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“He’s a stray,” she admitted, twisting her hands together. “I just saw him around earlier today. Then when I opened the door to check on him, he ran inside, then back outside and now I can’t … I just … I couldn’t …”
“Don’t tell me. You’ve fallen in love with him already.”
“Don’t you believe in love at first sight?” Okay, that was way too flirty to say to a man she’d just met. Still, Polly tipped her head to one side and waited for his answer.
“Believe in it?” He lowered the dog out of face-licking range and gave a resigned kind of smile, his brown eyes framed by the faint beginnings of laugh lines. “I think it’s unavoidable.”
Her pulse went from racing to practically ricocheting through her body.
“Especially when you’re talking about a little lost dog as cute as this.” He looked down and rubbed the dog behind the ears, then came around the front end of the car to bring the animal to her.
“Of course.” Polly let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. “I still want to try to find who he belongs to, of course, but if nobody claims him …”
“He’s a lucky dog.” He bundled the dog into her waiting arms.
“I don’t believe in luck.” She ran her fingers along the dog’s smooth, silky ear. “I believe in God’s blessings.”
“I’ve had a few of those in my life.” He nodded but didn’t offer any further explanation, just turned and headed for his truck.
“So …” Polly looked up and down the street, not sure what to do next. Her gaze fell on the truck. “Oh! Do you know … I mean, it’s about food.”
“I have been known to eat food, yes.” He patted his flat stomach even as he slowed his pace slightly and spoke to her over his shoulder. “What do you want to know?”
I want to know that everything is going to work out fine. I want to know if I made the right choice moving here. I want to know when I’ll see you again. “I don’t have any dog food in the house, so I was going to take him with me to grab a fast-food burger. Do you think it would be okay if he ate one of those?”
“I think it would be okay if you ate one of them.” He shook his head and scratched his fingers through his thick, light brown hair. “But there’s a gas station with a little fresh market near the burger place. You can get a can of dog food there—for him. You should probably stick with the burger.”
She laughed. “Thanks, and thanks for your help.”
“Glad to do it.” He started toward his truck again, tossing off a friendly wave. “Nice to have met you. Both of you.”
“You, too, from both of us.” She took the dog’s paw and waved it.
He opened the driver’s side door to climb in, then paused and leaned inside the cab, as if looking for something.
“That right there—” she whispered with her cheek pressed against the animal’s head “—is the whole reason I came back to Baconburg.”
She didn’t mean the man. She meant the man’s willingness to take time out of his own schedule to help a stranger. Okay, Polly could not lie, even to herself—maybe the man … a little. Or a man like him. What Polly really wanted in Baconburg was the life she had always dreamed possible, and that included a good man and her own family that would stay together no matter what.
Before she could shuffle the little dog into the backseat of her car, the animal dashed around the back of the car. Polly glanced back and there was Sam walking across her front yard, heading back toward her. And he had his hand up in a wave. She raised her hand as the dog returned and ducked into the back of the car.
“Wow, maybe I do mean that guy is the reason I came here,” she whispered to her canine companion as she took in a sharp breath. “He sure seems like he isn’t ready for me to go yet.”
The dog paced back and forth over the seat. If she kept him, she knew she’d have to invest in a safety restraint but thought for now this was safer than leaving him in her house or outside.
“Maybe I should see if he wants to join us for burgers.” Polly gripped the door.
Sam came to a halt in her yard. His raised hand fell to his side.
She smiled and worked up the courage to say, “Hi, it looks like you’re thinking what I’m thinking …”
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “That your dog has my hat?”
“Your … Oh, no! You set it on the driveway, didn’t you?” She glanced back in time to see the animal give the hat a shake. “No!”
Sam put his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. Probably unable to look at what the dog had done.
“I am so sorry.” She hurried to the back door, reached in and grabbed the hat by the brim. It took a firm tug to rescue it, but she held it out to him.
He looked down, his expression guarded.
Polly stared at the damp brim and the crown the dog had shaken into a shapeless wonder. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“What’s done is done.” Finally he put his own hand up and turned his head to one side as if to say, I don’t want it now. “It’s okay. Don’t feel bad. It was just an old Christmas gift from my wife.”
“Wife?” Now she felt careless and a bit silly. “I didn’t think you were—”
“My late wife,” he clarified. He frowned down at the mash up of brim and crown. “Hmm. Well, okay, then. I guess that’s the end of that.”
He flicked it with one finger as if to say, Goodbye, old friend, then raised his hand in a sort of salute to her, turned and headed for his truck.
“Your taking this so well only makes me feel worse,” she called after him. “Isn’t there something I can do with it?”
“Maybe we can cut ear holes in it and let the dog wear it.” He didn’t look back.
Polly climbed into the car and looked her only friend in all of Baconburg in the eye. Poor little thing. Of all of God’s creatures, he could understand her fear, sadness, embarrassment and loneliness when she said, “Maybe Essie was right. Maybe running away isn’t going to be the big solution to my problems that I thought it would be.”
