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  “No? Then what do you do with the dogs you steal?”

  “I give ‘em to Bear.”

  “Bear is a person?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know the dude’s real name. We call him Bear.”

  “And what does Bear do with the dogs?” the giant asked.

  “He uses ‘em to train his Pits.”

  “Pit Bulls.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And by train,” the giant said, “you really mean bait.”

  Russell shrugged. “That ain’t on me.”

  The giant looked at me as if to say, “Is this guy for real?” I had to admit that Russell was even less bright than me.

  The giant said, “I want you to take me to wherever Ruby is being kept. And I want you to do that now.”

  “Sure,” Russell said. “Don’t know if Bear will be around or not.”

  “I don’t give a shit about Bear. I want Ruby.”

  Russell gave a half shrug. “Whatever.”

  I was surprised the giant didn’t crush him right then and there.

  We all climbed into Russell’s car, an old white panel van that smelled like dog shit. The giant sat in the passenger seat and stared straight ahead while Russell drove. Fifteen minutes later, he turned down an alley and parked the van at the end. He left the van running and motioned to a rundown house surrounded by a new stockade fence. “Right over there,” Russell said. “He keeps the Pits in the garage. The bait— The other dogs are locked in a pen out back.”

  “Shut off the engine,” the giant said.

  “Why?” Russell said. “I got you here. The rest, like I said, it ain’t on me.”

  The giant twisted the key and yanked it out in one quick motion. Then he shoved his door open, grabbed Russell by the arm, and dragged him across the seats and out the door.

  I jumped out the side door and we all stood in the alley. The giant was quiet a moment. “How many people live here?” he asked Russell.

  “A couple,” Russell said.

  “Are they here now?”

  Russell shrugged. The giant glared. I had a feeling that shrug was going to get Russell in a world of trouble.

  The giant said, “Show me this pen where the bait dogs are kept.”

  Russell took us to the side gate. “It’s locked,” he said. As if that would keep us out and end the whole ordeal.

  The giant reached over and flipped the latch. “Not anymore.”

  ‘The pen’ out back was a filthy enclosure. Four dogs huddled in the waning sun. There was shit everywhere and not so much as a drop of water for their dangling tongues. When the Chihuahua spotted the giant, she ran forward, barking frantically and dancing in circles. The giant opened the gate and scooped her up with one hand. The other hand held Russell firmly in place.

  The giant made a somewhat embarrassing spectacle as he snuggled and apologized to Ruby. I looked in at the other three dogs. Two were mutts, maybe twenty or so pounds each. The other was a black Lab puppy. They looked terrified and malnourished. I felt sick.

  “Here,” the giant said as he handed Ruby to me. “Would you mind holding her for a minute?”

  I took Ruby. She shook in my arms.

  The giant said to Russell, “The Pit Bulls are locked in the garage?”

  “Yeah,” Russell said.

  “How many?”

  That shrug again. “Three maybe? Like I said, I got nothing to do with this.”

  “Right.”

  Just then, the back door to the house banged open and a shirtless man with hair sprouting wildly from his chest, arms, face, and head made his way toward us.

  “You must be Bear,” the giant said.

  “Yeah. And who the hell are you?”

  The giant responded by slamming his fist into Bear’s temple. Bear crumpled to the ground. Russell squirmed, frantically trying to get loose from the giant’s grasp. Even I was smart enough to know that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Take me to the garage,” the giant said to Russell.

  “You can’t go in there,” Russell said. “Those dogs are wild.”

  “No worries. I’m not going in there.”

  Russell relaxed a bit. Then the giant added, “You and Bear are.”

  The rest of the color drained from Russell’s face. “No way! Those dogs scare me, man. Besides, Bear’s bleeding.”

  “So?”

  “He trains his dogs to scent blood. They’ll attack.”

  The giant smirked. “Ain’t that a shame.”

  The giant grabbed Bear’s arm in his free hand and began dragging the two men toward the garage. As he did so, he said to me, “I’ll be right back. Don’t lose her, okay?”

