Chapter 12
Kayla
William had been vibrating since we got in the car.
Maybe not literally, but close. He sat in the back seat with his seat belt pulled tight across his chest, his feet drumming against the underside of his booster, his hands gripping the straps like he was on a roller coaster that hadn’t started yet.
He’d barely touched his breakfast. He’d put his shoes on the wrong feet twice and hadn’t cared either time.
“Mom. How much longer?”
“Five minutes. Same as the last time you asked.”
“That was a really long time ago.”
“That was forty-five seconds ago.”
He pressed his face to the window. The morning was sharp and bright, a Colorado day where the sky looked scrubbed clean and the mountains stood out against it as if someone had cut them from blue paper.
We were taking the same route we took every school day, past the same houses and the same trees and the same mailboxes, but William was watching the road like we were driving into uncharted territory.
“Do you think Jolly will remember me?”
“Buddy, you played with him through the fence just a few hours ago. He remembers you.”
“But it’s different at school. Everything looks different, and there’s a bunch of kids. What if he doesn’t know it’s me because I’m not at the fence?”
“Dogs don’t work that way. Jolly knows you, knows your scent. He’ll know you anywhere.”
William considered this. His feet kept drumming. “What if the other kids scare him?”
“Jolly works with police officers in dangerous situations. I don’t think a gym full of first graders is going to rattle him.”
“But there are a lot of us. And some kids are really loud. Tommy Weller screams at recess every single day for no reason.”
“I think Jolly can handle Tommy Weller.”
He was quiet for about ten seconds, which was a new record for the morning.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Everyone’s going to see how amazing he is.” His voice had changed. Softer and private, like he was sharing something that cost him. “They’re all going to want to be his friend.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror. William was still looking out the window, but his hands had gone still on the seat belt straps.
There it was. The thing underneath the excitement. William had kept Jolly a secret for weeks, a friendship that belonged only to him, conducted through a gap in the fence where nobody else could see. And now his whole school was about to meet the dog he considered his best friend in the world.
He was proud. He was also terrified of sharing.
“You know what’s special about you and Jolly?”
He looked at me in the mirror.
“All those other kids are going to meet Jolly today for the first time. But you already know him. You know what games he likes. You know how he listens when you talk to him. You know what his eyes look like up close.” I held his gaze in the mirror.
“Nobody else in that gym is going to have that. Just you.”
He turned this over, the way he turned over everything, examining it from every angle before deciding what to do with it. Then he nodded once, and his feet started drumming again.
We pulled into the school lot, and I found a spot near the gym entrance.
William was out of his booster and standing on the asphalt before I’d turned off the engine.
His backpack hung from one shoulder, his jacket was unzipped despite the morning chill, and his eyes were scanning the parking lot with the focus of a kid on a mission.
He found what he was looking for before I did.
Ben’s truck was parked near the side entrance to the gym. The tailgate was down, and Ben stood beside it in jeans and a dark pullover, unloading a duffel bag. Jolly was already on the ground, sitting at Ben’s left side with his harness on, ears up, tail sweeping the pavement in steady arcs.
William grabbed my hand and pulled. “Mom. Come on.”
“William, slow down. He’s not going anywhere.”
He did not slow down. He towed me across the lot at a pace just short of running, weaving between parked cars, his backpack bouncing against his hip. We were twenty feet away when Jolly’s head turned.
The tail went from sweeping to frantic. Jolly’s whole body shifted toward William, his ears flattening in that particular expression of uncomplicated joy. He stayed seated because he was trained, but every other part of him was straining forward.
William dropped my hand and closed the distance at a dead sprint. He hit his knees on the asphalt, and Jolly’s discipline dissolved. The dog surged forward, and William threw his arms around Jolly’s neck and buried his face in the dark fur.
“Hey, boy. Hey, Jolly. I told you I’d see you today.”
Jolly’s body wiggled against William’s, trying to be in all the places at once, nose pushing into the boy’s neck, his ear, his hair. William was laughing, wild and free, a sound that belonged to a kid who’d forgotten anyone was watching.
