Moment in Time: A Novel

1

CHLOE

The first thing Chloe sees when she walks into the alley is a gate someone forgot to close. The sign reads NO TRESPASSING KEEP OUT, but of course dogs don’t read. And even if they did, most dogs wouldn’t consider themselves trespassers, only humble guests, as is their nature when they are hungry and looking for food—quick to befriend anyone who might offer a morsel to fill their empty bellies.

“Hey, Chlo,” Jeff says as he lumbers over to shake her hand. “Thanks for coming.”

Towering over her at six eight, Jeffrey Thornton is the biggest human Chloe’s ever known, and he might just have the biggest heart. He runs a service called Happy Tails, which deals with stray animals in the city when animal services is closed.

Chloe’s who he calls when an animal is injured or distressed.

In this case, it looks like it might be both. The black dog wedged between the dumpster and the building sits lopsided on her haunches, her eyes wide and her ears pinned back against her head.

“Idiot cook whacked her with a broom when he caught her going through a trash bag he left on the stoop.” He nods toward the back door of the Thai restaurant beside them. “Waitress stopped him from hitting her again, then called AS, and the call went to me. I think he clocked her pretty good. Looks like she’s bleeding above the eye.”

Chloe squints to see the injury, but it’s dark, the moon and stars obscured by clouds and the only light borrowed from a small bulb over the restaurant’s door. The dog’s left eye does seem to be twitching, but she can’t tell if that’s from an injury or stress. The dog looks young—not a puppy but less than two years—and Chloe agrees with Jeff that she’s a girl, her face fine boned and feminine.

“Looks like she has a collar,” Chloe says.

“Yeah, but no tags.”

Chloe looks at him curiously.

“She let me get within a foot, then freaked out when I reached for her, so I backed off and decided to call you.”

Jeff was right to be cautious. Even the gentlest dog is unpredictable when stressed—fight-or-flight instinct is as real in canines as humans, and neither reaction is what they want from this girl.

Chloe scans around them. The alley smells of trash and sewer but doesn’t feel unsafe, the greatest danger the cold that blows off the bay a block away.

Despite June arriving a few days ago and it being warm everywhere else in California, San Francisco has turned frigid, the grande dame of the West showing her defiance with a mutinous arctic freeze in springtime. The phantom tip of Chloe’s left pinkie and her three missing toes pulse.

Bring it on, she hisses silently, the heat in her veins matching the cold in her lungs. You tried once, but I’m still here. Her hands ball into fists, and her remaining toes curl, belying her bluster; cold is a nemesis that Chloe knows too well does not care what you think.

Eight years ago, she and her family were in an accident in a blizzard that killed her younger brother and sister. It left her with a few less digits than she started with and scars on her soul that have never quite healed.

“Thanks, Jeff. I’ve got it from here,” she says.

“You sure?” He looks from her to the dog and then back with concern. “I can stay.”

“No. I’ve got it.” She glances at the back door of the Thai restaurant. Through the wood, she hears pots clanging along with ugly techno music. “Just do me a favor and let the restaurant know they need to stay out of the alley.”

“For how long?”

Chloe looks at the trembling dog, then back at Jeff. “For as long as it takes for me to calm her down and get her out of here. It could be a while.”

The last time she needed to wait out a terrified dog—a pint-size terrier mix at least ten years old with trademark signs of dementia—it took almost twenty hours. She shivers at the thought and really hopes this time doesn’t take as long.

“Give them my number.” She pulls a business card from her vet bag and holds it toward him.

Jeff’s eyes catch on her half pinkie before darting away. Though he’s seen the injury dozens of times, his reaction is always the same—an empathetic wince followed by a heartfelt frown of sympathy followed by self-consciousness for both.

Chloe can tell a lot about a person by the way they react to her abbreviated pinkie. She refers to it as her humanity meter. Guys like Jeff—good guys with great big hearts—notice it no matter how many times they’ve seen it and feel enormous compassion each and every time. They are what she calls the golden retrievers of humans—good natured, predictable, and loyal.

Then there are the chows, snooty people who are revolted by the deformity and seem to blame her for getting herself into whatever predicament caused such a disfiguration and who seem upset with her for forcing them to put up with looking at it. Aloof, fastidious, and callous, chows are among Chloe’s least favorite dogs.

