Ethan let his fork clink onto the empty plate before him and drained his wineglass, then settled back into his couch. “Not bad,” he said aloud, and the dog isn’t even begging – yet. Spurred by that thought he swept up the empty glass and half-empty bottle of red in one hand, clamped the plate and fork with the other and tried to pluck it all from his coffee table without scratching the wood. He’d almost taken one whole step toward the kitchen before a loud bark erupted from the back of the house.
“Virginia!” Ethan shouted automatically, “it’s just thunder.” This bark had a higher pitch, though, an excited bark usually brought on by deer walking through the grass or a squirrel sneezing. She barked again.
“Hey!”
Bark
“Hey!”
Virginia, Eater of Treats and Protector of the Yard, thundered down the hall and cut right, nails digging into the carpet audibly as 60 pounds of pit bull cornered hard into the library. Actually, it was meant to be a formal family room, but Ethan didn’t have a family, so it was now the library. His neighbors with kids were jealous.
Probably one of the kids walking past, he thought as the barking, blessedly, stopped. Virginia only barked to scare something into running. Once she identified it as friendly and potentially food-bearing, she quit. That, or if she decided it needed to die. She was quiet then, too. She was quiet now. Ethan walked into the kitchen and looked over his right shoulder, through the front windows and into the fading light poets would call dusk. The Platters would call it twilight.
Ethan had looked through the windows primarily to check that nothing was on fire that shouldn’t be. Partly, though, because his dog was standing at rigid attention looking out the window. She had that stone stillness that usually preceded a break-neck and utterly silent charge.
A man stood in the front yard, warming his hands over the still hot coals of Ethan’s old Weber kettle grill.
More….
Ditto