Ben watched them. His hands were still on the duffel, but he’d gone motionless, and something in his expression had opened up in a way that he probably didn’t know was visible.
The hard angles of his face had softened, just barely, like they always did when Jolly did something that reminded him the dog was more than a working animal.
Ben looked up and found me standing a few feet back.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
Last night, I had kissed this man across a gap in a fence and then walked back to my house, smiling so hard my face hurt. Now we were standing in a school parking lot in broad daylight with families arriving around us, and neither of us seemed to know what to do with our hands.
Ben held my gaze for a beat longer than neighborly. There was warmth in it, and something careful, like he was measuring how close he could stand to an open flame without changing the terms of an agreement neither of us had made yet.
“You ready for this?” I asked.
“Jolly’s ready. I’m just the guy holding the leash.”
William looked up from Jolly’s neck. “Mr. Ben, are you going to show everyone the commands? The ones where Jolly sits and stays and does the thing where he finds stuff?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Can I help?”
Ben crouched down to William’s level. “Tell you what. I might need a volunteer during the demo. Think you can handle that?”
William’s face went incandescent. He looked at me, then back at Ben, then at Jolly, as if he needed all three of us to confirm that this was actually happening.
“Yes. I can definitely handle that.”
“Good. Now head on to your class. I’ll see you in there.”
William gave Jolly one more squeeze, jumped to his feet, and took off toward the school entrance. Halfway across the lot, he turned and ran backward for three steps, still looking at Jolly, before spinning around and disappearing through the doors.
Ben straightened. “He’s a good kid.”
“He is.” I grinned. “Except for the fact that he just totally forgot his mother even existed.”
We stood there for another second, the parking lot filling around us, and I wanted to say something about last night, about the kiss, about the way I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since I’d walked back across the yard.
But the moment was too public and too bright, and some things needed walls around them before they could be spoken aloud.
Ben seemed to understand that. He shouldered the duffel, gave me a nod that carried more than a nod should have been able to carry, and headed for the gym entrance with Jolly at his side.
I watched him go. Then I took a breath and followed.
The gym was already controlled chaos by the time I got inside. Trish was near the door with a clipboard, directing parents to the bleachers and teachers to their assigned sections. She spotted me immediately.
“There she is. The woman who saved the children of Summit Falls from a lifetime of emotional scarring.” She pulled me into a one-armed hug without breaking stride from her clipboard duties.
“Mrs. Patterson actually cried when I called her. Real tears. I think she was three glasses of wine into planning a movie in the gym when I told her.”
“It was Ben’s idea, not mine.”
“And we’ll get to Ben in a moment.” She steered me toward the far side of the gym, where folding chairs were stacked against the wall. “First, help me set up the parent section. Then you’re going to explain to me why you failed to mention that your neighbor looks like that.”
“Looks like what?”
“Kayla. The man is six-foot-hunky and carried a duffel bag like it was a clutch purse. Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m not playing anything. He’s my neighbor. He offered to help.”
“Mm-hm.” Trish handed me a stack of chairs and started unfolding her own row. “And last night? When you texted me that he’d volunteered? What were you doing when this generous offer occurred?”
“We were talking. At the fence.”
“At the fence. Naturally. Very pastoral.” She set down a chair with a decisive snap. “And how does one’s neighbor come to volunteer for a school assembly at seven forty-five on a weeknight? Were you just standing at the fence at that hour, chatting about community service?”
“We were talking about other things. The assembly came up. He offered.”
“Other things.” She set down another chair and turned to face me.
Her expression was friendly and knowing and impossible to hide from.
“Kayla. Honey. I have known you for six months. In that entire time, you have shown zero interest in any human male. You have deflected every attempt I have made to set you up. You told me, and I quote, that you were ‘enjoying the quiet.’ And now you’re standing in a school gym with a flush on your neck because a man you claim is just your neighbor looked at you in a parking lot. ”
I put my hand on my neck. It was warm.
“I don’t have a flush.”
“You absolutely have a flush.” She grinned and went back to the chairs. “I’m thrilled. For the record. Whatever this is or isn’t, I’m thrilled.”