Not That I Could Tell by Jessica Strawser

Author:Jessica Strawser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

23

For Father’s Day, we hope you’ll enjoy this questionnaire where the children’s responses to oral prompts were recorded verbatim. “1. My daddy is good at: Fixing things (but only our things, because when he lets other people borrow his tools they mess them up).”

—Laminated list from the Circle of Living, hanging on the door of Benny’s workshop (to remind him to stop being such a softie about lending people things)

The dog seemed to sense he was auditioning for a part he hadn’t gotten yet, the way he pranced in circles, barking happily, as Thomas raced him to his tennis ball, launched it across the yard, and gave chase all over again. Clara imagined that she saw a gleam of mischief in the animal’s otherwise soulful eyes, as if he knew he was going to win her over, and when he did, he’d have a few surprises under his collar. The mischievous air should have pitted her against him, but somehow it only endeared him to her more as she and Maddie giggled and clapped from their spot sprawled on a picnic blanket in the center of the action. Today was Thursday, marking a week since Thomas had been asked to leave school, and it was a relief to see him smiling as if he had not a care in the world—which, at his age, was exactly as many as he should have.

“Where’d you get him?” a voice called out. Clara turned to see Hallie cutting through the side yard, her backpack slung over her shoulder, and registered the rumbling of the school bus as it pulled away. Without awaiting a response, Hallie tossed her bag into the grass and jogged to join Thomas, matching his squeals of delight at the dog as if all had been forgotten. Clara sneaked a look at Natalie’s back porch, expecting her to burst out the door and call her daughter home at any moment. But until that moment came, she wasn’t about to send the girl away. Torn though Clara was between a knee-jerk dread and a genuine happiness to see Hallie, it didn’t matter which emotion would win out, because being the one to back away was akin to admitting wrongdoing—something she would not do.

“We got him yesterday at the farmers’ market,” Thomas told her proudly. “Can you believe it? We only went for corn on the cob!”

Hallie raised a disbelieving eyebrow at Clara, but crazy as it sounded, he spoke the truth. She hadn’t given serious, immediate thought to adopting so much as a goldfish until they’d come upon the rescue shelter booth. Clara should have turned on her heels when she saw it; the volunteers had a knack for trotting out the cutest contenders, and she and the kids had been instantly, overwhelmingly smitten. The tricolored mutt was shades of blond, medium sized and medium haired except for his head, which was disproportionately large and covered with what amounted to overgrown bangs. She’d had a stuffed animal that looked just like him when she was a kid.

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