“Yes!” He slid off my lap with the speed of a seal and was soon slurping down pasta. I blew out an invisible sigh of relief. Not only relief that Oliver had recovered, but also relief that I’d divorced Richard. Oliver’s father wouldn’t have comforted him and explained the mysteries of ingredients; he would have told him to eat what was on his plate.
“Um, Mom?” Jenna took a piece of garlic toast.
“Hmm?” My lovely daughter was growing. The top of her head obscured the bottom of the wall calendar. In June I’d been able to see all the way to the end of the month.
“Mom?” Though she hadn’t taken a bite of toast, Jenna took another from the pile. “Can we get a dog?”
Jenna’s request hung in the air. I got the feeling that if I squinted the right way, I’d see the words spelled out in light and dark furry shadows. But maybe I’d heard wrong. Maybe Jenna had asked about getting something that only sounded like dog. A bog, perhaps. There was room for a little bog in the backyard, tucked between the garage and the sandbox.
Or maybe she’d said hog. That was easy to turn down. We were zoned residential; no agricultural animals allowed. Sorry, kids. It’s out of my hands. Or maybe she’d said log. Or maybe—
“Mom?”
“Yes, sweetie.” I wiped away my imaginings. “Did you ask about—?”
“A dog.” Oliver sat up straight. “A puppy. With big paws and a pink tongue.” He dangled his own tongue out of his mouth.
This was not good. I looked from one child to the other. “Didn’t we have this same discussion last year? The reasons we couldn’t get a dog then are the same reasons we can’t get a dog now.”
“But it’s different now.” Oliver wiped his mouth of dog drool.
“How so?”
“You said we weren’t big enough to take care of a dog, but now we’re a year bigger.”
“That’s true, but—”
“And we’ve been taking care of George all by ourselves for months,” Jenna said. “Litter box and food and water and brushing and everything. That shows we’re responsible enough to have a dog.”
“It helps, but—”
“And we’d be safer with a dog in the house,” Oliver said. “He’d bark if anyone broke in. Really loud, like this!” My son the dog let out a series of yips, more poodle than guard dog.
“If Mrs. Mephisto had had a dog,” Jenna said, “maybe she wouldn’t be dead.”
Her simple words hit me like a physical blow. “Oh, sweetheart.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled away. I stifled a sigh.
Gus had told me there’d been no signs of forced entry at Agnes’s house, so it was likely she’d let the killer inside, and given that the time was late, it was likely she knew the killer. That knowledge wasn’t very helpful, though, as Agnes knew hundreds of people. But since only the killer knew exactly what had happened, in theory Jenna could be right.
“So can we get a dog?” Oliver clasped his hands together and aimed them at me, elbows tight together. “Pretty, pretty please, please, please?”
“Please, Mom?” Jenna did the hand-clasp thing, too. “We’ll walk him and brush him and clean up his poop with those little plastic bags.”
“We’ll teach him to get the newspaper,” Oliver said.
“We’ll give him baths.”
“We’ll teach him to roll over.”
I did not want a dog. I especially did not want a puppy. Puppies had a knack for chewing up the most expensive shoes you owned. Puppies left puddles in the middle of the night. Puppies with great big paws grew up into great big dogs. I looked from one child to the other.
“Please?” they chorused.
I did not want a dog, but they’d lost so much in the last year, and now their principal had been murdered. Having the care of a dog might be good for them. But still . . . I didn’t want a dog. No matter what the kids said, I’d end up on dog duty. I pinched the bridge of my nose. If Richard were here, he’d say no and that would be the end of it. But there was no Richard, and the decision was up to me.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
Jenna and Oliver grinned at each other, and I got the feeling I’d lost the first battle.
As soon as Richard had moved out of the house, the standard pattern of visitation rights had begun. The first Wednesday night I sat on the couch and made a gap in the curtains so I could see the kids the instant Richard dropped them off. The second Wednesday I made a pot of coffee and brought it with me to the couch.
When I found myself putting together a tray of coffee and snacks for the third Wednesday, I knew I was in serious trouble. Ignoring the fact that it was dark, raining, and cold, I went for a long walk. When I got home, I was drenched and shivering, but an idea was banging around in my brain.
I needed a hobby.
In the months since that walk, I’d gone through knitting (too much counting), scrapbooking (too many options), and baking (too much weight gain). I’d settled into journaling. My writing sessions had seen me through the worst of the effects of the separation and the post-divorce aftermath. In writing to myself, I took my share of the blame for the marriage’s failure. Through writing, I calmed my fears for the children and my fears for myself. I wrote about coming to grips with my status as a divorced mom, and I wrote about my high hopes for the future.
Jenna and Oliver and I were a family, and Richard was a good father, even if he did live on the other side of town. Together, we’d make this work.
But would it work with a dog?
On this Wednesday night, the four board members of the PTA met in Erica’s kitchen.
“Are you sure this is legal?” Randy Jarvis asked around a chocolate-chip cookie. His concern about PTA proprieties didn’t extend to ignoring the plate of treats Erica offered.
“I checked the bylaws,” said Julie. Our vice president had lowered herself onto a ladder-back chair, eschewing the padded window seat on the grounds that the bump wouldn’t fit behind the table. “We can call special meetings without the rest of the members as long as we publish minutes afterward.” Even when discussing murder at the PTA, Erica was bound and determined that we would follow all bylaws.
She put down a china cup and saucer of decaf in front of me. Cream, no sugar. “Beth, you ready to start taking notes?”
“On it.” I extracted a spiral notebook and pen from my voluminous purse.
Erica slid into the window seat next to Randy. Julie and I sat in chairs facing the window. Even on a dark October evening and only partially illuminated by floodlights, Erica’s garden was beautiful.
“This special meeting of the Tarver Elementary PTA is now called to order.” Erica lifted the half glasses that hung from a chain around her neck and put them on the end of her nose. I called the roll.
“As this is a special meeting,” Erica said, “we can dispense with a reading of the minutes and committee reports and move on to the topic of the night.”
“Agnes,” Julie breathed. “Oh, it’s so horrible.”
I remembered Marina’s fairy tale of Randy being involved with Agnes. If he and Agnes had had a relationship, surely he’d be distraught. On the verge of tears. Full of sorrow and grief. But as far as I could tell, the only thing Randy was, was hungry. He was already chewing on his third cookie, and I guessed he’d go for a fourth any second.
“Yes, we must decide what to do.” Erica put down the very short agenda and looked at us over her glasses. “Now, Agnes was born and raised up in Superior.”
“Really?” Julie’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t know that.”
Neither had I. Superior lay due north an amazing number of miles, about as far north as you could get and not be in Lake Superior. You heard stories about life up there. That you knew it was cold when the keg of beer on the porch froze solid. That if you milked a cow in January, you got ice cream. That in spring they didn’t spring clean the
