Didn’t they? Because raising her rent two hundred a month and forcing her to sign a year’s lease would probably push her out, and she suspected they had to know that.
“Hey! Want some crookneck yellow squash? That stuff is still growing, can you believe it? Wait right here and I’ll get you some.” Conrad turned and loped back up his drive.
Carly sank back against her seat. Baxter nudged her shoulder with his snout. “I know,” she muttered. “I’m freaking out, too.”
Conrad returned with an armload of squash, and she took it, piling it into the front passenger seat, assuring him that she understood the rent situation all the while. Then she drove down to the cottage with squash rolling around in her seat and onto the floorboard.
She did not sleep well that night for two reasons—one, because of the rent, obviously. And two, because two dogs crawled onto the bed with her during the night, which, in the beginning, had been kind of nice and comforting, but by morning, they’d spread themselves out, leaving her just a patch of her own bed.
She woke up with a crick in her neck and a sixth-sense type of dread that things were about to go south. How could they not when you added another dog to the mix of dogs that you already hadn’t asked for? How could they not when you’d just heard about a two-hundred-dollar-a-month rent hike when you didn’t have a full-time job? It was just the laws of the universe—stuff was bound to happen.
Her first business of the day was to log Gordon into his blog. But with no dog walker—she wouldn’t be able to afford one now, for sure—and no place to park her two matching beasts, Carly had to take the dogs along with her. She parked in Gordon’s drive, took the dogs out of the car, and leashed them to a magnolia tree, where they lay side by side in a cool breeze, apparently a-okay with hanging out in the shade for a time with the water bowl she set up for them.
Gordon wasn’t home, but his housekeeper, the evil Alvira, was. Alvira wasn’t appreciative of the dogs, but Carly just smiled and went into Gordon’s office and logged him in to his blog. He hadn’t written anything but the initial blog post she had helped him with, and that was two weeks ago. So her plan was working beautifully! Not. She would need to rethink her five-point publicity proposal.
From there, she took the dogs with her to run a dozen errands—no way was she leaving Hazel with any pillows in the house, her brand-new subscription to Dog TV notwithstanding, which, if she was being honest, was pretty soothing for people, too. That was as much TV as she’d watched in weeks.
She took the dogs to her sister’s house when Mia called on the verge of tears, as she often did. “It’s Finn,” she said, referring to her oldest child, a five-year-old. “He’s the devil, Carly. Satan has inhabited his body, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
“Why? What’d he do?”
“He tried to flush his brother’s bear down the toilet. But it wouldn’t go down, so he got a stick to help it along. My bathroom is flooded, and the toilet is probably ruined, and Will called and said he had to extend his trip by two days. Two days!”
Mia did not handle stress well. Once, when Mia was pregnant with Millie, Carly had pointed out that she didn’t handle stress well, and Mia had almost come across the table for Carly’s throat. Thereby, Carly had further pointed out, proving her point.
“It’s too much, Carly. I can’t take another thing today. What am I supposed to do?” Mia cried into the phone. “Just tell me, What. Am. I. Supposed. To. Do?”
“I’ll be over,” Carly said. When Mia got like this, what she really needed was contact with an adult, and Carly was always the one on speed dial.
She showed up with Baxter and Hazel in tow. Mia took one look at the dogs, then at Carly, and shrieked, “What are you doing? Why do you have two dogs? Why are they in my house?”
“I told you the whole mix-up story. The second dog is the basset I found in my house. And, of course, you know Baxter.” Baxter wagged his tail. “I’m dog-sitting.”
Mia stared at her. Somewhere upstairs in this beautiful, modern home, a child screamed. Mia glared at Carly. “Carly? I can’t deal with your dog