The Lover's Knot by Clare O'Donohue

offer, but you don’t want my cooking.”
    He smiled and looked at me. Not stared, exactly, but looked long enough to be studying me. It was a look of confidence, bordering on arrogance. But there was also something sad that betrayed the cool guy persona he was trying so hard to achieve. A bad boy with a touch of wounded puppy.
    Suddenly I was self-conscious. “I should get inside,” I said.
    The spell was broken. He looked away. It seemed like he blushed, but maybe he was just sweaty from the work he’d been doing. In any case, he nodded and turned away.
    Barney greeted me with the usual excitement, for which he got two of his favorite doggy cookies. I let him out in the yard and he wandered out of sight, likely down to the river. I sat waiting for him to return, but ten minutes went by and then twenty. No Barney.
    A cloud moved over the sun and suddenly it turned the afternoon chilly and gray. I walked in the direction Barney had gone but there was no sight of him, just a few squirrels who scrambled up trees as I came close.
    “Barney,” I called out. Nothing. “Barney,” I said a little more insistently this time. Still nothing.
    I veered off the path I usually took to the edge of my grandmother’s property and started toward the thicket of trees that we romantically called the “black forest.” Although there were only a few dozen trees, they were old and even as they dropped their leaves, they still blocked out most of the darkening sky.
    “Barney,” I practically screamed.
    There were more than five acres of property, but Barney was lazy. He wouldn’t have wandered around. He would have done his business and come back to the house, knowing dinner was waiting for him.
    “Barney,” I finally screamed.
    I heard rustling behind me and spun around. I saw nothing.
    A storm was now brewing in an ever-darkening sky, and I hadn’t brought a flashlight with me. With the tall trees and the encroaching evening, I felt blackness descend around me.
    “Barney,” I called toward the rustling. I could hear a slight panic in my voice. Even though I knew it had to be the squirrels, a small voice inside me said it didn’t sound like squirrels. I was momentarilyfrozen, staring at the spot where I heard the sound. I wasn’t sure whether I was scared that something had happened to the dog or was about to happen to me.
    “Nothing happens in this town,” I told myself. “Good or bad.”
    With common sense taking the lead, I turned back toward the house. I would give Barney an hour to get hungry and come home, and if he hadn’t, I’d come back out with a flashlight.
    I took a dozen steps and heard a sound behind me. It was more than just rustling leaves. It was footsteps. I clenched my fist into a pathetic attempt at a weapon and turned.
    “Who is that?”
    Nothing.
    “Who is that?”
    “Hey,” a male voice came from the other direction.
    “Marc?”
    “Yeah, you okay?”
    I was, I guess. “I thought someone was behind me.”
    Marc came toward me. “I saw. You were about to do battle with a vicious squirrel. Or maybe a bunny.” I turned and saw a squirrel rustling in the leaves before it scampered up a tree. Marc started laughing and I turned every shade of red from light pink to brick.
    He smiled. “I heard you calling for Barney.” He stepped toward me. “I came to tell you he’s in paw-to-paw combat with another squirrel out front. Takes after you, I guess.”
    He took another step, and I instinctively stepped back, more out of extreme embarrassment than anything.
    “Did it scare you that bad?” he asked.
    “No.” I hated being the silly girl. Maybe it was stupid to punish Marc for my self-consciousness, but I couldn’t help myself. We walked for a minute in uncomfortable silence.
    “It’s an amazing old place, isn’t it?” Marc stopped and looked at the house just up ahead.
    “Sometimes I love it almost as much as my grandmother does.”
    “I bet she’d leave it to you, if you asked her,” he