What a Dog Knows Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  St. Martin’s Press ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  To David

  for more than a hundred mornings of walking the dog

  so that I could get to work

  PROLOGUE

  Back in the day, Ruby Heartwood—fortune-teller, seer, psychic—seemed exotic, mysterious, slightly dangerous. Now, for someone who dresses in a gold-brocade caftan and reads tarot cards in a conical tent with a pennant flapping in the breeze, she looks, well, dated. Madame Ruby isn’t drawing them in like she used to. The trouble with setting up at these Renaissance Faires is that it has become more Game of Thrones cosplay than an homage to the era of Camelot. Nowadays people seem to like seers with pyrotechnics. Today, one customer, dressed like a cross between a barbarian (as imagined) and Jared Leto, offered to let her read the chicken bones from his order from Ye Olde Pub Grub. Complete idiot. She declined, asked for his hand and read him a completely bogus fortune that included attracting a woman who would appear gnomish at first, but then be revealed as a femme fatale. Happily, the hairy jerk planted a sticky twenty in her hand and sloshed his Ye Olde Pub authentic “mead” all over the rug she had beneath her table. Even if she had actually been able to glean a real prognostication from his palm, she would have lied to him anyway.

  Ruby tries not to dwell on the fact that for the past few months it’s all been bogus readings. Her powers of interpretation seem to be on the decline—as in gone.

  The truth is, Ruby is ready to move on. If this had been a more lucrative gig, she’d stay through the rest of the weekend; but, really, there is no point. Another hundred bucks, and that’s being optimistic, won’t make or break her budget. It’s more imperative to listen to her instincts. This Renaissance Faire is tapped out. Time to go. The itch to be gone has evolved, as it always does, from a niggling idea to a compulsion.

  As she always does when it’s time to go, Ruby pulls out her atlas and opens it to the next state from where she happens to be. It’s not quite as random as, say, closing her eyes and dropping a finger on a page, but not too far off. Some would suggest that a fortune-teller might consult her tarot cards or tea leaves, but Ruby prefers a degree of planning over allowing fate to take the wheel. Forty years on the road, and she has learned that it’s better to move one hop at a time than take big strides. Better to have at least an idea of where she’s going. Both she and her VW Westfalia have aged out of eighteen-hour drives.

  Ruby packs up her tent, stows everything into the camper van that has been her home on the road since it was almost new, ever since her daughter, Sabine, went off to college and never returned to their wayfaring lifestyle. A decision that made it possible for Ruby to quit any pretense at needing a stationary place to call home. As she has said before, if you have a van you aren’t homeless.

  Since the advent of direct deposit and ATMs, cell phones and online bill pay, Ruby hasn’t spent more than a few weeks in any one place. She could. She could take up her daughter Sabine’s offer to use the little garage apartment attached to their house; settle into grandmother-hood and being useful to Sabine and her busy family. Those few times when she’d done that, made a concerted effort to be a normal mother, the claustrophobia descended. Not the kind of claustrophobia that would make one nervous about elevators, but the kind that gives Ruby the sense that she is being followed. Observed. As if she’s an object of someone’s curiosity. Not in the way that as a psychic she has cultivated curiosity. That kind of curiosity she stops attracting simply by taking off the gold brocade caftan, sweeping her hair back up into a twist and throwing on jeans and a T-shirt. Poof, just your average lady. Nothing to see here.

  This sense of being watched is neither ominous nor benign. Not comforting; not frightening. It is more a shadow or a glint in the corner of her eye. A presence that keeps Ruby’s hands on the steering wheel and her foot on the gas. Don’t catch me. When she was a kid, a runaway, she sometimes thought that it was her unknown mother looking for her, a fantasy only a little different than the imaginary reunions she and her fellow orphans indulged in. Different in that, even as a teenager, Ruby was pragmatic; her survival required her to focus on the here and now; keeping ahead of the law. Now that feeling of being sought has evolved into a simple habit—keep moving.

