Laughing, his grandfather shook his head. “Your grandmother will kill me.”
“Not if she falls in love first,” he said.
“And how will we do that?” he asked.
“How about I go in with the dog first?” he said.
Grandfather nodded eagerly. He was up for anything that would take the heat off him. They had another twenty minutes to think about it as they drove.
When they pulled up to the front of the house, Greyson awkwardly opened the truck door and carried the dog in his arms. His grandmother came flying out the front door, racing toward him. She tried to give him a hug, but Leo was in the way.
She looked at the dog, laughing a bit. “I don’t know who this guy is,” she said, “but he’s determined to be in the middle of our hug.”
“Let me put him down.” Greyson slowly crouched, letting the dog onto the ground. With the leash still in his hand, he leaned over the dog and gave his grandmother a hug.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said. Then she bent down and greeted the basset. “I didn’t know you were bringing a pet though. That couldn’t have been a nice flight.”
“Well, he wasn’t on the flight with me,” he said. “This is Leo. He was surrendered to a local shelter because his owner passed away. He’s been there for fourteen days, four days past their usual limit, so his days were numbered, and he’s very depressed.”
“Oh, you poor little thing,” his grandmother spoke to Leo, as if to a small child.
Obviously Leo already had a good idea of who the boss was around here because he did a great job of squirming in and showing her how much he wanted to spend time with her. When she straightened up, Greyson handed her the leash and said, “So glad to hear that you like him because he really needs a home.”
Her jaw dropped, and she looked at him in surprise, but Leo was already sniffling at her legs and wandering around at the end of his leash. “I feel like I’ve just been conned,” she said, but she crouched again and gave the basset a great big hug. Just then his grandfather appeared at his shoulder.
He looked at Greyson and down at her. “So, did it work?”
Greyson laughed. “I don’t know. The next part is up to you. You’ve got to convince her to keep him.”
She looked up at Grandfather and over at Greyson. “I can hear a story is behind this, but you’ve been talking about getting a dog for months now.”
“I didn’t want to get tied down,” Grandfather said, staring at the dog, “but I couldn’t leave him in that cage.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Come on in. Let’s see about getting this guy some food.”
And that was all it took. Leo had a new home. Feeling once again like his grandparents were the best, and wondering why he had cut them out of his life for so long, Greyson followed the two into the house, loving that they could see the ocean and had pathways all around, including ones to get down to the beach. Leo would absolutely love this. Lucky dog. And Greyson said as much when he walked in. “This dog has got a great home,” he said, “and so do you. This is a perfect place to live.”
“Now you know why we moved here,” she said. “But I have to admit it was pretty rough that we left just around the same time that you had your accident and ended up with all those surgeries.”
“I know,” he said, “but it wasn’t your fault.”
“No, but it seemed like we deserted you when you needed us most,” his grandmother said. She reached out and hugged him again. Then she bustled about in the kitchen, wiping at the tears in her eyes.
After she made coffee, and she still couldn’t calm down, he reached over, clasped her hands with his, and tucked her into a gentle hug. “It’s fine,” he said. “At that point in time, I needed to push everybody away so I could focus on me. You couldn’t have done anything for me while I was in that state anyway.”
“That’s not true,” she protested. “We would have been there for you.”
“You were there for me,” he said. “Physically, nobody could be there for me. I was a mess. I needed time and a lot of surgeries, and I wasn’t even cognizant of a lot of it,” he said. “Those months went by in a nasty blur, and I’m grateful they did, so that I had a chance to recover and to recuperate and to rebuild my life. Now I’m here, and you’re here, and you’re happy, and I’m fine,” he said with emphasis.
She smiled up at him mistily. “It was so hard to know what you were going through,” she said. “I’m so sorry that you had to suffer so terribly.”
“I know, and I’m sorry for the whole scenario. But it’s okay, and I’m fine now. I’m better than fine,” he said with a smile.
She smiled, then reached up and patted his cheek. “Well, you lie very well. There’s that.”
“I do,” he said, with a big laugh. “The bottom line is that it’s all good, Grandma. Really.”
She said, “Good then. You take these cookies over to the table, and I’ll pour some coffee.”
And that’s what he did. As soon as he sat down, Leo came lumbering over and sat on Greyson’s foot, looking for love. He gave the dog a good scratching; then Leo walked over to lie at his grandfather’s feet. Greyson nodded to his grandfather. “Good choice,” he said.
“I don’t know that there was any choice in it.” His grandfather reached a hand down, placing it on Leo’s head. “As long as it’s all good,” he said.
Greyson could see from his grandfather’s possessive stroking on Leo’s back that his grandfather was happy. And his grandmother? She had a soft smile on her face as she studied the man and his dog.
“Look at that,” she said. “You know something? I teased him for months and months about getting a dog, but he kept holding back. Now he’s with you for five minutes, and we already have a dog. What will we have in an hour or two?”
He burst out with a laugh. “Well, it was an accident that we went there in the first place. An accident in that Grandpa went along,” he corrected. “I’m here looking for a War Dog that was accidentally shipped to Hawaii instead of Denver.”
“How does that happen?” she asked in bewilderment. “Accidentally shipped to Hawaii? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“It doesn’t to me either,” he said, “but, once it was here, temporary arrangements were made for it to be housed by this shelter for a couple days, while another flight was scheduled. Only it disappeared that first night. I wanted to take a look at the actual location to make sure that the holding pen was adequate and to talk to someone firsthand.”
“And was it? Did they find it? What happened to it?”
He held up a hand at his grandmother’s questions. “They don’t have a clue. They don’t have any idea what happened to the dog.”
Jessica walked back outside again, her eyes constantly searching her huge backyard. When she had first found this house, she knew she had to rent it, as it would be perfect for Danny, with this great big backyard that he could grow into. And her landlord, knowing she was a single mom with a toddler, had installed security cams inside, just not in Danny’s bedroom or the two bathrooms. Yet her bedroom had a cam. Her landlord had a panic button installed in her bedroom, in case she ever had an intruder. Which was the extent of her interaction with the security system here, but it was everything to her. It made her feel safe.