Runaway Bridesmaid

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.”