Page 19 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)
Teagan
Something is wrong. The kids can sense it, too, even if they’re not aware of what has changed.
For three days, Elliott has grown quieter and more reserved than usual.
Deflated like the air has been let out of his tires.
He’s not a man who smiles much as it is—merely an uptick of one corner of his mouth here and there.
But even those have become rarer. Barely a twitch now, and those are solely for the kids. I don’t get any.
No, what I get is at most a quick glance before he looks away, even when I’m speaking directly to him.
I know well enough how quickly a man’s mood can change.
I’m terrified and pissed off that I’ve once again made the worst decisions and put myself and my kids in a situation where we have to walk on eggshells around a man so we don’t set him off.
My temper flares—at myself, not the kids—when Sydney and Kendall squeal and scream as they dart away from Dustin, who is chasing them around the cabin, the big bad wolf who is going to swallow them up if he catches them.
I should be able to enjoy their antics and boisterous laughter, especially since they’ve managed to find a physical activity and some joy after being cooped up inside for over a week.
Instead, I have to remind them that they’ll need to keep their voices down once Elliott is finished with his superhuman workout.
I don’t need a man as large and intimidating as him blowing up at the kids for being too loud, like Quincy used to.
That fucker . By the time I figured out who Quincy really was beneath his mask, I was completely out of options—which was his intention, I’m sure—and I had to urge the kids to stay out of his way until I could finally get rid of him for good.
Man, I still hate him as much, if not more, than I did Guxxer, and it’s disquieting how much I enjoyed his death. Guxxer’s, too.
I motion to the kids to end their game when Elliott bounds up onto the front porch.
“Who wants to do a puzzle with me?” I ask with a cheery voice, picking another one from the pile we hadn’t done yet—a rainbow array of cats wearing bikinis dancing on trash cans in an alley with giant margaritas raised in their paws. I’m sensing a theme here.
Dustin and Sydney flinch when the front door flies open with a bang.
All three children scurry away from Elliott to hide behind me, and once again, my anger and guilt threaten to erupt.
I did this. This is my fault. Their fear is my doing, and I curl my fingers into my palms, wishing I had grabbed Priscilla’s knife before Elliott burned it with the rest of the evidence.
I’d never go anywhere without it strapped to my side if I had.
“What’s wrong?” Elliott asks, his silver brows drawn below his sweaty forehead as he peers at the kids once he’s closed the door and kicked off his tennis shoes.
“Nothing,” I say between clenched teeth, and then my mouth drops open. “What is that?” I ask, staring at the mutant, wet creature in his arms .
Elliott crouches at my side, turning the bundle with skinny limbs and huge paws around with a genuine smile that softens his brutally masculine features. “Look what I found outside.”
“A big rat?” Dustin asks, scrunching his nose and leaning closer.
“Alien goat rat thingy,” Sydney says, kneeling in front of Elliott to study the creature, to which Elliott laughs so hard that it makes the tattoos on his thick middle dance in a nightmare theater.
“Doggy!” Kendall squeals around her thumb, crashing into Elliott’s side to lay her head against his arm, reaching out to thump the creature on the head.
I catch her wrist before she can hurt the poor thing, who, if you squint right, does kind of resemble a puppy. One so ugly that it’s adorable.
“We need to get him warmed up or he might not last the night,” Elliott says.
The kids trail after him to the hall bathroom like puppies themselves, their earlier fear forgotten.
They crowd around his back when he kneels at the side of the bathtub, turning the hot water on, testing the temperature with his wrist. I lean against the door frame with my arms crossed, watching the four of them while Elliott patiently explains how they don’t want the water to get too hot, how they’ll need to carefully wash the puppy, and what to feed him since we don’t have any dog food.
Dustin pushes past me with the biggest, toothiest smile on his face to look for any cans of evaporated milk in the kitchen pantry.
Sydney rushes to get towels from the linen closet in the hall, and Kendall helps lather a bar of soap in her tiny hands to wash the mud from the puppy’s short gray fur with Elliott’s guidance.
And I…smile, too. I smile and run into Elliott’s bedroom, figuring he left his phone on his nightstand, charged despite not being able to use it for much of anything. I hold the phone up and tell them, “Say cheese!”
