Read Online The Dog Who Knew Too Much by Carol Lea Benjamin - Free Book Online

words.
    â€œLook,” I said, “something just came up. I have to reschedule our lunch.”
    He turned and looked the other way, his face now more the color of rose hip tea than jasmine.
    â€œI’ll call you,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And like a steak left out to defrost in the same room with an untrained dog, I was gone.
    Walking home, thinking about my sister, I remembered another kiss. Well, it was sort of a kiss. That time I’d been a child, and the person I’d sort of kissed had been Lillian.
    I was too young to know how ridiculous her original idea was. We were lying on the glider on Aunt Ceil’s screened-in back porch, after a day at the beach. We were face-to-face, so close I could see the fingerprints on Lili’s glasses.
    Let’s become blood sisters, she said.
    How? I asked.
    First you have to put a match under the needle, like when Mommy takes a splinter out, she said. Then you stick your finger, and I stick mine. Then we press them together, mixing the blood, Lillian said, pressing her two pointers together to illustrate. That makes us blood sisters, forever.
    I began to cry.
    Okay, okay, she said. There’s another way. Stick out your tongue.
    Wug iz dis thaw, I asked.
    She didn’t answer. She stuck out her tongue and made the smooth tip of it touch mine.
    Forever, she said.
    Thawevah, I repeated obediently, afraid to pull in my tongue. God only knew what germs were on it, I thought. Even then.
    Could you even let your own sister’s tongue touch yours nowadays? Probably not. Not if her husband was maybe running around doing God knows what with God knows whom.
    The bitch wore black, a short, slinky thing that went in and out wherever she did. Her hair was long and straight, shimmering where the light hit it, moving as gracefully as seaweed in the ocean. I hated her on sight.
    But what could I do about this? Tell my sister? Mightn’t she simply kill the messenger?
    Not tell her? Then what?
    Confront my brother-in-law? And say what? Who was I supposed to be, the sex police?
    Was this even what it appeared to be? And if it was, mightn’t it blow over without Lili getting hurt?
    Without Lili getting hurt, I thought. How could she not get hurt, even if the thing was a one-night-stand? Doesn’t infidelity, even the briefest sort, always damage a relationship? Even if Lillian never found out, wouldn’t the very fact of it change everything? Forever.

10
    Something Was Different
    When I got home, I made two urgent phone calls. Then I sat in the garden with Dashiell until it was time to see Avi.
    As soon as I opened the downstairs door to Bank Street T’ai Chi, Dash knew something was different. His nose dipped down to the floor in front of him and soaked up information unavailable to mere humans. His head pulled up. It appeared he was looking up the stairs, but it wasn’t his eyes that were working so hard. His nostrils flared as he tuned in on the scent cone hanging thickly in the air. Whoever had recently passed this way interested Dashiell greatly. He turned as if to ask if my hands had fallen off or my feet were nailed to the ground, and he whined. I unhooked his leash and watched him disappear.
    A moment later, they were both standing on the landing, looking down at me. He, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the dog world, a can-do machine, was all muscle. Except for the black patch over his right eye and the black freckles on his skin that show through his short, smooth coat, Dashiell is white. He has a broad head with great fill in his cheeks, a jaw so strong he can hoist his own weight, a chest as hot and powerful as a blast furnace, and a heart so elastic you’d think his dam was Mother Teresa.
    She reminded me of Lisa’s mother, refined where Dashiell was crude, decked out where he was no-frills, feminine where he was clearly one of the guys, champagne to Dashiell’s beer.
    The bitch wore black, a double coat of medium