Epilogue
Hardly a day passed, however, without some exciting adventure.
—Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Boxcar Children
This is what happened next.
Dancy and Clint got married. (You figured that would happen, right?) They held the wedding at the lake, with Erin as maid
of honor. Bisa was invited, but not her husband. (More about them later.) Erin is currently engaged to a high school math
teacher with two rescue dogs, so you know he’s a good guy.
Dancy took her show on tour. Even the critics loved it, but I didn’t get to go with her, which put me off my kibble for a while, but as she pointed out, I needed to stay with Clint to get him through the season when she couldn’t be there for him.
(Go, Stars!) Thanks to me and his family, Clint got his game back and ended up playing four more seasons with the Stars before Dancy finally let him retire as one of the greats.
Now Clint is busy renovating the big old farmhouse he and Dancy bought on five acres of land west of Chicago because they want me and the kids to be able to roam free.
Right now he’s designing an office-rehearsal space for Dancy in the barn and a big carpenter workshop for himself.
He’s also taking classes in architecture, which has me and Dancy wondering what’s next.
Dancy stopped touring for a couple of months when she got pregnant because she was so nervous, but once she settled down,
she hit the road again and finished the tour. (There was an unfortunate incident involving me and her light-up dress. No need
to go into details.)
After the first of the kiddos was born, she made an indie film that, unfortunately, had no part for a dog. She got acting
awards and more movie offers, and Clint said that was it, they were moving the family to LA permanently. But—and I didn’t
see this coming, either—Dancy wanted to stay in Chicago because she fell in love with this big-deal Chicago professional theater
company that wanted her to be part of their ensemble cast and also wanted her to direct, which made her over-the-moon happy.
She still does a film sometimes, and we’re all excited to go back to the house with the fountain when that happens, even though
it gets crowded with two grown-ups, two kids, a dog, and Bisa hanging out with Windsor. (That’s what she named her kid. You
can’t make this stuff up.)
As for Bisa and Roth—Roth’s movie bombed. The critics called it a miscast embarrassment of a film that should have been great.
They said his performance was wooden and unconvincing; he should stick to Cole Legend, they said, and his costar should stick
to singing. I know all this because Clint kept following Dancy around reading the reviews, and she lectured him about something
called schadenfreude, but I know she was happy, too. And so was I because Roth doesn’t like dogs.
Bisa does like dogs. It drives Clint crazy when Bisa’s around, but she loves Dancy, and Dancy says she doesn’t have the heart to cut her out.
Dancy also says Bisa is too self-centered to let Roth take over her life, and that he picked the wrong woman if he wanted a partner who would put him first, because the only person Bisa cares more about than herself is Windsor.
And Bisa says that every time Roth asks for a divorce she reminds him how much it’ll cost him, and with his career on the downswing, he can’t afford it.
(I like Windsor. Unlike other children I live with, she never tries to ride me or make me wear a hat.)
We spend a lot of time at the lake in the summer and the winter. All of us, plus Clint’s family, their friends, sometimes
a bunch of Stars players, and even the Stars owner and her husband show up. Clint used to love being alone here, but we changed
that.
One more thing . . . Clint built me a ramp so I can get in and out of the water by myself, but sometimes he and Dancy dive
in after me anyway. Clint says he’s the luckiest guy in the world, and Dancy says she’s the luckiest woman, and then they
shut the bedroom door and leave me out in the hallway, which I don’t appreciate at all. It’s hard being a dog.
The End