Chapter Two
“So, let me get this straight.” Sam’s sister, Gina, slipped off her computer glasses and aimed her sharp-eyed gaze at him. “You just left your hat in her hands and drove off?”
“Hey, it wasn’t like I was going to wear it home.” Sam moved around the kitchen table gathering up the three empty bowls where a few minutes ago his daughters had been eating ice cream. He stacked Juliette’s “sprinkles, please, Daddy, and no nuts” dish inside Hayley’s “chocolate on chocolate with a side of chocolate” one. Finally he took up Caroline’s “whatever you give me is fine, Daddy” dish, held them up and said to his sister, “Anyone who thinks those girls are completely identical has never had to feed them.”
“Don’t try to change the subject on me.” Gina wriggled in the high-backed oak chair, then kicked it up on two legs, bracing her hiking shoe against the table leg to stabilize herself. “Marie gave you that hat.”
“I am well aware.” Sam plunked the bowls into the sink. He turned on the water to rinse them out and said, loudly enough to be heard over the splashing, “By the way, if Mom were here she’d tell you she didn’t care if you are the owner of this place now, you keep both your feet and all the chair legs on the floor, young lady.”
Gina rocked the chair slightly and crossed her arms defiantly, not even flinching when her long, dark blond braid got snagged under one arm. “Tell me again who this woman is.”
“Mom?” He faked surprise to cover his determination not to prolong any discussion of Polly Bennett. “I know she and Dad have been living in Florida for a few years now, but—”
“You know who I mean. The mysterious woman who got you to help rescue a dog. A dog, Sam. That’s huge for you.”
He finished washing up the dishes, then moved to drying them off with the towel that usually hung from the handle of the oven door. “I don’t dislike dogs and she’s not mysterious. Her name is Polly Bennett from Atlanta, Georgia.”
“New in town?”
“Didn’t say.” He put the bowls up and shut the cabinet, wishing he could finish up this conversation that easily. He wouldn’t normally have even mentioned any of this to Gin, but she had asked if he had left his hat at work when he’d come home. And when she didn’t get an answer had wondered aloud if he had left it in her truck and she’d have to get it out of there later. She wouldn’t let it go, even several hours later.
“You don’t suppose this Polly Bennett is the new schoolteacher?” Gina asked.
“Thought of that myself.” But he’d dismissed it almost instantly. Polly Bennett, with her wild, dark hair, her fresh face and pint-size stature, didn’t look like any grade-school teacher he’d ever had. “But then I remembered you said word on the grapevine was they’d gone with someone born here in Baconburg.”
“That’s right.” The chair legs came clunking down. She shifted her laptop around on the table as if she was about to get back to work promoting the farm’s upcoming fall pumpkin-themed festival, the Pumpkin Jump, online. Instead she looked up at him again. “And you just left your hat with a stranger?”
“Stop this ride.” He held up his hands. “I am not going around again.”
“Fine.” She leaned in over her keyboard and put her fingers over the touch pad. But always one to want the last word, she said, “You know, they say if you leave something at a person’s house, it’s a subconscious way of giving yourself an excuse to go back.”
“Then they don’t know me because I don’t go back.” He headed out the kitchen door into the hallway.
“Walking away is not the same as moving forward, you know.”
“I’m not walking away. I’m going to check on the girls and tell them good-night.” He paused at the bottom of the stairs.
“Good luck with that.”
“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in God’s blessings.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said it, but the words, and thinking of the woman who had said them, actually made him smile.
“Fine, go say good-night to your little blessings. Remember they’re all wired up about getting their classroom assignments tomorrow. I hope you’re ready to deal with the fallout.”
“I was born ready.” Whatever came his way, Sam met it, wrestled with it, made it his or left it behind. Nothing slowed him down. Full speed ahead. Farm kid. College football hero. Hometown business owner. Husband. Father. Widower. Single dad to three six-year-old girls.
He moved forward, always forward, tackling every new role with his faith to uphold him. When he made up his mind, applied his experience and attitude, he could handle anything.
Except second grade.
Sam took a deep breath, stepped into the doorway of the room shared by his daughters and made one loud clap of his hands. “Big day tomorrow, girls! Second-grade registration and we find out who your new teachers will be.”
“There’s only one new teacher,” Hayley, the most outspoken of the three, reminded him.
As if he needed reminding. Three second-grade classes at Van Buren Elementary, three Goodacre girls aching for a chance to be teacher’s pet to somebody who hadn’t known them since they were toddlers. A school with a policy not to put multiples in the same classroom, and one new teacher. He didn’t have to be a math whiz to know he was going to have a couple of upset girls tomorrow, maybe for a big part of the whole school year.
“Okay, let’s not borrow trouble.” Especially not triple trouble, he thought. “We’ll deal with whoever gets the new teacher the way we deal with everything. And how’s that?”
“With grace and with gratitude, with a never-give-up attitude.” The trio repeated in unison another line from the bedtime stories their mother had created, stories that they each knew by heart.