  I smiled at my new friend. “Don’t worry. I’ve got her.”

  I don’t know for sure what happened after that. The three men disappeared around the side of the house. I heard a little screaming and a lot of barking. Then a door slammed and the noise drifted off to faint sounds. The giant reappeared and said, “The garage is soundproofed. Convenient, don't you think?”

  I nodded. I could imagine what was going on inside that garage, but I didn’t want the details.

  The giant took Ruby from me, nuzzling her close. She licked his huge face. Then he gestured inside the pen, where the other three dogs had bravely made their way closer. “Can you grab those two little ones? I’ll get the black one.”

  We carried the dogs out to Russell’s van. “What are you going to do with these other dogs?” I asked.

  “Keep them. They’re Ruby’s family now.”

  “Are you worried they’ll get stolen again?”

  The giant frowned. “I’m moving out. I’ve got the money to make a new start. I found an old farmhouse just outside the city limits. Place is perfect.” His voice got quiet. “Lydia would have loved it.”

  “That’s really good.”

  “Yeah. I’ll have to find a roommate, though. I can’t afford the upkeep on my own. Finding the right person is going to be difficult.” He grinned at me. “I can be a little intimidating, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “A little?” I laughed. “Yeah, you are that. But I’m over it. You don’t scare me anymore.”

  The giant looked at me. “You like dogs?”

  I had one of the mutts in my lap. He was black and tan, scruffy, smelled like a urine-soaked rag. He watched me with big brown eyes and I swore he was smiling. I said, “Yeah, I do.”

  “Do you have a job?”

  “I work in tech support. Computers.”

  “You live in a dump.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “How do you feel about farmhouses?”

  I grinned. “I’ve always wanted to live in one.”

  The giant gave me that huge grin. “My name’s Joel, by the way.”

  “Great to meet you, Joel.”

  A Snapshot in Time

  I stand at the edge of the path and stare into the clearing. The schoolhouse, long ago abandoned, somehow manages to retain its warmth in the midst of the cold, forgotten landscape. Nowadays, schools resemble prisons; sprawling gray fortresses children are forced to attend. That was not always so, and the loss saddens me.

  This red schoolhouse, like most of the others of its day, resembles a church. Though even the churches have now grown large and foreboding, haven’t they? We’re always striving for bigger and better. Somewhere along the way, we traded our quaint lifestyle for 50-story high-rises and shopping malls the size of small cities.

  I look at the barren tree and recall the days of playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie. I can almost hear the shrill giggles of my childhood friends, as we clasped hands in a circle. Mrs. Schneider, our teacher, would call us in after our fifteen-minute recess and all our noses would be bright red from the cold. We’d quickly settle into our seats, always happy to be there. We all loved our school and our teacher. Learning was an adventure we each eagerly sought.

  I’ve been gone from this place for many years. I grew up and married my childhood crush. Elliot
had sat behind me from kindergarten through fifth grade, right here in this very schoolhouse. He’d pull on my strawberry-blonde banana curls and feign innocence when I turned to tell him to stop.

  As young adults, Elliot’s job took us far away. We settled into our new life and raised four beautiful children. Our children grew into wonderful adults, and soon we were blessed with fifteen healthy grandchildren. When I look back, it all seems to have happened in the blink of an eye. Hard to believe I now have seven great-grandchildren. And I’m a widow. I lost Elliot three years ago. When I close my eyes, I can still feel him pulling on my banana curls.

  I have not returned to this place in all the decades of my adulthood. The memories, though, remain vivid. This was a time of joyous innocence, and I worry that this new generation of children will never know such youthful exuberance.

  My granddaughter, Barbara, touches my arm. “Are you ready to go, Grandma?” she asks. “It’s getting awfully cold.”

  I look at that little red schoolhouse and try to imagine the scene through her eyes. She might describe it as old-fashioned, possibly even bleak. Everything in her world has always been so much larger. She grew up in a city of skyscrapers, and her son’s school is a huge block of concrete with metal detectors and security guards.

