Her mother’s voice was strong today. She sighed as she hurried to the front door and pulled it open.
The children from next door stood on her porch, their arms overflowing with familiar black-and-tan puppies.
“Hello, ma’am,” the girl said politely. “Are these your puppies? They’ve wandered into our garden.”
Wandered. Oh, no. She shot a look at the enclosure she had set up so carefully earlier that day, puzzled to see it looked completely intact.
How on earth had they escaped this time?
“Oh my goodness. You little rascals.”
“Excuse me?” The girl looked affronted.
“Not you. I’m sorry. I was speaking about the puppies. They’re very good escape artists. I’m not sure how they keep getting out. It doesn’t matter what measures I take to prevent it, they immediately find another way to escape.”
“I love puppies,” the little boy, Thomas, said with a dreamy look, resting his cheek on Coco’s head.
“They are adorable, aren’t they? These particular puppies are very mischievous, though. They are always trying to explore.”
“Can I put one down?” The girl, Amelia, had her hands full trying to contain them—the runt of the litter, Oscar, and his chubby older brother, Calvin.
“Yes. Of course. Here. Let me take one.” She grabbed the larger of the puppies, who licked at her forearm as it wriggled to get away. “I need to find their mama, too.”
“When we walked past on the way to your door, she was sound asleep in her pen,” Thomas informed her.
“Perhaps she was enjoying having all that room to herself,” Amelia suggested.
“No doubt you are correct. I imagine it can’t be so easy to have puppies climbing on you all day long.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Thomas said cheerfully. “I love puppies.”
He was adorable, she had to admit. She wanted to hug him like he was hugging the puppy.
“I do love them, too, especially when they stay where they’re supposed to. Let’s go see if we can figure out how they wriggled out this time.”
She and the two children walked to the metal enclosure, supposedly held into place by stakes she had driven into the ground. They did indeed find Betsey stretched out inside by herself, looking perfectly content with the world.
She could see immediately how the puppies had escaped. Somehow they must have managed to burrow under one of the metal panels that was raised off the uneven ground only about three or four inches.
She should have noticed that one of the fence panels wasn’t flush to the ground. If she hadn’t been so distracted by her workload, she might have done a much better job of ensuring the pen was secure.
“Oh, you little rascals,” she exclaimed again, shoving the panel farther down into the dirt.
The puppies were too smart for their own good and seemed to spur each other on to increasing levels of deviousness.
She set Coco inside the pen and the children did the same with the other two puppies.
“I love dogs. I wish we had one at home,” Thomas said with a happy sigh as soon as he’d set his puppy down inside the enclosure. “We don’t have one at home.”
“No. But Grandfather and Nana have four,” Amelia reminded him.
“Four. That’s a lot of dogs.”
“They’re very cute. We play with them whenever we go to their house. I suppose we’ll see them more, now that we’re moving to be closer to them.”
“Right now we live in Oxford,” Thomas informed her. “That’s in England.”
Fitting, that a nerdy salmon researcher lived in a university town like Oxford. Why was he moving to be closer to his parents? For help with the children, now that his wife was gone?
“How are you enjoying your stay here in the States?”
Amelia pursed her lips as if considering how to answer. “I miss my friends, if you want the truth,” she finally said. “My best friends are called Jane and Sarah and they’re eight years old, same as I am.”
“Eight is a very good age,” Samantha said.
“I think twelve is the perfect age. My father says I can get my ears pierced when I’m twelve. I like your earrings very much.”
Sam touched one of the dangles and sent it swinging. She had made these herself at McKenzie’s store one time when the Helping Hands had tried their collective hand at beading.
“Thank you. Have you gone swimming or anything like that out in the lake while you’ve been here?”
“I wanted to. We waded a little the other day but the water was so cold we nearly froze!” Amelia looked aghast. “I thought it would be like going to Nice in the summer. We used to do that with our mum during holiday. Swimming in the ocean there was like having a bath.”
“Only with about a hundred other people,” Thomas said.
“Yes. And in a really big bathtub,” Amelia agreed.
Lake Haven was always cold, since it was filled by snow runoff from the surrounding Redemption mountain range.
“That sounds nice. You must have enjoyed it very much.”
Amelia nodded. “The beach was nice, I suppose, but spending time with Mum was the best part. She liked to build sandcastles with us and she always said ours was good enough to win a prize.”
“Our mum died,” Thomas offered, his voice small and sad.
These poor children, losing their mother at such a young age. Her heart ached for them and she wanted to cuddle them both close.
“How lovely, then, that you have such wonderful memories of the time you spent with her.”
“Our mother was sick for an awfully long time. Months and months,” Amelia said.
“I imagine that must have been very difficult for all of you.”
“Yes.” Amelia acknowledged her sympathy with a regal sort of nod and they stood for a moment, each lost in thought, until Coco waddled after a ball and ended up falling on her face, which made the children laugh.
Samantha loved how resilient children could be. Even when they were grieving and sad, they could often still manage to find moments of joy in the world around them.
She had
