She tries the front door. Though she and Zev got lucky sometimes, it’s locked. Lifting a welcome mat sprayed with snow, La La uncovers a thin layer of displaced earth, crumbling leaves that escaped a blower, but no key. She sifts through damp, brown mulch in a large planter sheltered under the eaves. Bingo.
Tires hiss through the snow. She wonders whether it’s the homeowners returning. If you don’t count the key in her hand, she hasn’t done anything illegal—yet. A fire has lit beneath her wool coat. When the car passes, she reconsiders and starts back toward her Honda.
She’s taken only two steps when pain shoots through her, and she clenches her jaw. He must be fussing with the ear. Her eyelids sweat. Opening her palm, she sees the key.
In the entryway, a sign above an oak bench reads KINDLY REMOVE YOUR SHOES. La La’s boots drip onto the bamboo flooring. The sign isn’t meant for her. The Labradoodle approaches and sniffs her, his collar embroidered with the name “Clyde.” La La scratches his chin, her fingertips disappearing in soft curls, her pulse slowing. Animals are incapable of deceit. They don’t say, “I’m making a run to the grocery store,” while secretly planning to leave you. Crouching, La La offers the dog a biscuit and observes while he chews.
The house is quiet, except for a furnace that breathes like a dragon. Outside, the wind twists tree branches, brushing them against a window. A thump behind La La revs her heart. She wheels around, scrambling to her feet, but it’s only a cat. He knocked her bag from the bench and scratches his claws against it. Reclaiming her property, La La pulls out an otoscope and examines the dog’s ear. A foxtail is embedded in the canal. The barbed seed heads lodge there when people take their dogs hiking and can lead to serious infection. In rare cases, death. It’s unusual for it to happen in the winter but not unheard of. Why didn’t his owners—who must have heard him cry and seen him scratch—take him to the vet? She’d report them for animal cruelty if she weren’t in the house illegally.
She wipes sweat from her forehead onto the sleeve of her coat. “I can’t sedate you, but you’ll have to hold still.” The dog plants his paws as if he’s appearing before a judge in the Westminster Show. With a pair of alligator forceps, La La removes the foxtail. “That’ll be eighty-five dollars,” she says, holding out her hand. The dog places his paw in her palm.
As she’s about to leave, she notices a white envelope on a coffee table, Donella written on the outside. She picks it up and opens it, revealing a stack of twenties. Payment for a housekeeper? Without thinking, she stuffs the envelope down the front of her jeans and rushes to her car. It will make only a small dent in the payment for O’Bannon, yet she feels relief having taken it.
Anxious to get away, she drives too fast, her tires slipping on snow. As she pulls over in front of Zev’s house, she has trouble stopping and nearly slides into his van.
Inside, Zev takes her coat.
“I would only do as many jobs as it took to pay O’Bannon. I’d finish school next year,” La La says, as she sits on a kitchen chair.
Zev sets a mug before her. “What if you get caught?”
La La’s chest tightens. “Only one out of every eight burglaries is solved. Aren’t you the one who told me that? Sloppy jobs done by drug addicts and kids on crime sprees. Amateurs. You worked for years without getting caught.”
“It’s gotten trickier,” he says. “People have doorbells that send video to their phones. Don’t know why they have to make it so tough.”
“Terribly unfair,” La La says, laughing despite herself.
“It’s not funny. We’ll figure out something that doesn’t involve you.”
“Like what?”
“If I knew, we wouldn’t have to figure it out.” He sits opposite her. “Maybe my father will lend me the money.”
It’s been nearly two decades since La La saw her grandfather Sam, a man quick to anger, who’d broken two of their dining room chairs, raising them up and violently reintroducing them to the floor. Eventually, Elissa moved meals to the kitchen, where the chairs had metal legs, when he visited. He used to join them for Thanksgiving, complaining about the healthy side dishes she made—whole roasted yams, stir-fried string beans, and the tofu he called “soy paste.”
Yet he always had a Hanukkah present for La La: a key-chain light, a notepad shaped like a duck, chocolates wrapped in foil and stamped with Jewish stars. Small things she kept on her nightstand, or in the case of the chocolate, devoured. But after Elissa left, he visited only once. When La La told him Zev was teaching her at home, he said to her father, “You? A teacher? Tell me another one.”
“I’m not that bad,” Zev said, without conviction.
“You’ll ruin her life.”
“Like you ruined mine?”
Their voices rose, and La La ran to her room and shut the door.
She can’t imagine Sam giving Zev money, though there’s no harm in asking. The cash meant for Donella presses against her stomach. She intended to tell Zev about it but changes her mind.
* * *
That afternoon, La La joins her friend Nat at a reservoir for their weekly hike. Fifteen years La La’s senior, Nat enrolled in veterinary school after a career in finance, and La La was immediately drawn to her more mature classmate. They met in a large-animal anatomy lab their first year. Nat wore rubber boots, while La La, still trying to impress her classmates, sported new tennis shoes. Formaldehyde soaked the sneakers by the end of their first session dissecting a horse Nat named Secretariat. La La’s favorite scrubs were ruined, too.
They share more than veterinary school. Once, after they drained a pitcher of beer at the Longview Tavern, Nat confided that her husband, Tank, had done time for drug possession. La La confessed her own criminal past and Zev’s. She was tired of keeping secrets, and it felt good to return Nat’s trust. Just as she hoped, Nat didn’t judge her, just made a joke about Zev and Tank both having a thing for stripes.
Even now, when La La says, “Zev was arrested,” and tells Nat the story, her friend frowns sympathetically. But La La doesn’t really expect Nat to agree when she blurts out, “I’m considering doing a few jobs.” Perhaps what La La actually wants is to be talked out of it.
A gray mist hovers beneath the sky. Nat pulls a bright wool cap over her ears, hiding her pixie cut. “Risky.”
“I haven’t told Clem.” La La struggles to untangle the dogs’ leashes, but they’re pulling in opposite directions.
Nat grabs their collars. “Could be hard on the victims.”
Freeing the leashes, La La hands Blue’s to Nat. “It’s just stuff. They have insurance.”
“You could lose Clem and your career as a vet. And you still might not save Zev. Is your father worth it?”
“Impossible to say.” Snow blankets a layer of ice above the water, and a child chases a silvery green duck until, annoyed, the bird takes flight. The scene excites Black, whose gaze follows the bird into the ether and then returns to La La. Remembering another frozen lake, La La tightens her scarf and looks for the child’s parents. “At least Zev never abandoned me.”
“That’s a pretty low bar.”