  This little red schoolhouse is where I learned about the world, and where I fell in love. I don’t know how to tell her all I feel when I stand here.

  Barbara senses my melancholy. She wraps her arms around my shoulder and says, “Sad that they’re tearing it down.”

  Tears sting my eyes. “Yes. Before long this will be yet another mall.”

  She slips a camera from her pocket and snaps a photo. That’s what all our lives come down to in the end; just a snapshot in time.

  Death by Chocolate

  You can’t kill someone with a chocolate mint stick. That’s just plain silly. What are you going to do, push it through his eye with enough force to ram the thing into his brain? Stupid, right? The stick might hurt his eye, but it’ll snap in half before it does too much damage. It certainly wouldn’t kill him. Then you’d be left with chocolate smeared all over your hands and a furious man to contend with.

  And yet…

  I want to do just that. Kill him with the chocolate mint sticks.

  I could jam them down his throat, a fistful of the things, chocolate mint twigs choking off the air he fights to breathe.

  But how do you get someone to open wide while you shove sticks down his throat?

  If I could figure that out, I’d have the karmic solution to the problem of his existence. Death by chocolate. He’d die with minty breath and chocolate lips. A mouthful of anger he couldn’t swallow. I could take a photo and display it on Facebook as his epitaph, this man with his chocolate mint stick addiction.

  Chocolate fingerprints on my keyboard. Chocolate on the TV remote. Chocolate kisses and chocolate lies.

  Wait.

  Back up.

  My name is Teresa Jackson. I’m thirty-two years old, and I live in a small New England town famous for inventing the chocolate chip cookie. But Toll House cookies aren’t the problem; chocolate mint sticks are the problem.

  I met him twenty years ago. I went with a friend to watch my older brother play football, which was really just an excuse to hang out with the high school kids. I didn’t like or even understand the game. He was there on the field, the quarterback, a god among pimple-faced boys. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  When they won the game, I cheered like a rabid fan. I left my friend on the bleachers and made my way across the field on the pretense of congratulating my brother. I managed to get an introduction to him, Johnny, the quarterback, the sixteen-year-old boy who made my heart flutter. He hardly acknowledged me. I was twelve, skinny, with barely a hint of anything feminine. The training bra I wore didn’t have much training to do at all. Johnny was surrounded by bubbly cheerleaders with perfect bouncing breasts and glossy lips. I didn’t have a chance.

  And yet…

  I went home that day and told my mother I’d met the boy I was going to marry. She humored me. I was still a child, with childlike fantasies. A schoolgirl crush.

  I married Johnny on my twenty-first birthday. He was twenty-five, all mine, the prize I’d spent nine years pursuing. A happy ending if our story had stopped there.

  Do you know what goes well with chocolate mint sticks? Bailey’s Irish Cream and chocolate liqueur, with a splash of vodka. Johnny doesn’t like sweet drinks. He sticks to vodka, straight up. But I don’t like the burn of alcohol, and so I match Johnny’s chocolate mint fixation with my own liquid version. I have a glass in my hand now, thinking maybe a drink will calm my murderous mind. Then I see a box of those damned sticks in the cabinet. Those things are everywhere. I’m surprised he didn’t try to build our house out of chocolate mint sticks.

  Welcome to my house of sticks. The cracks are showing. I should have known it wouldn’t last.

  I put my empty glass on the floor, then tear open the box. Chocolate mint sticks roll across the granite counter. I grab a handful and stand over the glass. Drop one, like a missile, and it bounces off the rim of the glass. I try another and miss completely. Johnny would be mortified to see his chocolate mint sticks on the floor. This makes me laugh, and again I miss my target.

  When I think about what he’s done, how these chocolate mint sticks have changed everything, the laughter dies in my throat. I drop the stick. It hits my target, sitting inside the glass like a swizzle stick. A chocolate straw. A tasty symbol of the mess my life has become.

  How can chocolate mint sticks be the cause of such unbridled hatred? Such despair?

