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Dean chuckled. “When you come right down to it, though, that’s what most people want.” While Katey seemed to contemplate how on earth she’d managed to be born into the human race, it suddenly came to him. “Balthasar!”
“Huh?” Katey said, her nose wrinkled under wide eyes. Her resemblance to her big sister made his heart stumble.
“Isn’t that the cat’s name?”
The little girl looked from him to the cat and back to him. “How’d you know that?”
In an instant, he realized she’d been told nothing. That she had no idea he’d known her sister before. Eventually, she’d figure it out, but right now she probably thought he’d just sprung up like a mushroom after a rainstorm. Nor was it his place to tell her any differently.
His shoulders hitched in a nonchalant shrug. “Oh…I think…Lance must’ve told me. I’d just forgotten for a moment, sugar.”
Enormous eyes shot to his, brimming with tears. “Why’d you call me that?”
The child’s sudden mood change threw him. “I…don’t know. It just kind of popped out. Does it bother you?”
One tear slipped down a soft cheek. “My daddy used to call me that.”
“Oh…” Dean hesitated, then leaned forward, his hands loosely clasped together. “You really miss him, don’t you?”
Katey nodded, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand, jutting out her chin. Sarah’s chin. “Sarah says I’ll always remember him, but—” she shook her head, straight maple-colored hair swishing softly against delicate shoulders “—but I think she’s just trying to make me feel better.” She swallowed and looked out the window again. “Every night, I imagine him sittin’ beside me on my bed and sayin’ my prayers with me, just like he used to. But I can’t hear his voice no more.” Dean saw her lip quiver, then the effort exerted to control it, and decided to let the grammatical slip pass. Then the child leaned her head to one side, considering. “Are you lonely, Dean?”
He choked on his own startled laugh. “What makes you ask that?”
“Lance said you don’t have a wife or girlfriend or nothin’. I just thought most grown-ups had somebody, ’less they were widows like Mama.”
He slowly shook his head. “Nope. Not me, honey,” he said, then stiffened, wondering if that endearment, too, would provoke a reaction. Apparently not. The child continued the conversation without missing a beat.
“You know,” she said in a low voice, “Sarah’s all alone, too.”
His heart lurched like a fish out of water. “She is, huh?”
“Uh-huh. Well, sometimes she goes to the movies with Dr. Stillman from the clinic, but they’re just friends.”
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
Katey shrugged, scowling at her sister and her fiancé. “Because they don’t look at each other like that—”
“Katharine Suzanne!” rang out from the kitchen. “What about this corn?”
Then, just like Sarah would’ve done, Katharine Suzanne shoved the disgruntled cat off her lap and took off out the front door, her waist-length hair flapping against her narrow back.
A mixing bowl in a choke-hold between one arm and her bosom, her other hand clamped around a wooden spoon, Vivian Whitehouse pushed through the swinging door and glanced around the room. Not seeing her quarry, her questioning eyes lit on Dean. He cleared his throat and nodded toward the front door, still ajar.
A sound that was half sigh, half chuckle, rumbled from Vivian’s throat. “Figures.” Then she added, “Sarah’s not here, either?”
“Uh…no, ma’am.” Why did he suddenly feel so self-conscious? Wiping the palms of his hands on his thighs, Dean said, “Last I saw her, she was headed toward the kennels.”
A pair of shrewd gray eyes bore into his. “You talked to her?”
“For a moment.”
Vivian nodded, then banged back the swinging door again, jabbed the spoon into the center of the bowl and clunked both down on a counter just inside the door. Wiping her hands on the front of her untucked shirt, she passed Dean on her way toward the front door. “I’ll be back,” she said, then thrust a no-nonsense index finger in his direction. “Then you and I are gonna talk. So don’t you dare move your backside out of this room, you hear me?”
As the front door closed behind Sarah’s mother, Dean became aware of affianced couple’s attention riveted to his face. He gave a nervous laugh in their direction, then raised his hands guiltily, staring at the space where the imposing specimen of motherhood had just been standing.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” he murmured.
The dogs had smelled Sarah before she got within fifty feet. Rich, baritone barking and excited puppy yips mingled with another roll of thunder as she approached. Five minutes, she promised herself. Just five minutes.
“Hey, y’all!” Sarah scooted into the kennel, upwards of two dozen noses nudging her calves and knees as she tried to greet them all at once. A laugh bubbled out of her tight throat as one puppy immediately latched onto her sneaker lace and gave it what-for, complete with a fierce growl designed to bring the shoe into immediate submission.
Pointing at the lowering sky, she warned, “Y’all better get inside, now. It’s fixin’ to rain any minute.” In confirmation, a bolt of lightning split the clouds, accompanied by a crack of thunder that made her jump and several of the puppies scurry toward the open door of the converted barn.
Sarah shooed the rest of the gang inside, shutting the half-door behind them, then swung open the chain link gate to one of the overlarge pens, staring into assorted sets of tiny golden brown eyes.
“I know you don’t want to, but you gotta. Come on, now.”
