by Annie Jones
She turned and looked at him standing there framed by his home, his life still every bit intact as it was the day they met. She made a mental photo, one more moment frozen in time of someone who would no longer be in her life. “It could be a whole city of strangers, Sam, the way I feel right now.”
He stepped toward her.
She shook her head to tell him not to bother. He didn’t want her to interfere in his life or the lives of his children unless she did things his way. Trying to make the man happy was a waste of time. He didn’t want to be happy. He wanted to be in control.
There were some things she couldn’t fix, couldn’t teach and now, couldn’t run away from. If that was the only lesson she learned from all of this, Polly decided that would be enough for a long time to come.
Three little girls with red hair in curls.
Sam peeked in to see the triplets all sitting on the same bed, talking with their heads pressed together.
He tapped on the doorframe before he stepped across the threshold of the open door. “Prayer time, girls?”
They scrambled to their own beds and knelt beside them.
Sam’s stomach knotted. He didn’t want to think his children could have played this trick on him and the teachers, but even more than that, that they could kneel and say their prayers in front of him knowing they’d done it. It didn’t sit right with him. He straightened up. “You know, girls, before we start prayers, maybe we should take a minute to talk.”
The three exchanged glances.
“About what?” Hayley, the bold, asked without exactly meeting her dad’s eyes.
“Well, for starters, I don’t want there ever to be secrets between us.” As soon as he said it, Sam wished he hadn’t. He thought of Polly, the kiss they had shared. Then of his attempts to get Ted Perry to hand over Donut while still adhering to his no-dogs rule for the girls. “That doesn’t count for the things that are just for adults. Things that I’m not ready to share with you.”
They definitely looked confused.
Last he thought of the argument he’d had with Polly tonight at the school and her saying she suspected they’d pulled “the old switcheroo.” Sam had to know that news of him and Polly clashing was probably already making the rounds. He could just imagine someone in his girls’ Sunday school overhearing the story even now.
“But then there are things that happen out in the open, things other people in town might be talking about.” He fumbled to find the right way to tell just the part they needed to hear.
All three faces tipped up in unison and at the same angle. In the dim light even their expressions seemed exactly the same. Sam had to concede that under the right circumstances even he could have been duped into believing Juliette was Caroline in the gymnasium this evening.
He crossed to the three desks where the girls usually did their homework, trying to give them time to unburden themselves if they had gotten up to any funny business to cash in on his Parents’ Night promise. He leaned in to peer more closely at stacks of paper and extra clippings left over from the collage still hanging in Juliette’s classroom. On one hand it did not seem likely that Juliette sat still and cut neatly around each picture pasted onto white foam board. He surveyed the desk with pink pens and stickers and even a small bottle of pink glitter on the corner. On the other hand, he had no proof she didn’t.
He turned and some chicken feathers dangling by bright green yarn tied to a small tree limb smacked him along the side of the face. He turned and blew a wayward feather from in front of his nose. He thought the girls would giggle at him tangled up in Hayley’s mobile, but instead they grew strangely quiet.
He thought of the day at the drugstore when the threesome had tried unsuccessfully to fool Polly and how Caroline had cracked and confessed everything so quickly. He’d certainly had the impulse to lay everything out in the open about his words with Polly when he’d seen their faces.
The fact that they didn’t say a thing made him think maybe he was right about the girls. They just sat there listening to him, seemingly in no hurry to talk to him about anything, anything at—
“Wait a minute. What’s up here?” Sam spun around and once again the chicken feathers went dancing on their green yarn tethers. “I have been in this room three whole minutes and not a one of you has asked when we’re getting that dog I promised.”
Three worried looks.
“We don’t want any dog but Donut, Daddy,” Caroline finally said softly. The other girls nodded almost simultaneously.
Sam’s heart sank. All this. He had broken his rule, asked his girls to give the proverbial one-hundred-and-ten-percent, gone to Parents’ Night and not even taken the time to properly appreciate or even look at their handiwork. And for what?
They didn’t want any dog but Donut.
Polly didn’t want anything but what was best for his girls.
Sam didn’t want anything but for his life to go back to the way it was when he was in charge of it all and nothing held him back.
He groaned and rubbed his eyes, then motioned for the girls to get to their own beds and say their prayers. As they knelt down to begin, Sam slipped into the hallway, not sure he could stand by and hear those three sweet kids ask for God to bless the dog they couldn’t have and the woman who thought they would resort to cheating just to please him.
Sam shut his eyes to keep from allowing himself to overthink that. Polly was a good person, a really good person. But she did admit she’d re-created the Baconburg of her childhood into something straight out of The Andy Griffith Show, starring him as the kindly single dad who needed the loving guidance of the local schoolteacher. She suspected the girls of pulling this prank because it fit with her idea of how things would work out. She’d point out the problem. He’d see the error of his ways and then—
“And if our mommy is near You, tell her it’s okay. We have Miss Bennett to help us down here now.”