  They aren’t, not really. Johnny is the cause. These sticks are one of the odd quirks we list about each other. My husband hates grape jelly. His favorite color is metallic blue. And he loves chocolate mint sticks.

  My knees give out and I’m on the floor with the pile of chocolate mint sticks. The smell causes tiny spasms in my stomach. And, so, this is what my life has come to. I’m a grown woman with a Master’s degree in ancient history, a respectable job, a group of intelligent friends, and a quivering, desperate need to force feed my husband a dozen chocolate mint sticks.

  How has this happened?

  I’ve always hated that cliché women fall back on. He’s not the same man I married. Really? Did a doppelganger sneak in and take his place? Did he suddenly become possessed by a demonic alien? No, he’s the same man; flesh, blood, and faults you chose to ignore.

  Now those words come back to me. He is the same man I married. That’s the worst part. This would be so much easier if I could blame demonic possession.

  Are you thinking he cheated on me? A stereotypical occurrence. A brief fling with another woman.

  If only.

  I know you’re wondering what could be so traumatic that I’d want to kill my husband. And what does it have to do with chocolate mint sticks?

  The world is a strange place. Serendipity. Synchronicity. Accidents or fate.

  A good friend of mine, Lindsey, is a Boston homicide detective. She and I went to college together. Our courses took us in different directions, but we kept in touch. Lunches in the North End. Her favorite dessert is tiramisu.

  Lindsey is working what has turned into a serial murder case. Three teenage girls. Popular kids. Two of them cheerleaders. She and I met for lunch yesterday. She needed a break, a distraction from the murders, but she was clearly preoccupied and even the tiramisu didn’t hold her attention. Our waitress brought us those after-dinner mints, the little rectangular shaped chocolates with mint in the middle. Lindsey picked one up, stared at it thoughtfully. I asked what had her so entranced, and she replied, “Crazy thing about this case. The killer leaves chocolate mints.” She dropped the mint on the table. “But not these. He leaves those chocolate mint sticks. Tied up with a red bow. Like a gift.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to her then. But, really, what wife would immediately jump t
o the conclusion that her husband is a serial killer?

  Still.

  Chocolate mint sticks.

  The thought niggled and nagged. Johnny worked late, and I found myself scouring the Internet for information about the murders. I matched the dates and times to Johnny’s schedule. He hadn’t been home around the times of any of the three murders. But that in itself didn’t mean anything.

  And yet.

  Did I know for sure where he had been? Business meetings, he’d said at the time. Johnny worked in sales. I’d never questioned his business meetings. Why did I suddenly question everything?

  Because of those damn chocolate mint sticks.

  For you, he’d said. Chocolate mint sticks wrapped up with a red bow. Inside, the diamond engagement ring I now wore on my left hand, slipped over the sticks and twinkling at me.

  Tied with a red bow.

  Chocolate mint sticks.

  Last night, after Johnny went to sleep, I did something I’d sworn I’d never do. I scoured through his cellphone. I’d turned into one of those wives, the kind who sneak and spy and distrust.

  His work calendar had no scheduled business meetings on the murder dates.

  When Johnny was seventeen, he was dating Melanie, the head cheerleader. They’d gone to a party, celebrating his big win at that day’s game. He’d thrown four touchdown passes, a school record. He had his choice of college scholarships from big-time football programs, the name brands. The world at his feet.

  He drank too much, got sloppy drunk, and Melanie drove them home in the red Corvette his father had bought for him the week before. She’d been drinking too, though not as much, and thought she was fine to drive. She drove too fast. Hard not to in that little sports car. Maybe she passed out. We never learned the details. The car bounced off a guardrail, slid across the road and straight into the path of a pickup truck. That truck hit the Corvette’s rear quarter and sent it spinning forward, where it slammed head on into a big old oak tree. Melanie went through the windshield and was dead before paramedics arrived. Johnny’s right leg was crushed between the door and dashboard, wedged in tight so they had to pry open the door to ease him out. Four surgeries and he still walks with a pronounced limp.