Yappy Holidays

The Thermometer On THE SHELTER’S front door read nineteen degrees, and Mia Harper didn’t believe it. Nineteen was cold but manageable. This felt meaner than that, a wet, biting wind that came straight off the county road and hit the flat cinderblock face of Paws & Purpose Animal Shelter like it had a personal grudge.

She stood in the parking lot at seven fifteen in the morning, a bag of rock salt in each hand and no gloves on because she’d left them on her kitchen counter next to the donor acknowledgment letters she’d also forgotten. The parking lot had a thin glaze of ice from the overnight freeze, and the open house was in four days, and if someone slipped on the way in and broke a hip, Mia would never forgive herself.

Biscuit sat on the cleared strip of sidewalk near the front entrance, watching. She had her front paws placed neatly together and her brown and white head tilted at that angle that meant she was observing, not waiting. Both ears folded forward like sealed envelopes. Her breath made small clouds in the December air, but she didn’t shiver. She rarely did. Biscuit met discomfort the same way she met most things, with calm acknowledgment and no complaint.

“I know,” Mia said, hoisting the first bag higher against her hip. “We could’ve stayed in bed.”

Biscuit’s tail moved once, a single slow sweep against the concrete.

Mia tore the bag open and started spreading salt in wide arcs across the lot, working from the handicapped spaces near the door outward toward the road. The crystals hit the ice with a sound like sand on glass. Her fingers were already red and stiff. She should have gone back inside for the gloves, or for the salt spreader Pete kept in the storage closet, but the storage closet was padlocked and Pete wouldn’t arrive until eight, and there were twenty-three other things on her list before nine o’clock, and it was faster to just do it herself.

That phrase had been running through her head a lot lately. Faster to just do it myself.

She finished the first bag, started the second, and was three-quarters through when headlights swung into the lot and Gayle Trainor’s silver Camry crunched over the fresh salt. Gayle parked in her usual spot, the one closest to the side entrance, and climbed out already re-braiding her gray-streaked hair, which meant she’d been awake long enough for the first braid to come loose. Leadership by example, the staff called it. Everyone understood it was insomnia.

“You’re salting the lot,” Gayle said. Not a question.

“The lot needed salting.”

Gayle looked at the torn bags, at Mia’s bare hands, at the half-spread crystals. She looked at Biscuit, who returned the look with the polite disinterest she reserved for situations she’d already assessed and found nonthreatening.

“Pete has a spreader,” Gayle said.

“Pete’s not here yet.”

“Pete will be here in forty-five minutes.”

“And in forty-five minutes the lot will already be done.” Mia upended the last of the second bag near the curb cut by the street. “See? Done.”

Gayle watched her for another moment, then pulled her coat tighter and headed for the side entrance. “Come inside before your fingers fall off. I made the mistake of checking the bequest file last night, and I have questions.”

Mia gathered the empty bags, tucked them under her arm, and followed. Biscuit rose, shook herself once from nose to tail, and fell into step beside Mia without being called. She never needed to be called. She simply knew when Mia was moving and moved with her, the way water follows a channel.

❦

Inside, the shelter smelled the way it always did in winter, like kennel disinfectant and dry heat and the warmth of twenty-two dogs living in close quarters. The ancient furnace in the utility room did its job, but it did it loudly, a low thrumming that ran through the cinderblock walls like a mechanical heartbeat. Pete had patched the ductwork twice in November, and the rubber-matted multipurpose room still ran five degrees cooler than anywhere else in the building.

Mia stamped ice off her boots in the front lobby and registered the state of things. The lobby had been partly transformed for the open house. Jenny Caulfield had brought in a tabletop Christmas tree two days ago, tasteful and small, with paw-print ornaments she’d made from salt dough and painted gold. A banner reading SEASON OF GIVING hung across the intake window, the letters hand-cut from green card stock. Someone, probably Marcus Delano, had lined the front counter with battery-operated candles in mason jars, each one labeled with the name of a shelter dog available for adoption.

It looked good. It looked like a place that cared, which it was. But the space was only half-ready, and the half that remained was the complicated half: the memorial display for Eleanor Vance, the donor acknowledgment wall, the reception tables, the printed programs Mia hadn’t finalized, and the hot chocolate station that needed an outlet and an extension cord rated for the shelter’s cantankerous wiring.

