Paint Me True: Sample Chapters

Six: A Scared Little Dog

My anxiety level ratcheted up as the cab got closer to Nora’s house. It wasn’t far from the hospital, but it was far enough for me to have time to worry my stomach to shreds. What if the paramedics had broken the door down and her house had just been left open? What if Pip had run away? What if the thawed out peas on the floor had attracted in wildlife? Would I find an urban fox in residence?

As the cab turned the corner of Charlbury Road, though, I saw the house and there was no visible damage to the door. It was shut, which meant it was locked. She had one of those front doors, common in England, that had no knob. If it was latched, it was locked.

Many of the upper story windows were shuttered and only the ground floor had lace curtains that allowed light in, but no prying eyes. It was a grand house built of Cotswold stone that had been in the Chesterton family for a hundred years – according to Nora.

“Go ahead and pull into the driveway,” I told the cab driver. The house had a semi-circular drive of gravel that crunched under the cab’s tires.

I got out, paid the driver and thanked her as she helped me carry my bags to the doorstep.

It occurred to me that the paramedics might have used a back door instead, so that signs of their entry wouldn’t be so obvious from the street. My aunt had given me a copy of her key years ago and I used that to let myself in. The lights in the foyer were off. “Pip?” I called out. “Hey boy!” My voice echoed hollowly.

Turning on lights didn’t drive out the empty, abandoned feeling the house had. I made my way to the kitchen first, where I expected to see plates out on the counters and fragments of crockery on the floor, only the floor was clean.

“Pip!” I shouted. “Where are you? Pip!”

He was a shy dog, so I didn’t expect him to come running. I did expect an answering jangle of tags, though. Maybe some barking. He was a dog, after all, and I was encroaching on his territory. “Pip!” I yelled.

The kitchen was next to the formal dining room, which had a pair of French doors that opened out into the back yard. No sign of forced entry there. I wondered if the paramedics had used a window, though there was no stirring of breeze in the house that would give that away. “Pip?”

The size of the house meant it had plenty of places for a tiny dog to hide. I decided to start from the top story, which meant I had to climb two flights of stairs. The corridor of the top floor had sea green carpet and slightly crooked doorways to each room. “Pip?”

Just silence.

At the far end of the corridor was my cousin, John’s room, still decorated for a little boy, even though he was now in his twenties. Blue wallpaper and a ship’s wheel on the wall gave it a nautical air. On the windowsill was a flashlight which seemed out of place. Other than that, the room was neat as a pin. I went over to the window and hefted the flashlight. It was an old one with a plastic sliding switch. The window looked out on the back yard. A glint of light on the garden wall caught my eye.

Of course. I was being foolish. Pip had a doggie door that couldn’t be locked. If he didn’t come when I entered the house, he was probably not in the house.

I jogged back downstairs and out the back door. “Pip!” I called out.

A jangle of tags answered me, and I immediately stepped down onto the grass and called his name again. “Where are you, boy?” The jangle had come from a cluster of bushes just to my right. I got down on my hands and knees in the damp grass to peer underneath.

Sure enough, there he was, his back hunched in a sad horseshoe, his tail tucked between his spindly back legs. He looked at me with his silky ears pressed to the sides of his head.