10
Janet’s kids came tumbling out of the school when the bell rang, along with the rest of the neighborhood children.
Mine did not.
A shiver ran down my spine as the wave of students slowed to a trickle and then dried up entirely. I should have gone straight home after work. What if the school had been trying to reach me?
“I—I’m just going to go run into the office and see what’s going on,” I said to Janet, trying not to alarm her kids.
Janet had no such qualms. “Jeanie, where’s Susie?” she asked her eldest.
Jeanie shrugged. “They called for her from the office around lunchtime.”
“Who called for her?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The secretary said she was leaving.”
Ice cubes clinking in my veins, I forced my feet to move toward the front office. I pushed the door open and approached Mrs. Garrison, the secretary.
She looked up from her phone call and held a finger in the air, indicating I was to wait. But this wasn’t a time for waiting. “It’s an emergency,” I said softly but urgently.
Her eyes flitted to my face, and then she told the person on the phone that she would call them back and replaced the receiver. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Feldman?”
“Where are my children?” I blurted out.
She tilted her head, confused. “With their grandmother,” she said slowly, clearly annoyed. “She signed them out at noon.”
“She—what?”
“I don’t know where they went from there. She said they had an appointment.”
“They didn’t,” I said. “And she’s not on the list of people who are allowed to sign them out.”
“Sure she is,” Mrs. Garrison said, pulling out an enormous binder and flipping to the F section. “Says right here: grandmother.”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “That’s my mother. Not this grandmother.”
Mrs. Garrison shrugged. “You should really update their forms, then, to specify. Now if you’ll excuse me, that wasn’t exactly an emergency, and I do need to return that phone call.”
I thanked Mrs. Garrison, though she had been less than helpful, and received a curt nod while she dialed the phone.
My fear turned to righteous anger as I pushed open the door to the front of the school. Janet was waiting for me, the kids running circles around her as she watched for me to re-emerge.
“Ruth,” I said, shaking my head as I made my way across the sidewalk.
“Who else would it have been?” she asked, as if that was an obvious person to abduct my children. “Should I get the pots and pans ready?”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. Then I forced my tense shoulders back down. “Maybe. If I don’t kill her first.”
“I’ll tell the police you were with me the whole time,” Janet said. “All these years of telling George my clothes were on sale were excellent practice at lying.”
Normally that would have gotten a grin, but I wasn’t in the mood.
My car was still at Janet’s, but I walked straight home from the school, my pace brisk in my eagerness to make sure the children still had all ten fingers and toes.
“Susie?” I called as I opened the unlocked door. “Bobby?”
A shrill yipping answered me, and the children came running out of the kitchen, chasing after a small gray streak that jumped up onto my leg. I moved back from the creature reflexively as Susie scooped the ... squirrel? ... into her arms, covering its small, bearded face in kisses.
“What on—?”
“Grandma got us a puppy,” Bobby said, trying unsuccessfully to take the ball of fur from his sister. “Hey, it’s my turn!”
“ Ruth !” I bellowed.
She emerged from the kitchen, smiling at the scuffling between the children.
“What did you do?” I asked her.
“Susie and Bobby said you were talking about a dog,” she said. “I thought this would be a lovely surprise.”
I looked at Susie, who was on the floor, the puppy in her lap.
“Talking about,” I said quietly but forcefully, “isn’t the same as ‘decided to get one.’”
Ruth shrugged. “I thought you’d be happier with this than the pony Susie really wanted.” She reached down and ruffled Bobby’s hair. “Your father loved dogs,” she said fondly. “It’s good for children to have a pet,” she said to me. “Besides, she’s fully housebroken and won’t shed.”
As if on cue, the puppy jumped out of Susie’s lap, came over to me, and looked up with her tongue lolling out happily. She was cute. I did have to admit that. And small. “What’s the breed?” I asked eventually, still not sold on this new addition to the family.
“Miniature schnauzer,” Ruth said.
“Aren’t those German?” I asked pointedly, remembering her objection to Heloise.
She fixed me with a withering look. “The dogs weren’t Nazis, Barbara.”
I sighed heavily, looking down at the joy on the kids’ faces. Overstepping was an understatement here. But she had also won, and she knew it because there was no way I was going to be the cause of more loss for them.
“You’ll need to feed and walk her,” I warned Susie and Bobby. “This is a lot more work than that goldfish from the carnival last year.”
“Well, yeah. That fish only lived for a week,” Bobby said.
“Exactly. I can’t flush a puppy.”
“We’ll take good care of her,” Susie said as the puppy ran back to her lap, sensing an ally.
Pure delight radiated from Susie, and I couldn’t help it: the annoyance began to trickle out of me. No one who could make my children smile like that again could be bad, even if this wasn’t the dog I might have picked. She was the one they picked. And that was what mattered.
“What’s her name?” I asked, crouching down next to Susie and holding out my hand, which the little furball licked, looking up at me with big eyes.
“We waited for you for that,” Ruth said. “I wouldn’t want to overstep again.”
My fingers itched to curl into fists, but I fought to keep them straight. “Any ideas?” I asked Susie and Bobby.
“Pepper,” Susie said immediately. “Grandma said her color is called salt and pepper.”
I looked to Bobby. “How’s Pepper?”
His face fell slightly. “I wanted to call her Spot.”
“She doesn’t have any spots,” Susie said. “That makes no sense.”
“Okay, okay,” Bobby said. “C’mere, Pepper!”
But instead of going to Bobby, she climbed out of Susie’s lap and came over to me. Where she squatted and proceeded to pee on my shoe.
I raised an eyebrow at Ruth. “Fully housebroken, you said?”
Ruth shrugged. “That’s what they told me. What does your German hausfrau say about cleaning a dog mess off a shoe?”
I sighed again, slipping the soiled shoe off and picking it up in one hand, the puppy in the other, and depositing her in our fenced yard, the kids fighting to chase after her, while I took the shoe to the kitchen to try to salvage it.
As I scrubbed at the wet spot, I looked up at the ceiling.
“You’re laughing at me right now,” I said.
“Don’t deny it. I can practically hear you.
” A flash of red at the window caught my eye, and I could have sworn that cardinal was laughing at me too.
I wouldn’t have been able to stay annoyed if Harry had been there.
He just had one of those infectious laughs.
We seldom fought, but when we did, if I could make him laugh, it was always over.
I missed that laugh—the way his whole body rolled with it, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.
I leaned against the sink, closing my eyes as the wave of nostalgia washed over me. Then I sighed and looked back at the bird outside my kitchen window.
What would Harry say if he was here right now?
He would wink, that mischievous twinkle in his eye, and say Ruth had trained the puppy to do that. She would protest earnestly, and he would laugh until we all joined him.
Hmm. Maybe I could train Pepper to pee on Ruth’s shoes. That was a thought.
“Oh shush,” I said to the silent ceiling. “I wouldn’t actually do that.”
The cardinal chirped merrily at me, and I abandoned the shoe to join the children in the backyard.