Mia pulled a folded sheet from her back pocket and added extension cord (heavy-duty) to the list. The list was three pages long. She’d started it on a legal pad, transferred it to her phone, then given up on the phone because the screen was too small to capture the full scope of what needed to happen before Saturday. Paper was better. Paper didn’t run out of battery or autocorrect “bequest” to “bouquet.”

Biscuit followed her past the lobby and into the narrow hallway that led to the records room. The green filing cabinet stood against the far wall, flanked by stacked banker’s boxes Mia had brought in last week, each one labeled with a year and a donor name. Eleanor Vance’s name appeared on three of them.

Gayle was already in the records room, leaning against the filing cabinet with a manila folder open in her hands and reading glasses pushed up on her forehead. She looked like she’d been there for a while, which, given the Camry’s early arrival, she probably had.

“The probate attorney’s office sent over the summary,” Gayle said, holding up the folder. “Russell Breck. He’s the executor.”

“I know. He confirmed he’s coming to the open house Saturday.”

“Good. Because I need him to explain page four.” Gayle flipped to a stapled section and held it out. “Eleanor left us a specific bequest for the medical wing. But the summary references a codicil I haven’t seen, and the amounts on this page don’t match the letter she sent us in September.”

Mia took the folder and scanned the page. Numbers, legal language, beneficiary designations. Eleanor Vance’s name printed in the formal typeface of a law office. Below it, the shelter’s full legal name, the amount of the bequest, and a list of conditions for its use.

“How much is off?”

“Forty thousand.”

Mia looked up.

“The September letter said the bequest was three hundred and twenty thousand,” Gayle said. “This summary says two-eighty. That’s not a rounding difference.”

“Could be a different draft. She told me last spring she was updating her will.”

“She told everyone she was updating her will. Eleanor liked to announce her plans. But she was also precise. When she said three-twenty, she meant three-twenty.” Gayle took the folder back. “I want to ask Russell about it Saturday. Gently.”

“I can pull her correspondence,” Mia said. “She sent us at least four letters this year, and I copied everything to the donor file. If she mentioned specific numbers, we’ll have them.”

“Do that.” Gayle paused. “And Mia? When did you last take a day off?”

“I took Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving was a shelter holiday. The building was closed.”

“It still counts.”

Gayle gave her a look, the kind that managed to be simultaneously patient and unyielding. She’d perfected it over years of managing volunteers, board members, and county inspectors, and it worked on all three categories.

“Saturday’s the open house,” Gayle said. “After that, take a day. A real one.”

Mia nodded in a way that committed to nothing, slid the folder into the filing cabinet’s top drawer, and went to find her gloves.

❦

They weren’t on her kitchen counter after all. Mia remembered, standing in her car in the shelter parking lot, that she’d put them in the glovebox two weeks ago and forgotten. She retrieved them, flexed warmth back into her fingers, and spent the next forty minutes at the folding table in the volunteer room, working through the donor acknowledgment letters.

The volunteer room at Paws & Purpose was a repurposed closet, barely large enough for the folding table, two plastic chairs, and the ancient coffee maker that had been there since before Mia started volunteering. The coffee maker produced a substance that was technically coffee in the same way that the shelter’s parking lot was technically paved. It was hot, it was brown, and it did the job, but nobody had ever called it good. Donna Harmon had promised to send over a thermal carafe of the real thing from the diner before Saturday, and Mia had written DONNA - COFFEE on her list in block letters and underlined it twice.

Biscuit had settled under the folding table, curled in the spot she’d claimed years ago, her chin resting on Mia’s left foot. This was her working position. When Mia sat at a table with papers, Biscuit found the nearest piece of floor and became part of the furniture, warm and steady and patient. She could stay like that for hours, occasionally shifting to follow a sound from the kennel wing or lifting her head when someone walked past the door, but mostly still. A genuinely relaxed Biscuit slept. This Biscuit observed.

The donor letters were a particular kind of tedious. Each one needed a personalized note, a specific dollar amount, a reference to the donor’s history with the shelter, and a paragraph about how their contribution would be used. Mia had templates, but templates only got you so far. A donor who’d given fifty dollars didn’t need the same letter as a donor who’d given five thousand, and a first-time donor didn’t need the same warmth as someone like Ed Walsh, who’d been writing checks since before the mural went up on the east wall.