He thought of Marie saying those same words, and on the heels of that, he thought of the cowboy-hat Christmas gift she’d given him as a joke. No one expected him to wear it. Which was why Sam had put it on the day they moved out to the farm, a month after Marie had died. He’d worn it every day since. It was his way of making himself embrace change. Now …
In the blink of an eye, his mind went to Polly Bennett. Polly.
What a great name. Fit her, too. Upbeat. Fresh, yet maybe a little old-fashioned. And a good heart. He’d seen it in her from the moment their eyes met until she looked at him with true regret over ruining his hat.
Unpredictable, too, just like that crazy hair of hers. Sam had had to clench his fingers tight a couple of time to keep from brushing it out of her eyes. Then that whole deal with that little lost dog …
That thought snapped Sam back into the moment. He shifted his boots on the old farmhouse floorboards. His mind did not usually skip the tracks like that. He had to get ahold of himself. “Actually, I meant that we’d meet the problem head-on and not look back because …”
“The rest of our life is ahead of us.” Hayley and Juliette repeated one of the many mottoes Sam had taught them. Caroline just looked at him, saying nothing.
“That’s right. Never look back.” He didn’t just talk the talk in this case. Sam had made these past few years about demonstrating those traits to his girls. People had told him he kept the girls too busy and spent too little time making a new life for himself.
He knew what they meant by that. They thought Sam needed to fall in love again. What those people didn’t understand was that he had made up his mind that all his time and energy had to go into his girls, into making sure they did not miss out on anything because they were missing their mom. Maybe one day he’d be able to let up a little and meet … someone. But that certainly wasn’t going to be tomorrow. Tomorrow presented its own problems. “Now say your prayers and go to bed.”
He reached along the wall and flicked off the light, but instead of turning around and leaving the girls to do what was expected of them, he lingered to listen as they thanked God for their day, their home, the food they ate and then began the list of the people they loved.
“Bless Daddy.” Always the leader, Hayley’s request came clear and firm.
“And bless Uncle Max,” Hayley’s carbon copy, Juliette, chimed in to add the youngest of Sam’s siblings.
“And bless Aunt Gina.” Caroline tacked on a request on behalf of Sam’s sister.
“And also, if You don’t mind …” Hayley started again, her tone uncharacteristically tentative. “If Mommy is close by to You in heaven right now …”
Don’t look back … Sam wanted to plead with his child, Let your mother go and don’t dwell on the loss. A lump rose in his throat, which he pushed down again. He turned away. No point in standing there having his heart tugged toward a past he could not change. His life … more importantly, his daughters’ lives, lay ahead of them and he had to keep fixed on that and never stop moving forward. It was the only way they could survive.
“If Mom is there with You,” Juliette took over for her sister, her tone bright and cheerful, “give her a hug from us.”
Sam froze in the dim hallway.
And finally Caroline added softly, “And tell her we will never forget her.”
Sam dragged air into his lungs, ignoring the dull ache that still caught him by surprise even two years after his wife’s death. Maybe pain was the wrong word. Emptiness? Sadness? He didn’t know anymore. He’d made his peace with his loss, accepted it as God’s will and got on with normal life for his girls’ sake.
That’s why he had moved them from the house he and his wife, Marie, had owned in their small town out to the family farm his sister had taken over from their parents. He did it to show the girls how life was about change and growth. What better place to show that than a farm? Were they not getting it? What more could he do?
“And bless the new teacher, whoever gets her.” This time Hayley led off. “I hope she’s fun and smart and nice.”
Again a twinge of emotion, only this time it was not grief but a mix of misgivings.
“And it wouldn’t be bad if she also thinks triplets are cool. And also if she’s pretty—” Juliette turned her head enough to peer over her shoulder through one half-opened eye “—and not married.”
It hit Sam like a sucker punch. This was why he needed to stop listening in on his girls’ prayers, because he did not want the girls using their prayer time to try to make a point to him. It didn’t matter if the teacher was pretty or single—all he cared about was how she would help whichever daughter landed in her classroom to have a successful school year.
“What did you say?” He put his hand to the side of his head to remind them he was standing right there within earshot.
“Amen,” Hayley concluded.
“Amen,” the others agreed.
“Go to bed,” Sam muttered, his hand on the doorknob. Just before he pulled it closed, he leaned in to add, “And tomorrow don’t make me remind you of my own personal set of no-no’s.”
“We know. Dad, we know all about your no-no’s.” Hayley sighed, got to her feet and threw back the covers on her single bed. “No dogs.”
That sounded particularly harsh all of a sudden after helping Polly Bennett wrangle that sweet little lost dog. But they had imposed enough on his sister’s time by moving in. To add pet care while he ran and remodeled Downtown Drug and while the girls were in school, and dance classes and tumbling and T-ball … just wasn’t fair.
“It’s not the ‘no dogs’ rule I’m talking about,” he reminded them. “No …”
Juliette and then Caroline rose, each flipping back the covers on their own beds, too.