Her favorite people are what she thinks of as working dog mutts, practical folk who barely notice her pinkie at all before moving on instantly. Life’s tough, and sometimes bad things happen. Half a pinkie doesn’t define her, and they don’t define her by it. Surprisingly rare, these unique humans possess an extraordinary combination of grit and soul along with plain understanding and very little judgment.

The final category is a strange one, and it took her a long time to understand it. A peculiar group of people—mostly men—who home in on her wounds like beef-basted bones, their expressions unapologetic as they gape with rapt, morbid curiosity like she’s an aberration to be feasted on and relished. She calls them Dobermans because they’re almost always high strung and aggressive—though she likes the breed far more than these humans. Like moths drawn to flickering light, they seem to salivate with macabre pleasure at the evidence of suffering.

Jeff takes the card. “They’re not going to be happy.”

“Which is why I want you to give them my number. They’ll be less happy with the attractive nuisance lawsuit I’ll serve them for not closing their gate or the animal-cruelty charge I’ll file against the cook if I don’t get this girl out of here safely.”

He smiles and shakes his head. “You’d make a great lawyer if you weren’t already a great vet.”

“I learned from the best,” she says. “My mom’s a kick-ass attorney.”

There was a time when Chloe wanted to be nothing like her mom. Now, nothing makes her prouder. Except, of course, she has no interest in the law. Her calling is healing, not haranguing, specifically when it comes to animals. She’s always loved dogs, cats, horses—anything with four legs.

Though, after the accident, it became more than that. Something inside her altered, and she found herself with a deep, innate understanding of the scared and vulnerable, regardless of genus or species. It was as if suddenly she could feel them, especially the most damaged. It started with Finn, her sister. For months after the accident, Chloe felt as if a vestige of Finn remained, as if she were still there and watching, not yet at peace. Eventually, she moved on, but the window to that understanding remained.

“Okay,” Jeff says with some hesitancy. “Call if you need me.”

Chloe sets her vet bag on the ground and lowers herself to the stoop. “Will do. But we’re going to be fine.” Though she’s talking to Jeff, her eyes are on the dog, and the pup tilts her head as if listening, considering the words and deciding whether to believe them.

2

MO

A good day.

Mo sighs happily, then opens the fridge to find something sweet to celebrate with.

Brussels sprouts fill two shelves—a large bowl of roasted ones along with a bag of uncooked ones below. Chloe. She rolls her eyes. The girl’s on either a binge or a budget. A month ago, it was quinoa; before that, beets—the first when Chloe swore off all food other than grains to see how her body would respond, and the second because Costco was selling twenty-pound bags of Chioggia beets at a bargain.

Sweet tooth still buzzing, she opens the freezer. A tub of Ben & Jerry’s mint chip sits beside the ice trays and Hazel’s assortment of Trader Joe’s frozen dinners. Yes! She pulls out the carton, thrilled by its heft, at least half the ice cream left.

She considers spooning it directly into her mouth but then thinks of her mother frowning and pulls a bowl from the cupboard.

Sitting at the table with her treat, she opens her computer to admire her accomplishment, starting with CNN. Front and center on the home page in bold letters: BABIES!—FactNews Releases Report Showing the Reasons for the Disturbing Trend of the Nation’s Declining Population Growth.

She spoons another bite of minty ice cream into her mouth and clicks the link to reveal the article. The page opens to six graphics—the entire issue of population degeneration captured in an eye-catching visual snapshot anyone can understand.

The troubling worldwide trend has already been reported on in depth. For years, futurists and economists alike have been sounding the alarm in dry reports in medical and financial journals about the cataclysmic impact continued waning population growth will have on everything from economic stability to mental health. But FactNews took all that bland analysis and turned it into something snazzy, made it “NEWS!”—new, entertaining, worthwhile, and scintillating (the tagline for the company). By boiling issues down to their essence and packaging them in millennial-attention-span news bites, FactNews brings serious issues to the forefront and makes them relevant.

The first image shows the birth rate decline by year (illustrated with a very cute baby gleefully sliding down the slope). The second shows the decline of sexual coupling (cleverly labeled The Sex Recession, which is already getting lots of traction on social media). The slope is overlapped by a second, steeper slope showing the precipitous fall of long-term partnering (called The Love Deep-ression). The graph culminates in a comic strip BOOM! in 2040, when it’s projected the family paradigm will no longer exist, with only a small subset of traditionalists still choosing to share their lifelong term with another.

