by Annie Jones
The whole way Juliette and Hayley vied for Polly’s attention, which she happily lavished on them.
The handful of committee members who hadn’t already gone home trailed along, calling out their goodbyes and thank-yous and began to leave as Polly got to the house.
“Donut is in the kitchen,” Gina said as she pointed in the direction of the brightly lit room while herding the girls upstairs.
Polly thanked Gina for having her, and hurried to collect Donut and get back to the door. Before she left, she looked up the stairs and called out, “Good night, girls. I’ll see you all tomorrow at…”
A torrent of water rushing through old pipes resonated from upstairs through the house.
“School.” Polly looked around the dimly lit foyer. The hallway was dark, the living room silent. Light shone from the kitchen like a beacon. Sam’s kitchen.
The last time she had been alone with him in this house, he’d kissed her. Of course, the last time she was alone with him outside the house she had scolded him. She put her fingertips to her lips, unsure what any of that meant. Unsure if she could face the man alone again…or if he was even in that kitchen.
She held her breath. She could do this. Whatever “this” became she could—
Essie’s special ringtone cut off that thought, filling the foyer and seeming to ricochet all around the quiet, cozy home.
“Hello? Someone in the house? Polly?” Sam’s voice came from the kitchen.
Polly fumbled with the phone.
Before she could answer it, three exuberant voices called out from upstairs, “Miss Bennett! Miss Bennett! If you’re still here, don’t go. We still want you to read No, No, Donut to us.”
Sam and Essie, the girls and the dog who had come to represent so much. Polly felt pressed in on all sides and so she did the very thing she had tried too hard to convince herself she wouldn’t do. She gave Donut’s leash a yank and hurried out the door.
Even as she dashed down the porch steps, she hit the answer button on her phone and whispered to her sister, “Can’t talk now. I’m running away.”
“Polly?” Sam stepped out from the kitchen where he’d been cleaning up the water dish and food they had set out for the dog. He thought he heard footsteps on the front porch, but with the sound of Gina coming down from upstairs he couldn’t be sure.
“Did she leave already?” Gina paused on the bottom step, her head tilted so she could hear the girls getting into their pajamas in their room above.
“I guess so.” He willed himself not to chase after her, not to go to the door and call out into the evening for her. What would be the point? He took a step into the hallway, his eyes fixed on the door. “She didn’t even say goodbye.”
“You’ll see her tomorrow when you take the kids to school.” Gina gave a wave of her hand. “Don’t you run off. After the girls are in bed, I want to hear this story about Polly biting you.”
“She didn’t bite me.” He rubbed the back of his neck, choosing not to admit to his sister that while he didn’t feel Polly had metaphorically chewed him out, her words had stung. He wanted to tell himself that was because they were so unfounded, but he was old enough to know that if there were no truth behind her observations, he’d have forgotten them already. “She made the mistake of saying she’d taken a bite out of me in front of Caroline and the kid took it wrong.”
“Good for Polly.” Gina laughed.
“You don’t even know what she got onto me about,” he protested.
“Did she have a point in what she said?”
Sam started to turn away, then stopped and leaned against the doorframe. “Maybe.”
“I thought so.” Gina laughed. “I like her, Sam. In case I haven’t told you that yet. I like her a lot and anyone with eyes can see you do, too.”
“Yeah, well, we all liked that little dog, too, but that isn’t going to keep its real owner from coming along and taking him away.” His gaze went to the bowls he’d just washed, deciding he’d take them out into the garage so they wouldn’t be in the kitchen as a reminder of the times the real-life Donut—and Miss Polly Bennett—had been a part of their lives. “I don’t know how I’m going to comfort the girls if that happens.”
“If I know you, you’ll do it the way you always do things.” She turned and headed back upstairs.
“Probably.” Sam rubbed his face and wished he felt better about that realization. “I guess we’ll find out when the time comes.”
Chapter Fourteen
Polly remained closed up in her classroom long after school had let out that next day. She used the quiet time alone, even with the rest of the school still bustling with after-school programs, to put together a montage of drawings and photos the children in her class had chosen as their best using the green-screen technology she had been working on the first day she brought Donut to school. She had brought him again today, having run home after the kids had gone to get him and bring him here to wait to hear from Ted Perry’s neighbor. She raised her head to watch him sleeping in the corner of the room and a tightness gripped her throat.
He raised his head and she smiled at him but decided not to coo over him as she might have done a day ago. The letting go had to begin sometime and if she didn’t make too big a fuss, it would all go smoother, right?
She focused on the task at hand, matching children’s photos with the artwork they had given to her today for the class theme, “I Can.” She stopped at Caroline’s. “I can illostrate the book No,No, Donut.”
Polly swept her fingertips over a drawing of a short-legged golden-brown dog with big brown eyes and long, floppy ears that appeared on her screen. It was not the only picture Caroline had done but it was her best. Polly contemplated not using it, though, what with Donut, that is, Grover, going away and Sam’s feelings about the whole dog thing.
Her finger hovered over the button to click through to the next image when a small tapping on her classroom door made her jump. “Oh! Um, yes?”
