“Technically I owe you,” I said. “But I cannot handle a dog right now. You understand. I’m sure someone will adopt you from the shelter very soon. All I know for sure is: You arenotcoming home with me.”
Seventeen
“Don’t get attached because we’re not keeping it,” I said, as the twins dropped to their knees and threw their arms around the dog’s neck.
“Oh, Mommy,” Alice began. Phoebe finished her sentence, “We love her so much.”
“Don’t start! We arenotkeeping it,” I repeated, feeling like an ogre, but an ogre without the bandwidth to care for a high-maintenance pet.
The dog thumped its tail in delight as Phoebe draped herself over its back. “Everyone at school has big families,” Phoebe said. “Can’t we at least have one dog?”
“Johnica has seventy-two cousins!” Alice said.
“And her mom has like three sister wives,” I added, under my breath.
“Only two,” Phoebe said. “And they live across the street.”
Alice looked concerned our conversation was veering off-track. “What we’re trying to say is we miss Grandma Lulu. So much. No one else in the whole world can do a Kermit voice like she could.”
“I miss her too,” I said, my voice catching.
“And we think having a dog could help,” Alice said.
Clearly, the girls were yearning for things I hadn’t been able to provide—a big extended family, or at the very least more friends around. A dog did not seem like too much to ask. Yet all I could think about was how if we kept the dog, it might run away or get hit by a car. I didn’t want my girls to go through that sort of loss. I didn’t think I could take it myself.
With the twins busy throwing a blanket over the dog and pretending it was a ghost, I opened Connor’s packages and letters in the kitchen,hoping for an Ipsy box full of clues instead of makeup. Instead I found payday loan offers, a round blanket that looked like a giant tortilla, and a T-shirt that saidASK ME ABOUT MY COCK. Trial and error revealed that if the wearer pulled the hem over his head, it looked like he was a rooster. And he got to show off his abs. A nifty optical illusion for the strip club.
Connor’s phone dinged. Another voice memo from Ralphie the Lizard—which I couldn’t listen to unless I used Connor’s face to unlock his cell. The last thing I wanted to do was climb into a playhouse with a corpse. But having kids on my own had taught me how to do things that terrified me.
First, I went to my bedroom closet and stuffed Connor’s teal vest into a Hefty Cinch Sak. I’d give anything to be able to remember how I ended up wearing that vest! The twins didn’t even look up when I told them I was taking out the garbage. Instead I trudged through the fresh snow of the backyard, dragged the playhouse doors open, and crawled inside. Now that I’d been in Connor’s house and had eaten one of his ice cream sandwiches, it was even harder to see his stiff, cold, crumpled body. I pushed the trash bag into the far corner of the cramped space and leaned in to examine the lump on Connor’s forehead—likely caused by Salma Hayek whacking him with a beer bottle. A decent egg, but it hardly looked fatal. I couldn’t bring myself to yank his pants further down to check out the stab wound on his thigh, but the relatively small bloodstain told me all I needed to know there. Next, I unbuttoned his shirt to examine the stab wound on his chest. It was partially obscured by dried blood, but didn’t look deep enough to have killed him either. Clearly I was missing something.
I crawled out and headed toward the house, then stood shivering by the sliding glass door with Connor’s unlocked phone. I hit play on the voice memo. “Confirm you can meet Baylee at Burgdorf Saturday at one for the handoff. If I don’t hear your voice, she’s not going.”
There was no chance Connor would be at Burgdorf, but I couldn’t exactly send Ralphie a voice memo from Connor telling him that. Hurriedly, I checked to see if any other messages had come in.
Natty Lite:Let me know when we can meet up. It’s urgent.
I texted back:sorry, man. out of town.
In the living room, Alice and Phoebe were wrestling the dog’s hind legs into a tutu. Instead of being annoyed, the pit bull beamed.
“Her name is Little Sister!” Phoebe and Alice yelled in unison. It was spooky to see them actually agreeing on something.
A rooster crowed and the dog barked. My mom had been pretty tickled when she’d installed that rooster doorbell. I threw open the door, ready to tell the person on the other side I needed organized religion like a bear needs a prom dress.
But it was Miranda Carson, looking stylish in a fur-trimmed coat. The blood in my veins turned to Slushee. Had she come to investigate my unfit parenting for CPS? A loud thunk sounded behind me, followed by a wail. Alice had tripped over the dog.
“Is now a bad time?” Miranda asked, but she was already sailing into my living room. You have to welcome in a vampire, but former-high-school-cheerleaders-turned-CPS-case-workers are apparently a type of creature who can cross the threshold into your home with no invitation whatsoever.
The dog barreled at Miranda. Everything went into slow motion as I experienced the sort of terror you can only feel when your foster pit bull is about to attack a Child Protective Services worker.
But Little Sister stopped short at Miranda’s feet, spun in a circle, let out a joyful bark, and looked up at her with adoring eyes. Jesus, Mary, and Joan Rivers, if I had a Xanax, I’d take it.
Miranda stared at the dog.
“Her name is Little Sister,” Phoebe said, running over and hugging Little Sister’s midsection territorially. “If you think she’s your dog, you’re wrong. She’s ours.”
“That’s not my dog,” Miranda said, staring at the pup as if trying to place it. “But I’ve met a dog before that looked exactly like that one.”