Like children forced to come in when they still wanted to play, the dogs reluctantly obeyed, some of them gazing back outside with what seemed to be genuine regret, as if they knew wonderful wet stuff was going to fall out of the sky any minute. Labs and water went together like biscuits and gravy. Sarah allowed a sympathetic smile.
“Sorry. I’m in no mood to clean up mud today, okay? So whaddya think? Should I go check the babies— Oh, Lordy!”
Katey jumped as much as she did.
“Shoot, baby, don’t sneak up on people like that!” Sarah lay her arm across Katey’s shoulders, as much to steady herself as out of affection. “What on earth are you doing here? Looks like the sky’s about to burst wide open.”
Katey hunched her thin shoulders in a gesture Sarah took to mean there really was no reason other than it seemed like a good idea. Or that Mama had asked her to do something, was more like it. “I just figured you were here. And…I didn’t have nothin’ to do.”
“Anything to do.” Sarah pretended sympathy. “And Mama couldn’t even find something for you to do in the kitchen…?”
“What’s wrong?” Katey asked, squinting. “Why are your eyes all red?”
Rats. Sarah cleared her throat, forced a smile. “Just got a bunch of dirt in ’em, is all. You know, from the wind?”
Which got a tell-me-another-one look from the little girl. But then the newborns eeked again, and Katey clasped both hands to her chest in supplication.
“Just for a minute,” Sarah said. Wouldn’t take much longer than that before her mother sniffed her out, anyway.
Katey skipped over to the pen where mama and pups were quarantined from the rest of the dogs, Sarah following. It was chowtime; the tiny black lumps looked more like oversize fat bugs than dogs as they jostled for position at their mother’s teats.
“This is the cutest batch we’ve ever had,” the eight-year-old solemnly declared, her fingers entwined around the chain link. Sarah hid her smile. Katey said that about every litter. Without fail. “C’n I hold one?”
“Let’s just see how Mariah feels about it, okay?” Sarah slowly opened the gate so as not to startle the mother dog, then entered the pen, settling onto the floor beside the bitch and her six pups whose birth she had witnessed just two days before. Squirming as much as the pups, Katey squatted at her right knee. “Think it’d be okay if I held one of your precious babies for a minute?” Sarah asked, then carefully picked up one of the pups and cuddled it against her chest while the mother dog rooted at her offspring’s rump, just to be sure.
Katey sighed, stroking the little furrowed head with one finger.
“Wish I’d’ve been here when the pups were born.”
“It was two in the morning, baby. And Mama dog did it all by herself. I was just here for decoration.” Sarah traded pups. “Now, sheep, on the other hand, don’t even know which end the lamb’s supposed to come out of.” She thought of last March when she and Doc helped George Plunkett and his pubescent son Joshua usher two dozen new lambs into the world, and yawned automatically. “Except they always decide to do it when it’s raining and dark.”
“Well,” Katey announced, unperturbed, “when I’m a vet, those dumb sheep will just have to have their babies when I’m on duty.”
Sarah regarded the little girl with a wry smile. Knowing Katey, she probably would get the dumb sheep to birth during office hours.
“So…still wanna be a vet?” She touched her forehead to Katey’s. “You didn’t seem real interested this morning at the clinic.”
Katey squirmed, her dark brows dipping. “Well…” Sarah could almost hear the child’s brain fast-forwarding through several dozen possible answers. Then the little face relaxed into a grin as she let a puppy sniff her fingers. “I’m just a kid. I’ve got a short attention span.”
Sarah let out a laugh, then hugged the little girl to her. No matter what, this precocious little girl never failed to make her smile. Even more than the pups. “You’ve never been ‘just’ a kid, you know that? Even when you were a baby, you always wore this funny, grown-up expression.”
“I did?”
“Uh-huh.” Sarah pretended to shudder and Katey giggled. “It was freak-y, too, having this little tiny baby look at you with this serious face all the time—”
“Sarah Louise?” The lights flickered in the kennel as her mother’s low voice, easily overriding the next wave of thunder, filled the old barn.
“In with Mariah, Mama.”
“Katey with you?”
“Yes, Mama,” Katey piped up.
Clad in her usual attire of oversize man-tailored shirt and jeans, the full-figured woman now blocked most of the light coming into the stall. Vivian never had lost the weight from the last pregnancy. Not that she seemed to care.
Vivian settled what was supposed to be a stern gaze on the little girl. “I believe there’s something you’re supposed to be doing, young lady?”
The child looked from one woman to the other, then let out an affronted sigh. “Yes, Mama,” she muttered, getting to her feet. Wiping her hands on the already filthy seat of raspberry-colored shorts, Katey unlatched the gate and let herself out of the pen, stoically allowing Vivian to plant a kiss on the top of her glimmering chestnut head as she passed. Size two sneakers ground emphatic squeaks into the smooth cement floor as the child retreated.
Vivian joined Sarah in the cage, huffing a little as she lowered her ample form to the floor, then patted Sarah’s knee. “You okay?”
Sarah cuddled the tiny dog to her chest. “The pups needed to be checked.”
That got a snort as Vivian tucked a stray hank of silver-streaked, ash-brown hair back up into a loose bun at the back of her head. “Chicken.”
