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special treat.”
    Robert nodded, his eyes shot with red
lightning bolts. He had tossed all night, awakening her once at 3
a.m. when his toenails dug into her calf. He must have been
dreaming of days with Sandy Ann, walking by the river, camping in
the hollows of Grandfather Mountain, dropping by the animal shelter
to volunteer for a couple of hours.
    Alison moved the grits from the heat and set
them aside. The last round of bacon was done, and she drained some
of the bacon grease away and poured the eggs. The mixture lay there
round and steaming like the face of a cartoon sun. She let the eggs
harden a bit before she moved them around. A brown skin covered the
bottom of the skillet.
    “ Nine years is a lot,” she
said. “Isn’t that over seventy in people years?”
    “ No, it’s nine in people
years. Time’s the same for everybody and everything.”
    Robert philosophy. A practical farm boy. If
she had been granted the power to build her future husband in a
Frankenstein laboratory, little of Robert would have been in the
recipe. Maybe the eyes, brown and honest with flecks of green that
brightened when he was aroused. She would have chosen other parts,
though the composite wasn’t bad. The thing that made Robert who he
was, the spark that juiced his soul, was largely invisible but had
shocked Alison from the very first exposure.
    She sold casualty insurance, and Robert liked
to point out she was one of the “Good Hands” people. Robert’s
account had been assigned to her when a senior agent retired, and
during his first appointment to discuss whether to increase the
limit on his homeowner’s policy, she’d followed the procedure
taught in business school, trying to sucker him into a whole-life
policy. During the conversation, she’d learned he had no heirs, not
even a wife, and she explained he couldn’t legally leave his estate
to Sandy Ann. One follow-up call later, to check on whether he
would get a discount on his auto liability if he took the life
insurance, and they were dating.
    The first date was lunch in a place that was
too nice and dressy for either of them to be comfortable. The next
week, they went to a movie during which Robert never once tried to
put his arm around her shoulder. Two days later, he called and said
he was never going to get to know her at this rate so why didn’t
she just come out to his place for a cook-out and a beer? Heading
down his long gravel drive between hardwoods and weathered
outbuildings, she first met Sandy Ann, who barked at the wheels and
then leapt onto the driver’s side door, scratching the finish on
her new Camry.
    Robert laughed as he pulled the yellow
Labrador retriever away so Alison could open her door. She wasn’t a
dog person. She’d had a couple of cats growing up but had always
been too busy to make a long-term pet commitment. She had planned
to travel light, though the old
get-married-two-kids-house-in-the-suburbs had niggled at the base
of her brain once or twice as she’d approached thirty. It turned
out she ended up more rural than suburban, Robert’s sperm count was
too low, and marriage was the inevitable result of exposure to
Robert’s grill.
    She plunged the toaster lever. The eggs were
done and she arranged the food on the plates. Her timing was
perfect. The edges of the grits had just begun to congeal. She set
Robert’s plate before him. The steam of his coffee carried the
scent of bourbon.
    “ Where’s the extra bacon?”
he asked.
    “ On the counter.”
    “ It’ll get cold.”
    “ She’ll eat it.”
    “ I reckon it won’t kill her
either way.” Robert sometimes poured leftover bacon or hamburger
grease on Sandy Ann’s dry food even though the vet said it was bad
for her. Robert’s justification was she ate rotted squirrels she
found in the woods, so what difference did a little fat
make?
    “ We could do this at the
vet,” Alison said. “Maybe it would be easier for everybody,
especially Sandy Ann.” Though she was really