  Last night, for the first time in many a year, Ruby had a dream about her mother. She had no face, no voice, no presence, but Ruby had awakened knowing that the dream had been about the woman who left her behind.

  Ruby doesn’t bother to let the management know of her retreat. Some people call it an Irish goodbye, but for Ruby it is what she has always done. To simply vanish. Even on paper, Ruby doesn’t exist.

  PART I

  1

  Ruby can barely see the road in front of her beyond the smeary path left by the worn-out wipers. She’s on a back road, having gotten off the west to east highway an hour ago when the rain started coming down. Neither her wipers nor her nerves can take highway speeds in weather like this.

  In the random way of many rural roads, there is suddenly a stop sign in front of Ruby. She has run out of west to east road. Her choice is now left or right, North Farms Road or South Farms Road. The only vehicle on the road, Ruby can take her time deciding. She glances to her left, and there is the prettiest little house she thinks she’s ever seen. A perfect hobbit house of a place. Even in the downpour, the yellow of its clapboards and the bright white of its gingerbread trim glow. Maple trees with their new pale green cauliflower buds bounce in the gusts, framing the view. If there was a B&B sign hanging out front, Ruby thinks she’d stop, see about spending the night. But there isn’t. Press on. She signals to the empty road that she will be taking the South Farms Road turn. Within a few feet she spots a sign: HARMONY FARMS 10 MILES.

  At this point, Ruby has been on the road for most of the day and right now she just needs a place to pull the Westie off the road, eat her dinner and regroup. If the rain subsides, she’ll make a few more miles to her, as yet, undetermined destination. If the rain doesn’t let up, she can lock the van and go to sleep.

  A sudden streak of lightning and she sees a brown state park sign directing her to Lake Harmony. Perfect. She pulls the van into an empty parking lot, notes the restroom facility and the scattered picnic tables. It’s too dark now to see the lake, but she can make out the lights of homes sprinkled around the edges. Another lightning bolt, immediately followed by the boom of thunder, and she backs the van out from under a pine tree. No sense getting crushed if a tree should get struck and topple over.

  In the van she eats the leftover grinder from a rest stop Subway, cracks open a little screw top single serve bottle of wine. Home sweet home.

  Are you nervous? Being all alone, a woman, and all? How many times has Ruby had to deflect that question with a wave of her hand and a laugh? A thousand? A million? She doesn’t tell them that it’s being in company that makes her nervous. It would seem rather odd to admit that being around people who want to be with her is far more frightening than bunking
down alone in her automotive tiny house. Besides, like a Victorian lady, she does keep a little peashooter under her pillow at night, no bullets, but it’s a comfort. And, in forty years on the road, she’s never had occasion to use it. Ruby is a recluse with an active social life. Just don’t try to tie her down. Even her daughter can’t do it.

  As if conjured by her thoughts, Ruby’s phone buzzes with Sabine’s FaceTime alert. Time to bid the grandkids good night and endure another round of where-are-you-and-where-are-you-heading-now-and-why-don’t-you-come-here?

  “Hi, Ruby!” Two faces crowd the screen. Molly and Tom. Plain names, what Sabine likes to refer to as normal. Where so many of her mommy-peers are giving their kids trendy monikers, Sabine, who has had to explain her exotic name too many times, chose to give her kids what Ruby thinks of as plain vanilla names. But they suit them.

  “Hello, my darlings.” Ruby is fortunate in that she doesn’t have to do much heavy lifting in these satellite-powered versions of face-to-face conversation with her grandchildren. They are happy to give her a thumbnail sketch of a busy kid’s day, talking over each other as they bring Ruby up to speed on the last days of school and the intransigence of their parents in refusing to consider going to Disney as a summer vacation.

  And then they’re gone and the face on the screen is her one and only child. “Do not encourage them in this demand we be like everyone else’s parents.”

