Home Is Where Your Bark Is

Chapter 27

Snowflakes stinging her cheeks, Jenna checked her phone for what must’ve been the tenth time in the last few minutes. Given how patchy cell service was in the crux of the crowd, it was likely pointless to expect a text from Jake right now. What if he hadn’t caught up to Seven, and the terrified dog was still on the loose? Her belly in a knot, she did her best to not to crescendo into worry over the various dangers awaiting a dog running loose in the city, especially given how tens of thousands of cars would be hitting the streets in the next hour as attendees attempted to get home ahead of the front pressing in.

As he’d chased after Seven, Jake had yelled over his shoulder for her to still meet him as planned, but Jenna wished she’d have clambered over the steel barricade and run after them rather than continue on the last couple blocks of the parade. Jake’s a runner, she reminded herself. I’d have slowed him down.

Judging by the well-meaning jeers and several “What a cutie!” exclamations when she’d caught up with her family, close to half of Jenna’s thirty or so cousins, aunts, uncles, and family friends participating in the Walsh family float today had witnessed her PDA with Jake, but no one seemed to have noticed that Seven got away.

As the parade slowed to a crawl, Jenna scanned the crowd ahead of her. She’d forgotten about the backup at 115th as those who still had beads and trinkets left over slowed their pace to toss them to the crowds clamoring for more. A brisk wind whipped about, sending a slurry of snowflakes in all directions, making Jenna shiver harder in spite of the body heat pressing in from all around.

While most of the group had taken turns riding up on the flatbed trailer and walking, Stuart had walked the whole time while pulling his family’s wagon. For the last half hour, Joseph had been curled up in it under a blanket, fast asleep. A few minutes ago, Sam had gotten back on the low-bed trailer and was sandwiched in between a couple of his second cousins. They were using a green plaid blanket over their heads as a tent and occasionally sticking their heads out in an attempt to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

After she worked her way over, Monica brushed Jenna’s arm. “Hey, I saw how Seven ran away. He’s going to be okay. I’m sure of it.”

Tears instantly stung Jenna’s eyes. Prior to this, they hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words to each other in the last eight days. With a dozen family members here who neither of them had seen all year adding to the commotion of the parade, both sisters had other things to focus on besides the fact that they were still holding grudges after last weekend’s fallout. Until now, Jenna hadn’t realized how much this had been wearing on her. Frustrating as her sister could be at times, Monica was her person, and tears of relief at this olive branch burned her eyes. “What if Jake hasn’t caught him yet? All these people are about to get in cars, and half of them are drunk.”

“Hopefully not the drivers.” Monica looked round as if this was sinking in for the first time, and her lips puckered into a slight frown. “And if he hasn’t caught him, Stu and I will load up the boys and drive around looking for him. You can ride with us. We can ask everybody else to drive around, as well.”

“Thanks. Only I think I’ll stay on foot.” A few tears slipped over her lids. “It’s my fault Jake brought him here in the first place. I never should’ve mentioned it. Seven did so good at the training center this week that it seemed like a good next step. That stupid man with the horn!”

“I don’t know if it helps, but I doubt that man even noticed Seven was there. I think everyone in a half-mile radius was looking right at you and Jake. Those were some serious fireworks going off.”

Jenna’s cheeks were too numb to flush further. “I’m kicking myself. Trust me.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. That’s not what I meant.” Monica touched her arm again. “Sometimes things just happen. And sometimes it takes a while to realize something good comes out of them.”

Jenna couldn’t imagine anything good coming from this. She checked her phone again and blinked in surprise to find a missed call and two texts from Jake had actually come through. Even with her phone on loud, she’d not heard it in this crowd. The first text was the location of his car. The second nearly had her knees buckling.

Almost had him but some drunk guys scared him off. Now I lost him. Call me when you can.

Jenna clamped a hand over her mouth. Ahead of her, the parade had come to a complete standstill. “He doesn’t have him yet. I gotta go. It’ll be a half hour or more before this clears up. I can’t wait that long.” Even though she was back to having zero bars of reception, she typed in a quick reply and attempted to send it several times only to receive Not Delivered notifications each time. “Crap! There’s no service again.” She slipped her phone into her back pocket as a wave of unease threatened to get the best of her.

“What about your coat and your stuff? Didn’t you leave it with Aunt Bridgette? It’s freezing, and your lips are nearly blue as it is.”

“I’ll be okay,” Jenna insisted, scanning for the best path through the rapidly condensing crowd.

Monica locked a hand over her arm. “Let me get you one of the blankets from the wagon, at least.”

“By pulling it off Joseph?” Jenna raised an eyebrow, and when their eyes met, Monica’s lips quirked into a smile.

“I can see when I’m arguing a lost cause. I’ll grab your stuff from Aunt Bridgette, and we’ll call you when we get the boys loaded.”

After asking Monica to say her goodbyes for her and to explain what had happened, Jenna snaked through the crowd and over to the line of steel barricades separating the parade route from the spectators. Within fifty or so feet in either direction, there wasn’t a single break in the metal fence line. Jenna headed for the nearest spot where two barricades were joined only to realize that the way they were designed, it would be nearly impossible to separate them at any place other than at the end or beginning of the line.

Ignoring the catcalls from a handful of college kids who were too drunk to realize she was too old for them, Jenna attempted to lodge the two barricades free, but doing so created a ripple and clanking that extended down several barricades in both directions.

“Hey, you can’t be doing that,” someone called out from not far behind her.

