kept trying to romp with a litter of black Labs.
She heard Ranger scratching at the back door. He’d been totally occupied in the yard, digging after something—a mole probably—and she’d been grateful for the respite while they ate dinner. She’d been worried about Brody seeing just how little progress she’d made with Ranger in the last few weeks. She’d bought a book on dog training and had even read a chapter. But as for putting any of it into practice…
“I’ll get him,” Brody said, rising on his considerably long legs and placing his napkin in his chair—a sign of good manners Esther hardly saw anymore. Most people didn’t know you weren’t supposed to place your napkin on the table until you’d finished your meal. Clearly someone had raised him right, burned turkey or not.
A moment later, the dog bounded into the dining room. He immediately started jumping in place next to Esther’s chair, barking his demand for table scraps. Brody followed right behind him. Esther was about to reprimand the dog—for what little good that would do—when Brody’s deep voice barked a command of its own.
“Down, Ranger.” His words, as well as their no-nonsense inflection, brooked no argument.
Ranger stopped jumping, sat, and looked up at him. Esther couldn’t tell whether the dog was surprised or cowed. Either way, she didn’t expect it to last very long. Brody sank back into his chair, picked up his knife and fork, and began eating. Ranger whimpered from his prone position on the floor but otherwise didn’t protest.
“How did you do that?” Esther asked, trying to keep the awe in her voice to a minimum. No sense letting Brody know just how impressed she was with him.
He laughed. “Years of practice. I learned early on that a vet’s got to establish himself as the alpha dog. Otherwise, I’d be toast.”
“That’s what I need to know. How to make Ranger think I’m the alpha dog.”
He shrugged. “It’s easy really. You just withhold things. Food, affection.” He shot her a sidelong look. “Sleeping on the bed.”
Esther blushed.
“If you do that,” Brody continued, “you’ve got the upper hand. You have what they want, but they only get it when you say so.”
A chill, sudden and fierce, swept through Esther at his words. You have what they want, but they only get it when you say so. The forkful of duck she was chewing, which only a moment ago had tasted like heaven, now had the consistency and flavor of sawdust.
In that moment, with Ranger quiet at her feet and Brody happily consuming a heaping plate of her carefully prepared Christmas Eve dinner, Esther Jackson experienced an epiphany. Unwanted, unannounced, but an epiphany nonetheless.
“That’s all?” she managed to choke out. Her voice sounded amazingly casual. It held none of the stark realization, the sudden avalanche of remorse that pinned her to her chair. “You just withhold?”
Brody nodded. “Works every time. Like everything else in life, it’s about power. Dogs know that, just like people do.”
Esther couldn’t make a response. Years of behavior, her own behavior, were suddenly stripped of all the justifications and rationalizations. She’d wielded her power to withhold ruthlessly over the years. It had been for a good cause—or causes, to be more accurate. Frank’s career, Alex’s upbringing, social success, the betterment of Sweetgum. But when she’d had the power, she’d used it to further her own ends, demanding that others do everything her way, and now it was gone.
Which meant that whoever she had been, she couldn’t be that person anymore. And if she couldn’t be the person she’d always been, who was she now?
Esther had not planned on having an existential crisis in the middle of Christmas Eve dinner. She took a long drink of iced tea to cover her discomfort. “Why aren’t you with your family this year?” she asked to divert her thoughts from herself. She had no interest in trying to reconstruct herself as a person, at least not until they’d had dessert. Better to deflect the conversation onto Brody. Only at her question, he started to look as uncomfortable as she felt.
“It just didn’t work out this year.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she tried again. “I don’t even know where you’re from.”
“Chattanooga.” He didn’t offer any further information.
“And will your sisters be at your parents’ house?”
He shrugged. “Probably. They’re not too happy with me at the moment.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m here, on call for vet emergencies, instead of with them.”
“But—”
“You do have a great house,” he said, looking around the dining