“Damn straight,” Sarah shot back with an attempt at a grin, then averted her face when her mother tried to look her in the eye.
“You’ve been crying.”
“What gave you your first clue?”
“Puffy eyes, blotchy face, swollen lips—take your pick.”
With a huge sigh, Sarah said, “I saw him.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Sarah leaned her head back against the whitewashed partition of the pen with a soft thud. “Could you just tell everyone I tripped and drowned in a mud puddle or something?”
Vivian grunted in what Sarah assumed was sympathy. “Now, baby, you knew he’d come back some day.” A beat. “And you knew what that meant.”
Sarah pulled her head forward, concentrating on the writhing mass of pups in front of them. “I just thought for some reason I’d have a little more time to prepare myself.”
“Hah! Bad news never seems to be terribly interested in giving much warning.” Vivian shifted her weight with a soft wince. “What’re you going to do?”
With a sigh, Sarah leaned her head back again and shut her eyes, the puppy snuffling the hollow of her throat with whiskers soft as the inside of a daisy. “Kinda liked the mud puddle idea, myself.”
“You could tell him.”
Sarah opened one eye and tilted her head just far enough to see the side of her mother’s face, sternly refusing to allow one more emotion into her already overcrowded brain. That didn’t stop her face from flushing, however. “Tell him what, exactly?”
The puppies’ mewling filled the silence as Vivian seemed to consider her answer. “You still being sweet on him might be a good place to start.”
The two women regarded each other for a moment, then Sarah looked away. “And what makes you think that?”
“I’m psychic.”
Sarah swallowed past the knot of anger in her throat, then said quietly, “Dean Parrish chewed up my heart and spit it out in little pieces all over Lee County.” Frowning, she shut her eyes and rocked her head from side to side against the wall. “I don’t deserve that.”
“That’s right.”
Sarah’s mouth pulled into a straight line as her voice dropped an octave. “And he sure as hell doesn’t deserve me.” She let out a long sigh. “You were right, you know. Back then. About our not being suited for the long haul.”
Vivian picked something off her jeans. “Maybe…he’s changed.”
“Yeah, and maybe Auburn’ll get a major league football franchise next year.” Sarah shook her head, finally opening her eyes, regarding nothing in particular. “You didn’t see the look on his face, the night he broke up with me.” She carefully placed the pup back with its siblings.
They sat in silence again for a full minute, Sarah fully aware if her mother touched her she’d start bawling all over again. Except what she did was far worse. “The question is, what did you see in his face today?”
Sarah turned away, determined to hold it together, determined not to be the pawn in whatever game her mother now seemed so determined to play.
“Honey, all you can do is take this one step at a time—”
“What’s done is done, Mama,” she said sharply. “There’s no going back.”
After a long moment, Vivian gently bumped shoulders with her daughter. A conciliatory gesture, Sarah figured. “How you handle this is up to you,” she said softly. “And it’s just one week. Dinner tonight, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding. That’s all. Think you can manage that?”
Just one week. Right. With a toss of her head, Sarah said on an exhaled breath, “Doesn’t look like I’ve got a whole lot of choice in the matter, does it?” She stood, then held out a hand to help up her mother, the one person who, no matter what, had been there for her, had helped her through the most painful period of her life. And who, Sarah knew, felt more than bad about her part in creating the situation now facing all of them.
“There are always choices,” Vivian said with a grunt as she struggled to her feet. No longer taller than her daughter, her eyes met Sarah’s dead on. “Always.” She shrugged and draped an arm around Sarah’s shoulder as a teeth-rattling thunderclap ripped open the clouds at last, letting loose a barrage of stone-hard raindrops onto the tin roof overhead.
“Like now,” her mother shouted as they stood at the barn door watching the deluge quickly turn the yard into a river of slimy orange mud. “Do we stay and wait it out, or make a run for it?”
“Oh, come on, Mama,” Sarah challenged with a wicked grin. “I’ve never known you to wait anything out.” She dashed into the driving rain, calling over her shoulder, “Last one to the house cleans dog poop for a week!”
Not surprisingly, Sarah lost the bet. It always astounded her how quickly her mother could move, despite her generous proportions. In any case, they were both drenched by the time they made it to the house and up the steps. Flushed with exertion and laughing too hard to breathe, they wriggled out of sneakers that looked dipped in pumpkin pie filling, dumping them by the back door before stumbling over each other to see who got to the kitchen first.
“Oh, yuck!” Jennifer waved a half-peeled cucumber in front of her as if to ward off evil spirits. “You two are gross!”
Dripping all over the kitchen floor, Sarah grabbed a kitchen towel to wipe off her face. Still laughing, she threw a broad wink at Katey, giggling and half hidden behind a mountain of corn at the kitchen table, then directed her attention to the flinching Jennifer. “Would somebody please tell me how Vivian and Eli Whitehouse managed to produce such a priss? It’s just water, Jen—see?” She shook her head like a dog, sending a spray halfway across the room, cackling in glee as her sister squealed and nearly tripped over herself trying to back away.
