I restarted the movie from the beginning so she could get caught up. A couple of minutes later, her gaze darted sideways in my direction.
"Um, Tristan, could you stop staring at me? It's kind of distracting."
"Right. Sorry." I forced myself to stare at the TV instead.
Halfway through the movie, Joan returned with her dog. As soon as they entered the trailer, Lucy started yapping and dived for my ankles.
What the... I yanked my legs up in the air out of the reach of its tiny snapping teeth, then stared at the dog in disbelief. It had to be the ugliest animal I'd ever seen, like some kind of deranged zombie dog with bald patches all over where its hair was falling out from mange or something. Yellow pee dribbled down its hind legs as it barked nonstop and leaped up in the air, doing its best to get at my feet. The smell of urine hit me so hard I nearly gagged and had to hold my breath.
"Lucy hates vampires," Savannah explained with a sigh, also levitating her legs in the air so the dog couldn't go after her ankles next. She stuck her left elbow on the couch's armrest then rested the side of her head against her fist.
I got the distinct feeling she'd had to deal with this a lot over the past two months.
I looked at Ms. Evans, waiting for her to grab her dog and lock it up in her room immediately. Instead, she cooed baby-talk gibberish in its general direction while she spent two minutes making herself a cup of instant coffee in the microwave and I stared at her in disbelief.
Finally the microwave dinged. Ms. Evans retrieved her mug, sighed loudly then picked up her dog and took both the barking hellhound and her drink to her room. Even once the door was shut, Lucy continued to yap.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. Holy hell. Maybe hanging out in the truck and outside was better. At least it was quieter and my ankles were safer.
Savannah got up, carefully stepping over the yellow puddle on the linoleum, and opened the cabinet doors under the sink. She stood up with an empty plastic spray bottle in her hand and a frown on her face. "Uh-oh. Out of bleach. I'll have to get some from the storage area. Be right back." Forcing a tired smile, she took the spray bottle with her outside.
Why was Savannah cleaning up after her mother's dog? And the way she automatically did it without hesitation made me think this must be a habit with them.
Something was off around here.
Then again, maybe this was some kind of arrangement they had worked out together?
If so, it wasn't right. But why was Savannah going along with it instead of saying something? There was no way she could like having to clean up something as pungent as this dog pee, especially when it came from a dog who seemed determined to kill every vamp it came within ten yards of if given the opportunity.
The whole thing seemed warped. But I wasn't exactly qualified to be the best judge of it, either. I didn't know too much about Savannah's relationship with her mother, other than that Ms. Evans had been gone on the road a lot even before Savannah had to move in with her dad after her grandmother's death. And since then, Savannah had only seen her mother every few months, though they had seemed to stay in fairly regular contact through text messaging and phone calls. Maybe they got along better at a distance, like Emily and our mother?
Women and their mothers. They made no sense.
I sighed and grabbed the remote. When Savannah returned, she might want to see the part of the movie we'd missed during Lucy's attempted attack.
I tried to rewind the movie to the point where Ms. Evans and her dog had interrupted. But I was unfamiliar with the remote's buttons and must have hit the chapter skip button instead, which rewound the movie too far. The f loor cleanup was probably going to take a few minutes, so I let the movie play and turned up the volume to drown out the dog's continued yapping from the other end of the trailer, planning on hitting Pause once we got to the right spot again in the movie.
Two minutes later, Emily barged out of the guest bedroom, the wild blond curls around her head and the murderous glare on her face making her look like a vengeful fallen angel come to kill every last demon in her path. "Would you turn that down? I'm not deaf, and I know you sure as heck aren't, either!"
With one hand rubbing the top of her huge belly, which had seriously rounded out over the past couple of months, she waddled over to the kitchen and slammed things around while pouring herself a mug of milk from the fridge. More banging half drowned out the yapping dog while Emily searched for and retrieved a bag of graham crackers from the tiny slide-out pantry cabinet. Then, growling something unintelligible under her breath, Emily headed back through the kitchen in the direction of either the trailer's exit or the bunk room.
Wherever she was headed, though, she didn't reach it.
The trailer's main door opened and Savannah stepped inside. Glancing at her, Emily forgot to watch where she was walking and stepped barefooted into the puddle Lucy had left behind.
Shrieking, Emily hopped on her clean foot all the way to the bathroom.
"Oh, crap," Savannah muttered, vamp blurring from the trailer door to the kitchen where she grabbed a roll of paper towels. She vamp blurred again, reappearing in a crouch beside the urine puddle, which she began to clean up.
Great. Now she'll be yelling for hours, Savannah thought to herself as she scrubbed the linoleum.
Shouldn't her mother be cleaning up after her own dog? I thought to myself, forgetting Savannah could hear me. Two months of hanging out with her dad had spoiled me into being able to think anything I wanted without fear of Savannah's reaction.
Savannah's head popped up, her mouth open in surprise. She dropped her head again, refocusing on cleaning every last speck of mess. Normally Mom cleans up after Lucy, but since Lucy does it constantly, sometimes Mom forgets to come back and clean it up for a while. Which of course drives Emily nuts and sometimes even triggers her nausea from the smell. So it's easier for me to just go ahead and clean it up.
But all I heard was how it upset Emily.
The shower turned on in the bathroom. Emily must have decided to clean her foot off in the shower stall. Seconds later, another shriek filled the trailer from the bathroom.
The dog's barking grew louder as Ms. Evans slid open her bedroom door and stuck her head out, using a foot to keep her dog from escaping past her. "What happened?"
Emily reemerged from the bathroom with a dripping hairball pinched between her thumb and index finger. "First I step in a puddle of pee left by your dog, and then when I go to wash my foot off in the shower, I find this!"