Elliott’s eyes are strangely watery, and Kendall’s are pinch closed with the force of her exuberant smile pushing her chubby cheeks up. I take photo after photo when Dustin and Sydney make it back into the bathroom, each taking a turn to hold and wash the puppy until he’s no longer shivering.
“Come here, Birdie,” Elliott says, capturing my wrist after twisting to the side to sit on his bottom, pulling me down sideways on his lap.
He grabs the phone and holds it out, taking several pictures of just the two of us, one with his head turned to the side, kissing the edge of my jaw, then swinging his arm out to include all five of us, sheer joy on everyone’s faces.
And then it’s my turn to kneel over the side of the tub so I can hold the gangly puppy with a strip of white fur down his chest, his large jaw yawning wide. After Dustin drains the bath, Sydney cradles the towel-wrapped puppy on the couch beside Kendall.
“Where did you come from, huh? Where’s your mother?
” I babble to the puppy, running my forefinger down his short snout.
My shoulders tense, and I cut a look to Elliott, who still needs to warm up himself.
“Where’s his mother?” I ask louder, my eyes turning hot.
“There’s no way he survived this weather by himself. ”
Before I can think about my actions, I run to pull on Elliott’s denim jacket hanging by the back door, and then I’m out the front door like a slingshot. “Where did you find him?” I yell to Elliott over my shoulder, racing down the stairs that are no longer iced over, looking left and right.
“Under the stairs,” he says from right behind me, grabbing my elbow. “Go back inside. I’ll look for her.”
“No!” I rip my elbow out of his hand, hunching to squeeze through the gap under the stairs that is too small for Elliott to fit under. “Here, girl, here, girl,” I call out. “Where are you?”
My fingers go numb as I crawl on my hands and knees, patting the thawing ground. It’s so dark under here that I only happen to stumble across a shallow, roughly dug hole under the stone skirting of Elliott’s cabin.
“Oh man, oh man,” I repeat, clawing at the dense soil to deepen the hole. “Are you in there?” An answering whimper has me biting off a sob as I rake at the dirt with bits of rock mixed in, heaving it to the side. “Come here, girl, come here.”
A cold, wet nose nudges my hand, snorting hot air in short bursts, and I cry out with relief, straining my muscles to dig and dig and dig until the hole is big enough that I can reach under the skirting and help pull her out, her ribs prominent beneath my palms.
“Elliott!” I yell, backing out from under the stairs, sliding the dog across the ground since she lays on her side, panting shallowly, too weak to stand.
“Help her!” I beg, since she’s too big for me to pick up.
I clap a dirty hand over my mouth when I see she’s so much skinnier than a dog her breed should be—some kind of staffy-lab mix—especially when she’s still nursing.
Elliott easily lifts her and tells me to run inside ahead of him, but I refuse.
“Dustin!” When my son pokes his head out the front door, his eyes going wide at the large gray dog Elliott is carrying up the stairs, I tell him, “Find Papa’s phone and bring it to me.
” I point at the stairs, then crouch back under them.
“Here, here, here,” I call out, reaching into the hole to pat around until Dustin brings me Elliott’s phone.
“Get back inside, baby,” I tell him. “Papa is going to need help.” When he’s gone, I lie on my side and turn on the phone’s flashlight, sweeping the light around the crawl space with my face pushed into the newly dug hole.
“Here, here,” I repeat, holding back another sob when I can make out a small form scooting on its belly toward me.
“Oh, sweetie, come here, come here,” I urge again and again and again until the puppy is within reach.
I hold the puppy, a girl this time, under my chin while I sweep the crawl space twice more with the flashlight, looking for any other shapes.
Certain that the space is empty, I crawl out into the daylight with the puppy tucked under my jacket and T-shirt against my breast to keep warm, then take to circling the cabin again and again, no longer able to feel my toes through my soaked double layer of socks, checking and rechecking the skirting and surrounding bushes in case there are any more puppies hiding.
“Please, please come inside,” Elliott begs, trailing after me.
After his third plea is ignored, he finally forces me to stop searching by scooping me into his arms and carrying me and the puppy into the cabin. I work the puppy out from under my shirt and hand her to Sydney.
“Dustin, keep an eye on Kendall,” I can barely say with my teeth clacking loudly together, my fingers torn and bloody beneath the mud caking my hands, my body perhaps going into shock. “Where is she?” I ask when Elliott carries me past the empty hall bathroom.