Sam jerked his head around to peer into the darkened room but not soon enough to identify which girl had said that.
Then nothing. Sam had formulated his plan with careful forethought. He had a job to do where the girls were concerned and allowing them to form attachments to a dog and now Polly were big mistakes. But mistakes that could be undone.
He just had to get the girls to really kick things up a notch. Tomorrow he’d call the mom in charge of the Go-Getters and offer to have the group hold another fundraiser at the Pumpkin Jump and maybe he’d just suggest they’d be welcome to do their square-dance routine, as well.
That’s exactly what he’d do—full speed ahead.
Chapter Seventeen
The next two weeks flew by for Polly. Her pupils had settled into the school routine nicely and the other teachers informed her that fall was a crazy-busy time for the small Ohio town that relied heavily on agriculture and tourism to pay the bills through the winter. This left very little time for Polly to sit and pine for Donut or her family. But somehow she still had plenty of time to think about Sam Goodacre.
“It’s that hat,” Polly told Essie on a late-night phone call while Polly graded test papers over what her students had learned in the first six weeks. “I need to get it back to him.”
“Or throw it away,” Essie countered. “He doesn’t want it.”
“Then he can throw it away. I can’t. Not a hat his late wife gave him.” Polly set down her pen and rubbed her eyes. “Maybe I can mail it to him.”
Essie laughed.
“Better yet, come up to the Pumpkin Jump on Saturday, pretend to be me and give it to him yourself.”
“That sounds more like wanting to be right than to do right,” Essie used another of their mother’s sayings to call out Polly. “It’s time to stop hiding in the past, Polly. There are some things you can’t fix, but you’re liv
ing proof that you can start again.”
“That’s a nice idea, but how can you start again with someone who won’t slow down long enough to notice the things around them that they can fix?” Polly sighed and said her goodbyes. She started to put the phone down, but as she stretched to put it far enough away that it wouldn’t further distract her, the photos on the mantel came into her line of vision.
She picked up the phone again and touched the button to look through her contact list. After only a couple clicks she pulled up the pic she’d taken of Sam, Caroline and Donut on the fire truck. She tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off.
“I was not wrong about the triplets,” she told the man smiling out at her from a moment frozen in time. She pointed at his face, then gave it a poke for emphasis. “I am not hiding in the past. And I am definitely not going to the…”
“Hello? Polly? Are you okay?”
“…Pumpkin Jump,” she murmured, realizing she had tapped Sam’s name, placing a call to him, when she meant to tap the photo. Her heart stopped.
“You calling about the Pumpkin Jump? At this hour? Polly?”
“Hi, Sam, actually I didn’t mean to call at all. Sorry.” She moved her thumb to the end-call button.
“It’s good to hear your voice.”
She curled her hand closed and said softly, “You, too.”
“I… What was that about the Pumpkin Jump?”
“I tried to get Essie to come to it, but…”
“She should. You should bring her.”
“I wasn’t planning to come if she doesn’t, Sam, but it was good to hear your voice.” She did hang up this time.
Polly thought that was that until the morning of the big event when her doorbell rang.
Even after all this time, Polly still hoped, just a little bit, that she’d find Sam holding Donut on the other side. Instead—
“Essie! You said you couldn’t come for the Pumpkin Jump!” Polly threw her arms around her sister.
“I wasn’t going to, but I went online to find this…” She thrust out the smoky-brown trilby Polly had admired as perfect for Sam.
Polly gasped and took it in her hands as the two of them came inside.
“And then I had to check out this Pumpkin Jump and lookie what’s going on there.” She held up a printout that included not just a photo of the pumpkins she and Sam and Caroline had picked out, but also a schedule of events that included a dog-wash fundraiser and a square-dance routine by the Van Buren Elementary Go-Getters.
Chaos and fun, work and worry, it all came together the morning of the Goodacre Organic Farm’s Annual Pumpkin Jump. Sam actually had very little to do with the event, which meant he was the one everyone expected to be available to help them with their part. He didn’t mind. He liked being able to move around the edges of the activities; it gave him a chance to see who was there.
“Nobody has seen her,” Max muttered as he pushed past Sam carrying a tray piled high with hamburger buns.
Sam opened his mouth to deny he’d been looking for anyone in particular then caught a glimpse of the girls trailing along behind their uncle, each carting her own giant jar of mustard, mayo or ketchup. He grinned at them, so proud to see them pitching in like that. In fact, for the past two weeks, they had pretty much been giving every effort their all and everyone seemed very happy.
The operative word being seemed. A dull heaviness lay on his chest. Sam just couldn’t believe that after having Polly and Donut in their lives, things could go back to normal so easily. He tried to tell himself that kids were resilient, they bounced back quickly, but if he had ever really trusted in that he would never have had to come up with even his simple set of rules.
“If we see her, we’ll tell her you’re looking for her,” Max called back as he led the girls toward the place where he was about to fire up a huge portable grill.
“Her, who?” Hayley asked, never even looking Sam’s way.