Her phone buzzes with a text from her assistant, Esther: Forbes wants to feature you in their 30 Under 30 List!!! You go girl!

Mo texts back a thumbs-up, then spoons another mouthful of mint chip into her mouth, pride ballooning in her chest. Making Forbes’s 30 under 30 has been a dream of hers since high school. It’s the business world’s recognition of the coolest geeks and nerds under thirty doing the extraordinary. She wonders if they might consider her for featured honoree in the media category. It’s possible. This release definitely puts FactNews on the map in the incredibly competitive world of news bites.

She sets down her spoon and returns to scrolling through the article. The graphs go on to show the decline in earnings, homeownership, and savings for young people; the increase in women working full-time along with the correlating increase in age of first pregnancies; and the projection of US deaths outpacing births, overlaid by the correlating decline of Social Security contributions from the diminishing working segment.

The final image is a mountain of hearts with a troop of adorable dogs and cats bounding up it, a sweet illustration of the skyrocketing trend in pet ownership by millennials and Gen Zers. Mo grins at the fluffy, heartwarming ending. Start and end with a smile, she thinks. It’s what reels them in and keeps them coming back. Already the final image is the angle getting the most buzz, the furry-baby phenomenon a bizarre and endearing side effect of the decline in having children.

As she leans back and thinks about her interview tomorrow with Jake Tapper, her focus narrows in on a particularly cute beagle springing up the slope. If she nails it, there’s a chance CNN will retain her as a consultant, a media expert who weighs in on the veracity of the latest headlines, which will further solidify FactNews’s position as a reliable source for facts. It almost feels like too much to hope for, but the producer alluded to the possibility when she called Mo about the interview.

The door slams open, and Mo peeks through the archway to see Chloe pulling a canvas wagon through the front door.

Leaping to her feet, she hurries forward and blocks Chloe’s path. “Uh-uh. No way.”

Chloe casts her eyes to the floor. “Sorry, Mo. I just need to use the bathroom and grab some dog food. I promise, we’re not staying.”

Mo tilts her head to the side to look in the wagon and sees a black dog curled beneath a beach towel, a bandage around its head.

“I didn’t want to come here,” Chloe says, “but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t leave her in the van, in case she woke up. I was careful. Super careful. She’s knocked out, and I made sure no one saw us.”

Chloe is dressed in her thick Patagonia jacket, silver Moon Boots, and the sweats she normally sleeps in, which means she was probably called out of bed last night for the stray and probably hasn’t slept, and already Mo feels her conviction wavering.

Kyle’s voice booms in her head. Repeat after me. No. More. Strays.

At the time, she repeated it—“No more strays”—fully believing, when this moment came, she would have no problem telling Chloe she could not bring another animal into their apartment.

Seriously, Ace, our apartment is not a halfway house for wayward animals. We signed a lease. No pets.

He was right, of course, and they are now exactly one infraction away from being evicted. But Kyle’s not the one standing here looking at Chloe with her bruised eyes and her cheeks chafed red from the cold, towing a sad, shivering creature behind her with its head bandaged.

“What’s wrong with her?” Mo asks.

“Dehydration, exhaustion, possibly shock.”

Chloe glances back at the dog with deep concern, and the last of Mo’s resolve disappears. The poor thing looks wrecked, and there’s no way she can simply turn her away.

“I promise, Mo,” Chloe says, “I’m not trying to mess things up for you. I’m just going to grab what I need, and we’ll be gone before anyone even knows we were here.”

Mo steps aside, then follows Chloe into the kitchen. Chloe pulls a water bottle from the cabinet, and the dog startles at the noise, then whimpers. Mo squats beside her and strokes her sleek black fur. “Shhh. You’re safe.”

The dog shudders beneath her touch, then settles.

“Will she be okay?” Mo asks.

“Hard to say. I hope so.”

Chloe puts the water bottle in the wagon, then goes to the pantry, pulls out a bag of dog food, and scoops the kibble into a baggie.

Concerned by the amount she’s packing, Mo says, “You’re taking her to the shelter, right?”

Chloe doesn’t look at her as she mumbles, “Not tonight.”