Sam stuck his head in the door. “Hey! Where’d you disappear to yesterday?”
“You came all the way to the school at…” She glanced at the clock and realized it was after five. Ted Perry’s neighbor would be here any minute. She clicked to reduce the image on her computer and bring up the screen saver. “…after work, to ask me that?”
Sam stepped fully into the room, chuckling.
Donut hopped up and ran over to him, tail wagging.
Polly tried to be more reserved, even though inside she was so happy he had showed up in the nick of time to be with her when she had to turn over the animal she had come to care about.
“Not exactly.” Sam squatted down to scratch behind the dog’s ears as he looked up at Polly and grinned. “The Go-Getters are having a rehearsal in the gym for the square-dance routine they’re doing for Parents’ Night next week.”
Polly pushed back her chair and stood. Her knees wobbled slightly. Was that nerves over turning over Donut or a reaction to having Sam show up when she needed him and looking so handsome and happy doing it? She smoothed down her skirt and adjusted her collar. “How’s that going? Caroline and the square dancing?”
“She sort of has the square part. The dancing?” He stood and gave an exaggerated wince. “I’m not ready to call what she’s doing that but she’ll get it. She just needs to…”
“Push herself?”
“I was going to say learn her left foot from her right.” He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head. “But your way works, too.”
“Actually, that’s your way, Sam.” Her low heels clacked softly on the tiled floor as she crossed the room to him. “I hesitate to ask you this, but—”
“But you’re going to ask it, anyway.”
She couldn’t help giving him the slightest
smile at calling her out on that. “Is that your way of telling me to mind my own beeswax?”
“No. No, not at all.” He laughed out loud. “It might surprise you—it sure surprises me—I kind of like having someone around to meddle in my ‘beeswax’ about the girls. It’s been a long time since I’ve had an objective opinion about them.”
Objective. Polly knew exactly what he meant by that—outsider. Having met Max and Gina, seen him at work and heard the way people talked about him, Polly knew he had plenty of opinions handy about how he raised his daughters. Everyone had had plenty of time to form those opinions. Hers differed because she wasn’t one of them. “So, about yesterday, what I said to you about… We’re okay?”
“We’re okay.” He nodded.
She expected him to say something more, to admit her thoughts on Caroline had some validity or even dismiss it outright as having been completely forgotten.
He just kept petting Donut.
“Okay, well, maybe we could go down to the gym and take a look at how Caroline is doing?” Suddenly her own classroom felt closed in. She shifted her weight, looked down at Donut, who watched them contently, and her heart ached. “Objectively, of course.”
She directed the dog to go back to his bed, jotted down a note for Ted Perry’s neighbor and taped it on the window of her room before she opened the door. She and Sam stepped out into the hallway only to find Hayley and Juliette sitting on the floor with schoolbooks in their laps.
Polly’s gait slowed. She could hardly swallow. She hadn’t imagined that the Goodacre girls might be there to witness her surrendering Donut for good. She turned to him and in a voice hushed and constricted she said, “You didn’t tell me the other girls were here.”
“Homework,” he said as they walked up to where the girls were waiting. “It’s not just for home anymore.”
“Homework? I didn’t think we were assigning a whole lot of that in second grade.”
“Oh, it’s not a whole lot. Not unless you don’t do it and let it build up.” He gave Juliette and Hayley a stern look. “Neither of them have done their Parents’ Night projects.”
“I’m supposed to do a collage of what we hope to learn this year,” Juliette said. She flipped through a magazine in her lap and tore out a page, flopping over with her hand on Hayley’s shoulder as if the minimal effort had worn her to a frazzle. “It’s so hard. All that sitting still for cutting and pasting. It’s too much.”
Especially when your time is taken up with activities from dance and gymnastics classes to Pumpkin Jumps, Polly thought, though she kept her outsider opinion to herself.
“We’re doing a mobile from what Miss Bradley calls ‘found objects’ that show our interests.” Hayley scrunched her face up. “But I can’t find anything.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can. It should be interesting,” Polly said when what she meant was That should be easy. Hayley had so many interests. She could gather leaves and flowers from the farm, toy farm animals—Polly could think of a dozen things right off the bat, but she held her opinion, not comfortable interjecting herself into the situation at the moment.
Sam didn’t give her a chance to speak up, anyway. He had already started toward the big double doors of the gymnasium. With a single gesture he encouraged Juliette and Hayley to come along.
Polly held her breath. She had expected having a moment as they walked along to tell Sam about the neighbor. She hurried up to him and reached out to grab him by the wrist, hoping to get him to stay back.
The girls hit the doors to the gym with a whomp. Those doors went swinging open.
Polly couldn’t help but stand there, mouth open at the scene of total chaos inside.
“Caroline, please, the other way. No, the other other way.” The school’s music teacher, Allison Benson, churned her arm in a small, frantic circle trying to illustrate the way she wanted the small redhead at the center of the group to spin and move. Allison did so in perfect rhythm, never missing a beat as she continued calling the dancers’ moves. “Form a circle hand in hand. Turn to your partner, right and left grand.”
Caroline staggered, went the wrong way, then pivoted and fell in step. Literally, fell in her steps.