  “Now, Sabine, when have I ever chosen to be like other people?” Ruby smiles. “I will go to the mat for your right to rebel against societal norms.”

  “Yeah. So, where are you now?”

  “Come on, Sabine, use your talents.” Like Ruby, Sabine has the gift. A gift she has spent most of her life suppressing. A gift quite different from Ruby’s, not just as a reader of signs and portents, but as a medium; seeing ghosts, interpreting the astral plane. Nonetheless, Sabine is pretty good at reading psychic vibes.

  “Right now, my talent is pinning you someplace near a lake.”

  “Yes! See, you still have it.”

  “What I have is Find Friends.”

  Ruby’s concession to Sabine worrying so much about her wandering lifestyle was to agree to let Sabine add her to the app. “I have no idea where I am, somewhere between here and there.” It’s her old dodge of a joke. “Hey, it’s really coming down now and starting to thunder. I have to hang up.”

  “Go. Be safe. Call me in a couple of days.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too.” A statement Ruby had despaired of ever hearing while Sabine worked through her adolescent rebellions. “Hey, Mom, quick question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How old was I when I, you know, started feeling things?”

  “You had flashes of it by the time you were eight or so.” Ruby would ask Sabine why that particular question, but she already knows the answer. “Molly?”

  It seems as though it is an inherited trait, this business of sixth senses and visions and clairvoyance. Like the distinctive single freckle located at the corner of Ruby’s mouth, Sabine has the same small blemish. Once Molly had grown out of babyhood and her features become more of a little girl, Ruby had seen that she, too, bore this tiny hereditary marker. It simply stands to reason that Molly would grow into the other distinctive family marker.

  “I think so.” Sabine’s face on the tiny screen betrays a maternal blend of worry and acceptance. “And you, when did you get yours?”

  “About the same age, although it wasn’t until I was older that it became a problem.” It is a conversation like the one most mothers have with their daughters, except that the topic isn’t menstruation but psychic powers. “And, Sabine, the good thing is that Molly will never have to figure it out on her own.”

  “Like you did.”

  “Like I did.”

  She saw Karen fall on the playground, except that they weren’t on the playground, they were in the chapel, hands clasped in proper reverence for the morning’s prayers. She felt the burn of a skinned knee even as her own, bare between knee sock and plaid skirt, felt the smooth fabric of the kneeler. She wanted to reach over to Karen and comfort her friend even as Karen dutifully recited the prayers, oblivious to her upcoming accident. The feeling was so strong, so inevitable, that when Karen joined the queue to head out for their ten minutes of play before school, she grabbed her hand and jerked Karen back from going outside. “Mary Jones, what’s the matter with you? Let me go.” Karen yanked her hand out of Mary Jones’s and ran out of the chapel onto the playground and promptly tripped in exactly the way Mary Jones had seen in her mind’s eye. And Karen, knee bleeding and tears running, blamed Mary Jones for her fall.

  Ruby shuts off the little battery lamp on her pop-up table, pushes the curtains to the side, the better to enjoy the light show nature has provided for her entertainment. The storm is moving northeast and streaks of lightning illuminate the wind-roughened lake water in front of her van. She can hear the sloppy chop of water against a wooden pier jutting out away from the beach. A split second of brilliant lightning and an almost immediate crack of thunder and suddenly all of the lights across the lake are out. Within seconds, a second thunderbolt and the fine hairs on Ruby’s arms stand up; her whole body tingles. The darkness is complete. Then a searing brightness that lasts for a full five count. Ruby closes her eyes against it. When she opens them, she fumbles for her lamp and turns it on, pulls the van’s curtains across the windows. Squeezes through the space between the two front seats and sets up the folding privacy screen against the windshield. It’s a weak measure against the brilliance of the electric show outside, but she feels better. Except that the tingling is not subsiding.

