there every day. He went in the morning, early. Then after work, he went back. He spent the evening with her. Sometimes he sat quietly by the bed, holding her hand. Sometimes he’d read to her. He’d tell me what he was reading, and I’d get the book. I’d read it, too.”
    I turned to look at her, dreadlocks loose today, hanging around her pretty face, her big eyes shining as she told about this man she loved, this married man who was so tender when his wife was dying.
    Or so he wrote.
    “For months, I read the books he read to his wife, listened to each new symptom, knew the names of the medications she was on, stayed up late, writing him, giving him letters for company when he was lonely.”
    “Did he talk about an autistic kid?”
    She shook her head,