Chapter 21
Twenty-One
“ W hat in the world could you have gotten me?” Lauren wondered aloud as they got closer to the bakery and she saw there was a big box sitting outside.
Big. Huge.
“What in the world?” she asked, thinking at first maybe it was some kind of newfangled mixer, but it was long and wide, not deep.
“I want you to open it,” he said. “And there’s a second package, a small one, behind the first.”
“I can see. It says right here what it is,” she said, turning her head so she could read the words that were sideways since the box sat on its end.
“A kiddie pool?” she asked, furrowing her brows and looking back at him.
“Yeah,” he said, letting the word just hang there.
“What in the world are you getting me a kiddie pool for?” she asked, even as she bent down to look at the smaller box. That one was in a packing box, and he quickly got his pocketknife out so he could cut the packing tape, and she could open it.
Inside was something in a piece of plastic that was shrink-wrapped.
“This is a…dog bed!” she said, jumping up, comprehension dawning in her eyes. “You got a kiddie pool to put in the shed along with the dog bed so that the stray dog can have her babies in there!”
He nodded, grinning.
“Oh my goodness! This is awesome!” She reached for him, kissing him hard on the lips, before she said, “Can we put it up right now?”
“Sure,” he said. He’d measured the shed before he ordered the kiddie pool to make sure that it would fit.
He’d already moved some things around while she had been busy doing some baking, when she thought he was outside working on the security system.
Everything was ready, all they had to do was take it out of the package and set it up.
Plus, they needed to tame the dog down, but from what Lauren said, she was coming every morning and every evening for a little bit of food. Lauren said she hadn’t tried to pet her, but that was mostly because he had asked her not to unless he was with her, and he hadn’t been there.
He appreciated her considering his feelings on that matter.
The kiddie pool box was not heavy, but it was awkward, and they basically slid it back between their building and Matteo’s shop.
Then, Lauren went back to grab the dog bed while he opened the box and got the kiddie pool out, setting it in the shed. It fit perfectly, like he thought it would, and he had it sitting where it needed to be when she came back with the dog bed.
“I think this will probably take a little bit of time to fluff out.”
“Yeah. It’s supposed to be a lot bigger than that, so it should fluff out a good bit.”
She smiled at him as he took his pocketknife and cut across the top.
She set it in the kiddie pool, and then they went about gathering up the garbage and placing it neatly beside the building where they could grab it and deal with it later.
When they came back, the dog bed was indeed fluffing out.
“I think I should unfold it,” Lauren said as she climbed into the kiddie pool and started messing with the dog bed.
From his calculations, the dog bed wasn’t going to fill up the kiddie pool.
He wasn’t sure if they would need to worry about puppies getting caught on the other side of the bed, or whether it would be okay.
He really didn’t have a whole lot of experience in doing this, but apparently Matteo had heard his buddies talk about doing this in the military.
Regardless, it had made his wife squeal and act almost like her old self, and it had been worth it. Even if he had to deal with the dog and however many puppies.
“I really wanted to get something that we could put in the house, but…if we’re going to try to renew the old permits and get a license to open the business, we really can’t do that.”
“No. No animals in the house at all. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I have always loved animals so much. They were a definite no in the house when I was growing up, although we had a couple cats outside.”
“If we go look at Josiah’s house, we can keep animals there. Since we wouldn’t be living on top of the bakery.”
“That’s another point in favor of getting a house,” she said. “You don’t have to talk me into it.”
A small whine interrupted their conversation.
Cannon had been so interested in what they were talking about, he hadn’t even thought about where the dog might be. But as he stopped and turned carefully, they saw her standing just three feet outside the doorway, her tail wagging, her belly drooping almost to the ground.
“Oh my goodness. She wants to come see her new bed,” Lauren said, although Cannon wasn’t quite sure that was exactly what was going on.
“I wanted to name her Lacey, by the way. Is that okay with you?”
He wanted to shrug his shoulders and say something along the lines of “I don’t give a flip what you name the dog,” but he thought that maybe she really did care about his opinion.
“Lacey sounds like a good name. She looks like a Lacey.”
As he’d suspected, his interest made his wife smile, and it was a smile and look that lingered on his face before she turned back to the dog, crouching down.
“Lacey. Look what we did for you,” she spoke softly, in a coaxing voice.
“We got some treats with the dog food, didn’t we?” he suddenly remembered.
“Oh. We did. I actually haven’t given her any of those yet. ”
“Okay. Brace yourself. I’m going to walk slowly over to the corner. Do you keep the treats with the dog food?”
He knew that the dog food bag was in the far corner of the shed. They had put it there after carefully checking to make sure that there were no leaks and it wouldn’t get wet.
“Yes. They’re unopened and sitting beside the bag.”
He walked slowly over and decided that it might be best for him to open the bag there to keep the rustling and any extra noises as far away from Lacey as possible.
Lacey seemed like maybe a little bit of a fancy name for such a scruffy dog, but perhaps once she got cleaned up, it wouldn’t be so bad.
He wasn’t sure how many to get, so he grabbed four. Two for Lauren, and two for him.
“Here you go,” he said, putting two treats in her hands. Moving slowly and carefully so as not to scare the dog.
But he really needn’t have worried. Either she was extra hungry or extra happy to see them.
