it to stay away, do I straighten. The dog takes that as an invitation to jump up and put its rough paws on my shoulders.
“Down,” I say. “Get down.”
It drops to the floor and sniffs me in that totally awkward way. My purse slips from my shoulder and hits the floor while I twist and block the dog, all the while trying to remain calm. I remember reading somewhere that dogs can smell fear. Why doesn’t Calloway control his freakin’ dog?
Calloway returns from another room—now relieved of my suitcases and backpack. A yellow-toothed smile breaks across his face. “I see you’re getting acquainted with Lucy.” He chuckles. “Golden retrievers are supposed to be water dogs, but she doesn’t like it at all, and by the time I figured that out she’d kinda grown on me. So…she won’t be going on the fishing trip, but she’ll be good company for you. She thinks she runs this place, anyway.”
Calloway strips off his plaid wool shirt, which he wears like a jacket over a faded black T-shirt, and throws it recklessly over a kitchen chair. He gestures for me to follow him toward the back of the house, and I take a tentative step away from the door before hurrying to catch up. The dog trails right behind me, a low rumble in her throat. Calloway reproaches her, and she sniffs the back of my knee.
“These are the sleeping quarters,” he says, gesturing through an open doorway to the left of the kitchen. There’s no doorknob, only a wrought-iron latch. He takes my purse from me and tosses it through the doorway where it lands with a thud on the floor alongside my suitcases and backpack. “Lucy sleeps at the foot of the bed. Good luck convincing her otherwise.”
“You didn’t mention anything about a dog in the ad.” I’m going to kill Macie.
He looks at me guiltily. “A kid in town suggested I advertise in his old college newspaper, but it charged more per letter than the normal papers. I was being economical.”
I continue to stare back, unblinking. Oh, no. No no no no. This is not happening to me.
“Plus,” he says gruffly, “I was in a bind. I couldn’t afford to scare off any more applicants by mentioning Lu. Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t sound sorry at all.
“Here are the keys.” He tosses them in the air, and I fumble the catch before getting my pinky finger caught in the ring. “Now, I hope you don’t mind, but it can get pretty lonely up here.”
“I don’t mind being alone.” I watch the dog warily and wonder if there’s a kennel on the island. “In fact, are you sure you don’t want to take your dog with you?”
“Have a seat.” He kicks one of the red lacquered kitchen chairs back from the round oak table, and it makes a scraping noise across the floor.
I pause again and survey the chair. If I sit, I’ll be closer to the dog’s mouth, which is already panting its hot breath all over the palm of my hand. Betta fish are one thing, but my anxiety with animals grows proportionally with their size. There’s no way I’m spending the summer with a dog.
Calloway tries to tune the radio to a combination polka channel/farm report, then he comes back to the kitchen table, flips another chair around, and straddles it backward. “I want to make myself clear. I usually don’t hire summer girls as young as you, but when your friend called, she said you were a very detail-oriented person. That’s good, see, because this place is my baby. Nothing’s too good for my baby. That’s why I don’t hire one of the local girls.”
Something he sees on my face tells him I don’t understand.
“My granddad was the lighthouse keeper, but the Coast Guard decommissioned it in thirty-two. About twenty years ago, the town council planned to tear it down.” He huffs and coughs, turning his head into his shoulder.
“I started a petition to have it added to the Register of Historic Places. Won that fight and bought the place. I never trusted most of the people in this town after that.”
He pulls a piece of paper out from God knows where—it’s like a freaking magic trick or something—then slaps it on the table. “How are you with lists?” he asks.
I raise my eyebrows. Is he kidding?
Apparently not, so I deadpan, “I’m the Queen of Lists.”
“Good.” He then proceeds to give me the rundown on the weekly