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.”
“Well,” Katey announced, unperturbed, “when I’m a vet, those dumb sheep will just have to have their babies when I’m on duty.”
Sarah regarded the little girl with a wry smile. Knowing Katey, she probably would get the dumb sheep to birth during office hours.
“So…still wanna be a vet?” She touched her forehead to Katey’s. “You didn’t seem real interested this morning at the clinic.”
Katey squirmed, her dark brows dipping. “Well…” Sarah could almost hear the child’s brain fast-forwarding through several dozen possible answers. Then the little face relaxed into a grin as she let a puppy sniff her fingers. “I’m just a kid. I’ve got a short attention span.”
Sarah let out a laugh, then hugged the little girl to her. No matter what, this precocious little girl never failed to make her smile. Even more than the pups. “You’ve never been ‘just’ a kid, you know that? Even when you were a baby, you always wore this funny, grown-up expression.”
“I did?”
“Uh-huh.” Sarah pretended to shudder and Katey giggled. “It was freak-y, too, having this little tiny baby look at you with this serious face all the time—”
“Sarah Louise?” The lights flickered in the kennel as her mother’s low voice, easily overriding the next wave of thunder, filled the old barn.
“In with Mariah, Mama.”
“Katey with you?”
“Yes, Mama,” Katey piped up.
Clad in her usual attire of oversize man-tailored shirt and jeans, the full-figured woman now blocked most of the light coming into the stall. Vivian never had lost the weight from the last pregnancy. Not that she seemed to care.
Vivian settled what was supposed to be a stern gaze on the little girl. “I believe there’s something you’re supposed to be doing, young lady?”
The child looked from one woman to the other, then let out an affronted sigh. “Yes, Mama,” she muttered, getting to her feet. Wiping her hands on the already filthy seat of raspberry-colored shorts, Katey unlatched the gate and let herself out of the pen, stoically allowing Vivian to plant a kiss on the top of her glimmering chestnut head as she passed. Size two
