got to love a child who reads,” Jody agreed.
I leaned in to give Noah a hug. “You could do a lot worse than Jody Bingham,” I whispered. He swatted my shoulder. “Ow. You hurt me. I may file charges,” I said. “Bye, Jody! Bye, Grampy! Love you!”
“Bye, Grampy! I love you!” Josephine echoed. There. Made him look good even if he resented it.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, I was clean and sweet-smelling and wearing comfortable pants so I could eat lots of Cabot’s cheese, food baby or no food baby. Josephine bounced on my bed, Bowie barking in approval. “Give me the directions, honey,” I ordered.
She hopped down and dug in her backpack, then handed me a sheet of paper. “Can I wear some of your lip gloss?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, scanning the sheet. Oh, heck! We weren’t going to a cheese bar … we were going to the Georgebury Veterinarian Practice. Ian’s, in other words. Huh. Clearly, this must’ve been set up long ago by Dr. Kumar, because I just couldn’t imagine Ian welcoming in a bunch of giggling five-year-old girls.
I was right, I found out twenty minutes later.
“Dr. McFarland will be right out,” Carmella Landi said for the fifth time.
“Marissa, don’t eat that, sweetie,” I said over the din. “It’s for doggies. Spit it out.” I turned to Carmella. “Is he hiding?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said. “He looked like he was passing a kidney stone when I told him this was on the calendar.” We both laughed merrily.
“How’s business?” I asked.
She sobered a bit. “Well, it’s a little quiet. Dr. Kumar was so … lovable. This guy … not so much. People want someone to worship their pets like they do. Dr. McFarland’s kind of an iceberg, know what I mean?”
“I do.” Clearly, Ian needed my professional help.
Given that the girls weren’t breaking anything yet and Michaela Oh, the other chaperone, was meting out bribes in the form of Life Savers, I took the opportunity to wander down the hall and find our host. The place seemed mostly empty. A tech I didn’t know was getting ready to go … there was no sign of Earl, my old buddy.
As I passed an open door, Ian’s beautiful Irish setter rose gracefully to her feet. “Hi, Angie!” I said, kneeling to pet her and, apparently unable to help myself, began channeling Mick Jagger once more. ‘“Angie … Aaannngie … You can’t say we never—’”
At that moment, Ian emerged from his office, looking much as Carmella had just described him. He wore a suit, but in place of a jacket, he had on the expected white lab coat with his name embroidered in black. His shirt was blue, his tie red, and he looked … well, formal. Stiff. But kind of nice, too. Aside from creepy Louis, I didn’t know a single man who wore suits. There was a lot of Carhartt up here, a lot of flannel. Ian … he stood out. Once again, the image of a Russian assassin came to mind. I smiled up at him, and Angie’s tail swished.
He did a double take when he saw me squatting on the ground with his dog. “What are you doing here, Callie?” he asked. “Don’t tell me one of those … children … is yours.” He swallowed.
“See, that’s exactly what I could help you with,” I said, my smile dropping like lead. I stood up. “A more appropriate greeting would be, ‘Hello, Callie, it’s so nice to see you!’ And is it really so hard to imagine that some guy found me attractive enough to knock up? Hmm?” No wonder business was off.
He rubbed his jaw. “I didn’t mean … I—never mind.” He looked down the hall, where the noise level in the waiting room was approaching home-run-in-the-bottom-of-the-ninth levels. I took pity on him.
“I’m here with my niece. Don’t worry. We’ll make this as painless as possible.” He looked dubious. “Come on, big boy,” I encouraged. “They don’t bite. Well, Mariah and Paige might, but the rest of them are completely safe.
“Girls!” I said, opening the half door into the waiting room and shouting a bit to be heard. “Dr. McFarland is here, and he’s so happy that you all came to learn about how he takes care of animals! Dr. McFarland, thank you so much for seeing us!”
He looked at the girls like a wounded calf might regard a school of underfed piranhas. “Hello,” he said.
“I have three dogs!” Keira Kinell shouted, lifting her skort and dancing in place. “They’re purebreds! They cost $4,000 each!”
“I have a cat named Eddie and he’s so cute!” Hayley McIntyre claimed.
“No, you don’t!” said Josephine hotly. “You don’t have a cat. I was just at your house! That cat is fake!”
“He’s not fake!” retorted Tess McIntyre, Hayley’s twin. “He’s imaginary! And he didn’t like you, so he hid!”
“I have a pony and two dogs and a hamster,” Kayelin Owens said, “except the hamster died and I found it in the cage and it was all curled up into a ball and I cried and my mother said it was in heaven so we buried it in the backyard!”
Ian looked as if electrodes were being applied to various parts of his body. Again, I grinned. “Dr. McFarland is going to give us a tour, girls! You can see where he does all that vet stuff that keeps our pets healthy. Right, Dr. McFarland?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “All right. Um, please don’t touch anything and follow me.”
“Good luck!” Carmella said, booting up solitaire on her computer. Michaela and I herded the girls into the rough approximation of a line and followed Ian down the hall.
“This is the operating room—please don’t touch that,” he said, as Keira began fondling an oxygen tank. Keira looked at him assessingly—she was a piece of work, that one—and, correctly assessing his efficacy, touched it again.
“Hands in your pockets, Keira,” I said, and she obeyed with a mutter.
Ian took a deep breath. “Well, this is where we operate when—”
“Do you cut out uteruseses?” Josephine asked, proud of her vocabulary, given that her mommy was a doctor.
“Um … sometimes,” Ian said. “We call that spaying.”
“What about peniseses?”
I bit my lip, trying not to laugh.
“Well, not exactly, no.”
“What’s a girl dog called?” Tess asked, smiling angelically. “It rhymes with ‘witch.’”
Ian, sensing that he was being led into a trap, glanced at me. I shrugged. Ian decided to ignore that question and attempted to educate the girls. “It’s important that a dog or cat or any pet doesn’t have a litter unless—”
“I never litter,” said Caroline Biddle.
“Not that kind of litter!” Keira shouted. “Dummy!”
Caroline looked like
