Last Licks

“Thanks, Dad.” Sunny got up and went to the kitchen, where she found Shadow back in his usual spot on top of the refrigerator. She went up on tiptoe and he leaned down ’til they were nose to nose. She heard him sniff and his eyes widened, but he stayed where he was.

Sunny zipped up the stairs for a quick shower. That should remove any temptation, she thought. But just to be sure, she unloaded her pockets and sent her T-shirt and pants down the chute to the laundry. Then, in a fresh shirt and shorts, she went downstairs to see what Mike had gotten off the shopping list.

After checking the fridge, she stuck her head around the entryway to the living room. “I see you got some tomatoes and cold cuts. We still have romaine. How does salad and a sandwich sound?”

Mike thought that sounded pretty good, so Sunny went to the kitchen and got to work. While she was slicing the tomatoes, she looked down at her scratched hand. Luke’s lotion had washed off in the shower, and she was getting prickles of pain again. When she finished her preparations, she went back upstairs, applied a little more of the viscous yellow stuff, and taped a new gauze pad over it. She descended the staircase and stepped into the living room again. “Dinner’s ready.”

Mike got the glasses and poured seltzer for both of them—raspberry flavored this time. Meanwhile, Sunny set out a meal for Shadow.

As they ate, Sunny and her dad made small talk about the events of the day. “I’ve been hiding in the air-conditioning all day,” Mike complained. “Even when I went out this morning to the mall, it was sticky.”

“Sticky or stinky?” Sunny said. “Didn’t you say it was supposed to break this afternoon? I left the umbrella in the Wrangler—”

Even as she spoke, a thunderclap detonated over the house like a small bomb. The whole place shook, and Shadow abandoned his supper and dashed over to Sunny’s feet. But he wasn’t cowering. His head and tail were both up, one scanning the area for trouble to be dealt with, the other lashing around in agitation.

“It’s okay.” Sunny leaned down and petted his bristling fur. “Nothing to get upset about. It’s only thunder.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I’m told that it’s lightning you have to watch out for.”

The sound and light show lasted only about twenty minutes, but the heavy rain that followed stayed on. Sunny and her dad finished their meals and the dishes. While he went back to the living room to see if the storm had done anything to their cable service, Sunny stayed in the kitchen by the phone, trying to think of anyone else she could call to go to Luke’s show tomorrow evening.

This is when you realize how much your life has shrunk,

she realized. Most of her friends from the old days had, like her, left Kittery Harbor and gone off into the wide world. The ones who remained were all married and didn’t have that much in common with her anymore. Finally she punched in the number for her old high school classmate, current vet Jane Rigsdale, who thought a guitarist in O’Dowd’s sounded like a hoot. “The problem is, Tobe’s got tickets for an outdoor concert in Portsmouth tomorrow night—that is, if the Piscataqua doesn’t break its banks and sweep everything away.”

Desperate to boost the friendly audience count, Sunny went into the living room. “I tried asking Jane to O’Dowd’s, but she has a date for tomorrow. Do you think any of your friends might want to come?”

“I don’t think Zach Judson’s been in that dump since he was your age,” Mike said. “And Ken Howell swore years ago never to mention O’Dowd’s in the Courier. Every time he’d mention a fight or a drug bust there, it only advertised the place to other lowlives. So he stays away. If he actually saw something there, he’d feel he’d have to write about it.”

He gave her a sly smile. “I did talk to one person while you were off phumphing around in the kitchen, and he agreed to come.”

“Really? Who?” Sunny asked.

“Will Price.” Mike raised his hands to cut her off. “Before you start in, he didn’t mention that you’d called him. Besides, he’d be a good man to have at our table.”

Sunny gave him an unwilling nod. Quite a number of the creepy types in O’Dowd’s knew that Will was a cop. If he showed up out of uniform, they’d probably behave themselves, thinking he was there undercover. “I was, um, waiting,” she said, realizing how lame that sounded.

“You mean you weren’t going to call him because you didn’t want Will to know you were going to see another fellow—even if you were only watching him make music.” Mike sighed, looking more dadlike than he usually did. “Maybe you don’t talk much about it, but I know it bothers you that Will hasn’t been a bit more serious.”

“I haven’t asked for anything more.” Sunny winced at the defensive tone that crept into her voice. “I’m just glad there’s someone around to go out with every once in a while.”