“Find your partner do-si-do.” Mrs. Benson valiantly pressed on.
Caroline’s partner grabbed her by the elbow to help her up and ended up sitting on the floor beside her instead.
Polly cringed and bit her lower lip to keep herself from rushing in to Caroline’s rescue.
“Do-si-do?” Sam gave a nod toward Caroline and the young boy sitting beside her. “Looks more like a do-si-don’t to me.”
“Sam!” Polly’s scowl went unnoticed as Sam continued.
“Get up, Caroline. That’s the key. It’s okay to fall, just keep getting up again.” He clapped his hands the way she had seen her father do when her brother played soccer or when her sister, Essie, had participated in a bake-off.
Without meaning to, Polly clenched her back teeth. Tension wound across her rigid shoulders like a mantle. It took every ounce of composure she had not to grab Sam by the shirtsleeve and haul him out into the hallway like a rowdy kid.
Look at yourself! She tried to get her point across in a glare. You have two daughters who are flailing with simple school projects and another who is literally stumbling around looking for a way to please you. Maybe Sam’s way did work for him, but he needed to take a good long look at—
“Is there a Polly Bennett in here?” A sour-faced man stood in the open door of the gym reading her name from a note in his hand. He shifted his weight from one heavy work-booted foot to the other.
Polly’s mouth went dry. She had spoken with the man on the phone but had hoped his gruffness was more an outgrowth of age than of attitude. She gave Sam a fleeting glance, then stepped away from the children, not wanting to include them in this exchange. “I’m Polly.”
The man raised one beefy hand with a chain leash and choke collar dangling from it. “I came for the dog.”
Despite having readied herself all day, Polly froze.
“No!” Hayley rushed to Polly’s side.
“Miss Bennett?” Juliette was on Hayley’s heels, her eyes huge, her face tipped up at the exact angle, in a mirror image of her sister’s.
Caroline scrambled to her feet and darted from the cluster of square dancers to grab her father by the hand. “You’re not going to let someone we don’t know take Donut, are you, Daddy? Not Donut!”
Polly swallowed hard to push down her own emotional reaction and allow herself to speak calmly and evenly about how they all knew the dog’s time with them would probably be brief.
“No. No, Caroline, I’m not.” Sam gave his daughter a pat that deftly guided her to the side. In two strides he was at the door with his hand extended. “I’m Sam Goodacre.”
“Calvin Cooper.” The man seized Sam’s hand and gave it a hard shake. “I came for the dog.”
“You said that, but I think you came for nothing. We’re not handing the dog over to you, Mr. Cooper.”
Polly covered her mouth with her hand to keep from cheering out loud. For all her criticism and concerns about the way Sam handled things, Polly felt a surge of gratitude for it. Her way, giving up and retreating, certainly would never have had the same impact.
“Ain’t your dog to keep.” The neighbor’s jowly cheeks shook slightly with the sharpness of his words.
Sam did not back down an inch. “Nor is he yours.”
“Neighbor left him with me.” He gave the chain and collar in his hand a shake.
Sam crossed his arms. “And you lost him and didn’t really seem to make much effort to find him.”
The man gave a huff that was clearly not a denial or an admission.
“Then I think we can agree that
as long as you know where the dog is and know that he’s safe, your neighbor won’t mind.” Sam put his arm around the man and turned him away from the watchful anxious gazes of Polly and the children.
“Have to take it up with him,” the neighbor grumbled.
“I’ve already called.” He gave the man’s slumped back a pat that was part camaraderie, part urging him down the hallway. “Got his number from Angela Bodine, the lady who identified him as Ted’s puppy.”
“Did ya?” He studied Sam.
Polly’s stomach felt as if it was taking more tumbles than Caroline in the square-dance routine.
“I did what I thought was right, Mr. Cooper.”
No matter how this all turned out, Polly would always remember the way Sam Goodacre took charge today. Maybe one day, if she lived in Baconburg long enough, that would be the Sam story she’d tell.
Ted Perry’s neighbor heaved a weary sigh. “Don’t make no never mind to me but wish you’d told me before I come all the way down here for nothing.”
“I’m sorry for your trouble.” Another pat from Sam that was also a little bit of a push.
The man stood there for a moment sizing up Sam through squinty eyes.
Sam made a gesture with his hand as if showing the man the way to the outside door.
It felt as if no one in the whole gymnasium so much as took a breath.
“Well, all right, then. Guess it’s okay. She seems a nice enough one.” He gave Polly a nod. “Told that fella he didn’t have no business with a dog, anyways, him being a bachelor who stays at the station for long shifts, but he said it was a chick magnet.”
“Oh, really?” Sam shot Polly a look that said he thought they had an angle they could work with, with that bit of inside information. “Did he happen to say which chick he wanted to magnetize with this dog?”
“No, but how many can there be in this town that you could meet being a fireman?” The stout older man shook his head and turned to leave, muttering as he did, “I don’t get the attraction, though. Walked that dog up and down the street a dozen times the two days before he runned off and I didn’t get so much as a ‘howdy’ from the ladies.”