Jenna turned to find one of the police officers on her side of the barricade making his way over. “Sorry. I need to get over. There’s a dog running loose in the streets because of me, and I need to help find him.” She pointed ahead of them. “And I can’t wait to wade through that.”

“All the same, these barriers are like dominoes, and you can’t be taking them apart.”

“Hey!” one of the college kids yelled, “You were the one making out with that guy back there.” This set off a chain of remarks and hoots that did nothing to further her plight.

“I saw that dog run off.” A few feet down, a kind-looking woman lifted a camping chair over the top of the barrier. “Step up on this, and we’ll help you over.”

When Jenna saw that the officer wasn’t going to object, she took the chair and braced it firmly on the ground next to the barricade as someone else set another one up on its other side.

The police officer reached out to offer his hand, and Jenna took it. The crowd was noisy on the other side and pressing in close, and she was glad to have him standing next to her while attempting this. It was harder than it looked, balancing on a camping chair, but after a bit of effort, Jenna hoisted a leg over and planted her foot squarely in the center of the other one, and once her other leg was over, getting down proved far easier than getting up. “Thank you all. I really do need to help find this dog.”

Both the police officer and the woman wished her luck at the same time, and Jenna thought how if Monica had been standing here, she’d surely have said “Jinx.”

By the time Jenna had wedged her way through the dense crowd of spectators, enough adrenaline was coursing through her that for the first time in the last few hours, she no longer felt the cold pressing in. Even so, the flurries were falling fast enough now to collect on her sweater at the tops of her shoulders and the mounds of her breasts.

She kept moving a full two blocks to get some distance from the crowd before reaching around to pull her phone from her pocket, only to grasp an empty pocket. She flattened both hands against her back jeans’ pockets, then her front ones. It wasn’t here. She clamped a hand against her mouth as she scanned the ground behind her. This wasn’t possible.

It could’ve fallen when she was climbing over. Or one of those dozens of people bumping into you could’ve been someone stealing it.

Jenna began to run back toward the parade, even though doing so made her throat sting from the cold. If she’d lost it while she was climbing over, surely someone would’ve seen it fall. Wouldn’t they have?

This wasn’t her. She didn’t lose her phone. She’d never lost her phone. Jenna was the one to show up on time, to come prepared with everything she needed. She didn’t lose things or get pickpocketed in crowds because she wore her stuff in a zipped cross-body bag against her chest. Except for on parade day—the one day this year she’d let her ego get the best of her because she wanted to look good and not look weighted down by a cross-body bag. Assuming she’d be surrounded by people she trusted, she’d brought nothing more than her phone and hadn’t thought twice about slipping it into her back pocket. Only now she’d lost it, and she’d separated from both Jake and her family.

This wasn’t happening.

By the time Jenna made it back to the spot where she’d crossed over the barricade, her throat stinging from running in the frigid air, the crowd was changing. Some people had left while others had pressed in, hoping for more of the trinkets being handed off at the parade’s end, and just about everybody left was drunk. “Hey, can I get by, please? I think I dropped my phone. Has anyone seen a phone?” she called over and over.

“Hey, I gotta phone for you! Right here.”

Jenna glanced over and was only half-surprised to find some wasted guy flashing her, his junk shriveled from the cold and anything but worth advertising. One of his friends shoved him, asking if he wanted to get arrested. “Sorry,” the friend called her way. “We’ll pummel him into bits if he tries that again.”

“When he sobers up, maybe tell him with a model that worthless, he shouldn’t be advertising it to anybody,” Jenna shot back before walking on, a “Well played!” trailed after her.

The woman who’d offered her the chair was nowhere to be seen. She was not a pickpocket, Jenna promised herself, not that helpful woman. No, it had either fallen to the ground, or someone else had swiped it.

She walked the area back and forth several times before giving up. When they heard what she was looking for, a few people asked if she needed to make a call, but none of them ended up having any service. Finally, she gave up.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said to no one in particular.

She had no idea where Jake was or where he’d parked. She no longer knew where anyone was. But she did know where her sister and Stuart had parked—most of her family had parked within a block of one another, and she’d spotted the Traverse earlier. With the kids and the wagon, Monica and Stuart would be moving slower than she could—assuming they didn’t hop into the back of the float once her uncle made it out of the quagmire at the end. Determined to catch up with them, Jenna worked her way free from the crowd and fell into the thin stream of people heading off.

Even while alternating between a jog and a brisk walk—her throat burning the whole time—it took a full twenty minutes to get there. She needed to backtrack almost to the start of the parade while weaving through the crowd, but she moved fast enough to keep the cold at bay as more and more snow tumbled down, the flakes thick and wet, sticking on the branches, railings, bushes, and grass and, eventually, the sidewalk and street.

Finally, she made it to 105th and Oakley. The Traverse was gone, marks from its tires having left unmarred tracks in the little bit of snow that had collected alongside its tires. Exhausted, cold, and thirsty, Jenna could barely keep herself from collapsing to the ground in a sob. Could it really have only been an hour or so since she’d been standing there kissing Jake and thinking how beautifully life had fallen into place?

In the now-dense snow that dumped from the sky, Jenna figured time had to be playing tricks on her. A single hour couldn’t flip everything on its head so fast, could it?

Didn’t the accident prove it could?

All the same, she’d lost her phone, couldn’t get a hold of her sister to tell her, and had no idea where Jake might be. And worst of all, Seven was quite possibly still out there somewhere, running and lost and even more afraid than her.