Ed’s letter was easy. Dear Ed, Thank you for your continued generosity. Your support helped us keep the lights on during a difficult year. She paused, pen hovering. “Difficult year” was an understatement. The shelter had weathered Nora Fielding’s laundering scheme, a murder at the café event, and an embezzlement at the summer fundraiser, all in the span of fourteen months. The board reforms that followed, the independent audits and separated financial roles, had stabilized things, but stability was a fragile word for an organization that ran on donations and goodwill.

She finished Ed’s letter, sealed it, and moved on to Alan Tsai’s.

By eight thirty, Pete arrived. She heard him before she saw him, the bang of the side entrance door (the keypad lock stuck in cold weather, and Pete’s solution was force rather than finesse), followed by the heavy tread of work boots on tile and the clank of whatever tool he’d brought in from his truck. Pete had been volunteering at Paws & Purpose for six years, longer than Mia. He was a retired electrician who treated the shelter’s infrastructure as a personal project and defended the pressure washer with a territorial zeal that bordered on the spiritual.

He appeared in the volunteer room doorway, red-faced from the cold, holding a space heater.

“Multipurpose room’s freezing again,” he said.

“I know. The ductwork?”

“The ductwork.” He said it the way a doctor says “the knee,” meaning the problem was chronic and the patient was uncooperative. “I patched it in November. Patch held about three weeks. I can patch it again, but what it really needs is a new run from the main trunk, and that’s a two-day job with materials.”

“Can you patch it before Saturday?”

“Already planning on it.” He looked at the spread of letters on the table. “You need help with anything?”

“I’ve got it.”

Pete studied her for a second, then nodded and left with his space heater. Mia heard him heading down the hall toward the multipurpose room, talking to himself about duct tape and flex seal in a tone that suggested he held both in equal contempt.

❦

Sandra Cho arrived at nine, quiet and precise as always. She passed through the lobby, checked the medical supply cabinet, and stopped by the volunteer room long enough to tell Mia that two of the dogs in the kennel wing were due for their booster shots and that she’d need the intake exam table clear by ten.

“It’s clear,” Mia said. “I moved the decoration boxes to the storage closet yesterday.”

“Thank you.” Sandra paused. “Mia, you look tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look tired,” Sandra said again, as if repetition might improve the accuracy of Mia’s self-assessment, and then went to prep the exam table.

Biscuit, still under the table, lifted her head and watched Sandra go. She liked Sandra. Most of the dogs at the shelter did. Sandra had a way of handling animals that was calm without being tentative, clinical without being cold. She touched dogs the way she spoke, with economy and care.

By ten o’clock, Mia had finished the donor letters, confirmed the printer at Office Depot could handle the open house programs by Thursday, left a voicemail for Russell Breck about the codicil discrepancy Gayle had flagged, and added four more items to her list. The list was now three and a half pages.

Jenny Caulfield called at ten fifteen.

“I can’t do Saturday,” Jenny said, and Mia’s stomach dropped.

“What happened?”

“My sister in Columbus fell and broke her wrist. I’m driving up tonight. I’ll be there through the weekend at least.” Jenny sounded genuinely sorry, which didn’t help. “I finished the ornaments and the banner, and there are two dozen sugar cookies in my freezer you’re welcome to pick up. But I can’t be there in person.”

“It’s fine, Jenny. Go take care of your sister.”

“It’s not fine. You’re short-staffed and I know it.” Jenny paused. “Ask Marcus. He’s quiet, but he’s good at this.”

Mia hung up and stared at the phone. Jenny was the most reliable volunteer on the roster, the one Mia counted on to cover the gaps she couldn’t reach. Without Jenny, the open house was Mia, Marcus, whoever Gayle could pull from the part-time staff, and a handful of newer volunteers who meant well but needed supervision.

Faster to just do it myself.

She picked up her pen and started a new list: the things Jenny would have handled, now reassigned to Mia. The greeting table. The sign-in sheet. The refreshment layout. The donor wall, where each contributor’s name would be displayed on a paw-print card. Mia had planned to delegate the donor wall to Jenny because Jenny had beautiful handwriting, a retired teacher’s pride in clean lettering, and the patience to write forty names without rushing.