Mo looks at the clock on the oven. It’s only six, and the shelter stays open until eight. “Why?”

Chloe intentionally keeps her focus on her task. “I’ll take her in the morning. She needs a night to rest.”

Mo’s worry grows. The last stray Chloe brought home stayed with them nearly a week before Chloe felt he was strong enough to take to the shelter, and this dog looks far worse off.

“Where will you stay?” she asks, her voice tight, knowing Chloe is broke and doesn’t have money for a hotel.

“The van,” Chloe says with a shrug like it’s no big deal.

“The van” is Chloe’s veterinary van, a heap of rust with a heater that provides about as much warmth as a matchstick with a fan blowing on it.

“You can’t stay in the van!” Mo practically yelps. “It’s freezing outside.” This week’s been the coldest June week in the city’s past fifty years, the temperatures at night dropping into the forties.

Chloe ignores her. Sealing the bag, she sets it in the wagon beside the water bottle.

“At least wait a bit before you go,” Mo says, her pulse pounding with the thought of Chloe and the dog spending the night in the van on the street while she is warm and safe in the apartment. “The dog’s asleep, and you’re already here. It makes no difference if you leave now or in a few hours. You should at least eat something and get some rest.”

Chloe shakes her head, her copper bangs swaying. “Not a chance. You’re not getting evicted on account of me.”

“We’re not going to get evicted,” Mo says, unable to believe the words are coming from her mouth. If Kyle could hear her, he would not be happy. But he can’t hear her because he is six thousand miles away, and Chloe and the dog are here, and it’s freezing outside.

“How long is she going to sleep for?” she asks.

Chloe skews her mouth to the side. “Maybe another two or three hours before I need to put her out again. She’s really strung out, and the best thing for her is sleep and fluids.”

“So she’s going to be out until morning?” Mo asks.

“Mo—”

“Think about it. Taking her out of the building now, when everyone’s coming and going, is far riskier than leaving early in the morning, when everyone’s asleep.”

Chloe shakes her head again but slower this time. “I don’t know, Mo. I’ve already gotten you in trouble, and if Kyle finds out—”

“He won’t find out.”

“Mo—”

“Clove, I’m telling you, he won’t find out. Neither will Jerry.” She makes a heroic effort not to let her eyes slide up toward the ceiling, where, one floor above and two doors down, her landlord lives.

She adjusts the towel so it covers the pup’s exposed shoulder, pushes to her feet, picks up the tub of ice cream, and holds it toward Chloe. “Eat, rest, and in the morning, go to the van.”

Chloe doesn’t look fully convinced, but perhaps out of exhaustion or possibly hunger, she takes the carton from Mo, hoists herself onto the counter, grabs a spoon from the dish rack, and digs in.

Her eyes close with the first bite, and Mo smiles, glad they came to a resolution that doesn’t involve Chloe sleeping with a stray dog in her van on the street.

“Does she have a name?” Mo asks.

“No tags,” Chloe says around a mouthful of ice cream.

“Hmmm,” Mo says as she considers it. She’s always loved coming up with names. The dog is pretty, sleek, and refined looking with a cotton candy–pink nose, floppy ears, and long silver whiskers.

“Maybe Rudolph, on account of her nose?” Chloe suggests.

Mo frowns. While the dog’s nose is her most defining feature, she’s far too pretty for a boy’s name. “How about Ruby?”

Chloe rolls her eyes but smiles. “Fine. Ruby.”

The dog’s cheek twitches, which Mo takes as a sign she approves.

She looks back at Chloe. “I guess this means you can’t go out tonight?”

Chloe’s brow furrows, and then her eyes pop open. “Your report! It came out! Crap! I can’t believe I forgot. How’d it go?”

“Good. Great. Really good.” Mo feels her cheeks grow warm.

“I knew you were going to kill it. Did CNN pick it up?”

“Yep. And the Times and the Washington Post.”

“Wow, Mo, that’s awesome. This officially makes you the reigning queen of truthdom.”

Chloe looks at the dog . . . Ruby . . . then at the tub of ice cream, then back at Mo. And her face radiates genuine apology as she says, “Sorry, Mo, I wish I could . . .”

“It’s okay,” Mo says. “Haze should be home soon. Maybe she can go.”