“We aren’t looking for a ‘her.’ We’re looking for a ‘him,’” Juliette announced as she passed.
“Him?” News to Sam. “Him, who?”
“Donut, Daddy.” Caroline paused long enough to get a better grip on the plastic jug of mustard in her arms. “The Go-Getters are having another dog wash and the firemen are helping. That means Donut is coming, right?”
Sam felt as if he’d just taken a punch in the gut. “Dog wash? I didn’t plan for—”
“There are some things in life you can’t plan for, Sam.”
“Polly!” Without thinking over the implications, he grabbed her by the shoulders, leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Am I ever glad to see you.”
The minute she was in his arms, everything felt right with the world. Or at least as if she could help him make it right.
Polly gave a nervous laugh and pushed at his chest, probably to give herself some breathing room—a stark reminder that no matter how good it felt to see her again, there was still a lot standing between them.
“Did you know about this dog-wash deal?” he asked before she could even get a word out.
She shook her head. “Not until this morning when—”
“And you just came? You weren’t going to come, but you did.” He grabbed her by the hand and began to walk. “We can still get this under control, but we need to go, and go fast.”
“Sam?” She stumbled forward a few steps before she caught up with his pace. “Have you ever stopped to think that just because you aren’t in control it doesn’t mean things are out of control?”
“I’ve missed you, Polly.” He glanced back at her and chuckled. “But we don’t have time for philosophy. If the girls have Donut taken away again, I don’t know what it will do to them.”
“You mean what it will do to you.” She twisted her arm to free her hand from his, then turned toward the stand where Max and the girls were busy setting up. “Sam, the girls look fine.”
“Of course they do. They probably have some wild idea that they will be able to get Donut as the dog I promised them. It’s the only dog they wanted.” He scanned the field where people were arriving, then the path leading toward the barn where the doors were flung open and a local band was warming up for the performances to come. “Let’s see if we can find Gina and find out where this dog wash is going to be set up.”
“Or you could just go over to the big yellow fire truck.” Polly pointed to an area in the open field where the truck sat surrounded by kids.
“Great.” Without hesitation, Sam grabbed her arm and started out again.
“Sam!” More foot-dragging. “Did you listen to yourself? I said the kids are fine. You’re trying to fix something that hasn’t even happened yet.”
“That’s my job.” He cupped her elbow and kept walking.
This time she dug in her heels and they stayed dug in enough that Sam’s hand slipped and she jerked to a stop. He pivoted to face her.
Even standing in the middle of a small crush of people, amid booths being set up, hay bales and pumpkins stacked to direct people to various venues, when Sam looked Polly’s way, she was all he could see. And despite all the things whirling around them, she made him smile.
“Your job? Really? I thought Sam’s way was to teach the girls that no matter what happened you could just push your way through and get on with life.” She folded her arms. “I thought that was your job.”
“You got me.” He held his hands out to his side. “Where Hayley, Juliette and Caroline are concerned, I… Look, Polly, I made this impulsive promise to the girls that they could have a dog if they came through for Parents’ Night and the only dog they want is Donut. So if Ted Perry shows up with that dog and leaves with him, it will be like I am the one taking him away from them. I don’t think I could stand that.”
“Oh, Sam.” She put her hand to his cheek. “That is the first time you ever actually said it.”
He leaned into her hand. “Said what?”
“The real reason why you have pushed the girls to do things your way. Because you can’t stand the idea of their being hurt,” she said quietly. “Sam, did you ever consider that this is about your grief, not the girls’?”
Before he’d met Polly, he’d have shot that down in a heartbeat. Now he actually stood there with her hand on his and could hear his own heart pounding in his chest, steady and strong. “I have no idea what to say to that, Polly.”
“That’s probably the best answer you could have given, Sam.” She dropped her hand and laughed.
He opened his mouth to say more, but the sound of the fire engine’s siren reverberated through the air, cutting him off.
Polly jumped forward.
He caught and steadied her by putting both hands on her arms. Their eyes met and they both broke out laughing at being taken by surprise.
“Hey, I…” Max came thundering up on them, stopped hard and leaned back, a stunned expression on his face.
Sam stepped away from Polly. Open as he was to exploring that he hadn’t properly grieved for Marie and the life he and the girls had lost, he didn’t want his family to get any ideas that he and Polly were suddenly fair matchmaking game.
“Look, Max, I…”
“You…” Max pointed at Polly. “You’re…”
“Look, don’t read anything into this.” Sam waved his hand, and put his back to the fire truck and his plans to head off any potential issues with Donut and Ted Perry. “I just met Polly out here and—”
“And I just met her back there.” Max jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“Your sister?” Sam looked at Polly.
She nodded.
“And you and the girls thought you’ve been talking to Polly?” he asked Max.
“Well, we haven’t talked to her—she was on her cell phone the whole time—but she looks like Polly and sounds like Polly and she…” Max made an overly played wince, then a slow look of realization came over his face. He started to chuckle. “The girls don’t know?”