She came right over, and as Lauren held a treat on the palm of her hand, with her fingers flat out, Lacey came over, sniffed, and took it up delicately, as though someone had taught her not to snatch treats from human hands. Or to be careful not to bite human fingers when she was getting a treat.
“I think she might let me pet her,” Lauren said, looking up at him with questioning eyes.
She didn’t say the words aloud, but he almost felt like she was looking to him to make sure it was okay.
“All right,” he said. If she got bit, he was ready to tackle the dog, and they would deal with whatever they had to deal with.
The dog did have a collar, so it had been someone’s pet at one time from the looks of it.
And if they could get close enough and manage to get her to the vet, maybe they could figure out whether or not she was microchipped, since there was no license.
Sometimes collars had little tags with their names on them, but he didn’t see anything like that on hers either.
“She ate them both!” Lauren said as Lacey took the last one.
“I’m holding two more. ”
“Why don’t you try to give them to her?”
“If I’m going to give her treats, she’s going to have to do something to earn them.”
“She came the whole way over here and allowed us to feed her. That certainly deserves a treat.”
“But these are two new treats. She has to do something new.”
“All right. Like what?” she asked, looking up at him and lifting her brows.
“I suppose we could try to get her to get into the kiddie pool, but I think that might be a little bit much.”
“Yeah.”
Instead of that, he turned to Lacey and said, “Sit.”
To his surprise, and to Lauren’s astonishment, Lacey’s rear end went down on the ground.
“Oh my goodness. She’s trained!”
“She sure is. Good girl,” he said, holding the treat out, only this time instead of holding it on his palm flat out the way Lauren had done, he gave it to her with his fingers wrapped around it.
She took it just as politely as she had the other two.
“Someone’s definitely worked with her. Which makes me wonder, did someone drop her off because she was pregnant? Did someone just abandon her? Or did she somehow get separated from her owner?”
“I think I’m going to try to take a picture and see if I can post it online in a few different places, to see if anyone recognizes her.”
“That’s a great idea. Let me see if we can get her to stand up again.”
He moved back just a bit, although there wasn’t much room with the kiddie pool behind them. But Lacey got up and took a step toward him.
“That’s a perfect position. Just hold on a second,” Lauren said as she held her phone out and snapped the picture.
She did a few more things, which he assumed was her posting the picture online with a comment asking if anyone recognized her.
“Do you think it would be okay for us to close the shed and keep her inside?” Lauren looked at him questioningly. She was practically in the shed, and it wouldn’t be hard to close the door behind her.
“I don’t know.” He supposed that if they put food and water in there, she would be fine. “Is there a way we can just enclose her in the yard? And leave the shed door open? That way, she might find the kiddie pool on her own, and if she has the puppies, at least she’ll be around.”
“There is a fence and a gate in the back, but she’s been getting in and out through a hole that she, or a different dog or animal, dug under the fence. I can’t keep her in.”
“Well then, we have two choices. We can make her stay in the shed, or we can just allow her to choose us.”
He felt like the second option was a better one, but he was guessing that Lauren would go for the first. After all, the dog really didn’t know what was best for itself, and that’s why it needed owners.
But for Cannon, it meant more when she chose them. It was kind of the way he was allowing Lauren to choose. He could have come and demanded that she go back to him, and they could have fought and ended up breaking up completely, because instead of wooing her, he’d commanded her.
Now, he knew what the Bible said about men being in charge of the household and women being submissive and obedient.
And he would have had every right to stand in front of his wife and say, “You have to listen to me because the Bible says so.” But sometimes, at least in his newfound wisdom, that wasn’t the best way.
Sometimes the best way was to woo things to oneself.
After all, that was the way God worked. He had all the authority in the world to stand in front of any human and say, “I demand that you worship me,” and the Bible clearly said that that was the way it would go someday.
But for now, God had given them free choice, and He stood, wooing them.
Wooing them with beautiful sunsets, and fresh lake breezes, with sweet smiles from people he loved, and the bonds of neighbors and friends.
With summer storms and winter snows and a sky brimming with stars at night.
That’s how God drew them to Himself. And that’s how he wanted to draw his wife back.
With love and warmth and all the ways he could show her that he cherished her.
“I think we ought to just leave the shed door open and let Lacey decide if this is where she wants to have them.” Lauren stood from where she had knelt before the dog, scratching her ears.
“After all, I don’t want her to have the puppies in the shed on the floor as she scratches to get out, unhappy because she’s penned up. ”
“I think that’s a really good idea. Let’s try to make it so that she wants to stay here.”
“I think that’s the best idea,” Lauren said, and he wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking as their eyes met and she smiled at him. A sweet, loving smile, the kind that he hadn’t seen for years and years, but now they came easily to her face.
All it took was a little attention and some love from him, and her entire countenance toward him had changed.
Why hadn’t he done this earlier? Why hadn’t he paid attention to her sooner?
He couldn’t answer those questions, other than maybe he was just so consumed with trying to be successful, enjoying himself even in his quest to be successful, because he saw it as a challenge, he saw it as fun, it was something he had enjoyed.
But in his pursuit of his own happiness, he’d left the most important person in the world to him behind.
And that was all on him. He vowed that it wouldn’t happen again.