”I added a bunch of household stuff to my online wish list last night. Just for fun, ya know? Some stuff I want but most of it is stuff we need, and then before I knew it, the total was already over fifty thousand dollars.” She blows a raspberry with her lips. “Stuff is expensive.”
”We’ll get everything back,” I say. “Eventually.”
There’s no place like home after a trip, and I don’t really have my “home” anymore, but pulling into the driveway of my childhood home still feels pretty good. That is until we walk inside and hear a loud commotion.
”What’s going on?” I ask. No one hears me.
Harper is crying, Brooke is talking a mile a minute, and my mom is freaking out.
Arko? He’s laying on the floor in the living room with the guiltiest look on his face.
We find them in the kitchen. Keanna sees the problem before I do because she gasps. “Oh my gosh!”
I follow her gaze to the back door, which is wide open, with a giant hole where the glass window used to be.
A million little shards of glass litter the file floor like glitter, and Harper is standing in the middle of it, crying her eyes out.
”Honey, are you hurt?” I rush over to her, crunching over the glass. Unlike the kids, I’m wearing shoes so I’m not concerned.
She shakes her head and cries harder.
”Brooke? You good?”
She nods.
Across the room, Mom struggles with trying to pull off the attached dustpan from the broomstick.
“Mom, let me have it.” I unhook the dustpan and start sweeping. “What happened in here?”
Keanna sighs. “I think I know what happened.”
Mom gives us a look. “It was an accident.”
I know my mom well enough to know she’s trying her hardest to be cool about all of this, but deep down she’s pissed.
”Mom said we can take Arko outside for a walk and when Harper tried to put his leash on him, he got so excited he ran to the back door and broke the glass.”
”Is the dog okay?” Keanna says, running into the other room. She comes back a few moments later. “His paws are fine. I’m surprised with all this glass, no one got hurt.”
”It’s tempered glass,” I say, sweeping up another pile and tossing it into the trash can. “It’s a little better than regular glass, but it’s still sharp so you girls be careful.”
I get it all cleaned up and the girls take Arko outside to play. They call it a walk, but I only allow them to walk around the back yard with his leash on because they’re too young to be on the street by themselves. I don’t care how small our town is, and how few cars drive down our street, that’s not a risk I’m going to take.
“Mom, we’ll pay to fix this.”
She nods. “I know you will. What do we do about it, tonight? Jace is next door and I don’t want to bother him with it.”
”I got it.”
There’s some old plywood in the garage. I take some measurements and cut it to the size of the window that used to cover half the back door. It’s ugly, but keeps the outside from getting inside for now. Keanna looks up glass companies and schedules someone to come out tomorrow to fix it.
“Eight hundred dollars,” she says.
I groan. “Dogs are expensive.”
”We need our own house,” she says. “I’d rather Arko destroy our stuff than your parents’ stuff. I feel terrible.”
”Yeah, I agree. Any new rentals yet?”