  Another person might be concerned, but Ruby sits and listens to this phenomenon, studies it for meaning. A normal person might think she’s been lightly electrocuted, but Ruby doesn’t. She may not have gone beyond an eighth-grade education, but she knows that the van, on its four rubber tires, sitting in sand, out from under trees, and with its aerial long gone, is grounded.

  Auguries and signs. Portents and forebodings. The ozone is thick in the air. She can smell the pine, the water, the very sand and where it changes from beach to loamy trail. She can hear beyond the heavy rain the sound of a fish jumping. This has happened before—a literal recharging of her senses. Whether it simply manifests itself as a better sense of smell or as renewed extrasensory powers, she won’t know until she is tested. But one thing Ruby is certain of, something is about to change.

  2

  Ruby dreams again of her mother. This time she hears her voice. Of course, she cannot possibly know what her mother’s voice sounded like as she has never heard it. Or seen her face. Or felt the touch of her hand. Nonetheless, someone is speaking to her, a faceless entity. Please open the door. Let me in.

  Ruby opens her eyes, pushes back the café curtain in the Westfalia. The light gracing the lake shimmers in the dawn. The blue sky above the lake’s surround of green pines is cloudless. It’s a pretty day. The dream has dissipated, but not the sense of hearing a voice.

  Open the door.

  “Oh geez.”

  Not her dream-mother, but some stranger outside her van asking for admittance. Jumping up, Ruby slips a sweatshirt over her T-shirt, pushes open the café curtain on the door side of the van, and looks out. No one there. Then she hears a rough scratching against the side of the van, too rhythmic to be a branch. She slides the heavy door a few inches and looks out, then down. Looking up at her is a small black and white dog. It has a goofy grin on its face, as if it’s brought her a surprise. Please let me in.

  Ruby sinks back onto the bench. Scowls. She slips the derringer into the palm of her hand, then pulls aside the café curtains on the other side of van, looks out. Still no one. No one human.

  In, please.

  Ruby jerks open the van door to its fullest and steps out, looks for the ventriloquist who has woken her with his foolish parlor trick. But it is only the dog. Taking her silence for pe
rmission, the dog jumps into the van, jumps onto the bench, circles three times and is instantly asleep.

  “Hey, you can’t do that. Out.”

  The dog opens one eye. “You invited me in.”

  It’s not like the dog’s mouth is moving, or even that she’s hearing its voice with her ears, it’s more like she’s being inhabited by some kind of auditory mist. It’s all in my head, she thinks. And yet it doesn’t feel entirely unfamiliar. It is almost exactly the same misty sense that she gets when she has an actual intuitive moment with a client. Or when she was a child, just finding out about her clairvoyant powers, and would see the future or the pain or the conflict residing within a person. In this case, she is hearing what the dog thinks. It’s not even that what’s bouncing around in her mind are actual words, it is the language of images and senses, not speech. Gingerly, she reaches out and touches the dog on its furry back. There is a mild vibration, a tingling that courses up through her fingertips and suddenly her mind is filled with sounds which feels like she’s breathing them in. It’s like a sudden onset synesthesia, where scent translates into colors. In this case, the olfactory becomes visual. She hears grass and macadam; the way a child’s skin is soft; the way loss is unspeakable. She pulls her hand away. Her heart is racing, her hands shaking. Ruby is suddenly dry-mouthed. She leaves the van, leaving the door wide open and runs to the park’s restroom. Scooping water from the faucet, she drinks and then splashes her face. Catches her breath. “This is crazy.”

  If she can understand what this dog is thinking, what does it expect of her?

  Refreshed from its brief nap, the dog greets Ruby outside the van, bows and stretches. Shakes. Squats, and Ruby sees that this is a little girl dog. Ruby sits down, pats her knee and the dog bounds over. “What do you want?” She doesn’t touch the dog, wanting to see if this phenomenon will happen without a physical connection. She leans down, and the dog gives her a tiny kiss. “I want to be with you.”