September 26, 1965
I am so stunned I can hardly breathe. Hardly move. Hardlythink.
I got up last night around 10 p.m. to use the restroom. I tiptoed down the hall and realized someone was already using it. The door was open a crack and I could see Peggy brushing her teeth at the sink. She wore a cotton nightgown so thin it was almost translucent.
She spit into the sink, and then she leaned back, and that’s when I saw it. Her belly, round and ripe beneath the white cotton.
Peggy is pregnant.
Chapter Sixty
Piper
The girls in the back of Piper’s SUV screamed with joy as she took the entrance to the parking lot a little too fast, sending gravel flying beneath her tires as she pulled up to the Potomac Pals pet shelter just off Fort Hunt Road.
After the ... incident ... with the man whowasn’ta locksmith, she’d checked Hawkeye Slaughter’s account on X. That morning, he’d posted a grainy picture of her in uniform, taken from an online flyer for a self-defense class she’d taught at Georgetown. He’d photoshopped antlers on top of her head. The caption on the picture made her blood run cold. “Happy Hunting Season!”
She glanced at the dashboard. Just in time. The shelter closed in fifteen minutes.
“Mom. Can we get a little dog that I can carry inside my purse like Demi Moore and Paris Hilton?” Caitlin asked.
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “We’re getting a big dog. The biggest dog we can find.”
They should have done this right after Scout died, but she and Brendan and the girls couldn’t bring themselves to get a new dog while still mourning the loss of their old one.
But that situation today ... well, it would never have happened if Scout were alive. His intimidating bark would have sent that man packing, mitigating Piper’s incredible stupidity in bringing him inside the house without asking for an ID, without determining that he was indeed a locksmith before inviting him into the home where her children lived.
She did not want to spend another night alone in that house without a barking dog as a living addition to the alarm system.
It had been a couple of months since they’ve volunteered at the shelter, but hopefully the fact that they’d fostered puppies in the past would allow them to take a dog home today. They’d already been through the background checks, the home visit, and the approval process.
“But I want alittledog,” Bella whined. “Like Toto.” She’d been the Tin Man in a children’s theater production ofThe Wizard of Ozlast year and had developed a strange fixation with the old movie, even though she had to hide her face in a pillow each time the flying monkeys appeared.
“Big dogs are better,” Piper said. “Because if he’s really big you can ... hook him up to your sled.”
Bella beamed at her mother in the rearview mirror, revealing the gap between her two front teeth. Piper averted her eyes, suddenly feeling guilty for raising Bella’s hopes of becoming a suburban dog musher.
Caitlin crossed her arms in the passenger seat beside her. “But after Scout died you said we weren’t getting another dog until we had demonstrated our ‘capacity for responsibility.’” She used her fingers to make indignant air quotes around the phrase.
Piper racked her brain for examples of responsible behavior in a home where children routinely left ice cream cartons sitting on the counter until the contents melted into dairy soup. But the girls would be terrified if they knew the real reason she suddenly wanted a new dog.
“We haven’t lost a single hairbrush all month,” Piper said, pulling into a parking spot. “Bella found her missing Hello Kitty raincoat. Olivia put an entire plate in the dishwasher instead of the sink,withoutbeing asked. And you threw an empty Cheez-Its box into the garbage recently instead of leaving it in the pantry, like you normally do. And you all used the Target gift cards Grandma gave you for Christmas last year instead of losing them under your beds. You guys are beyond ready for a new dog.”
Caitlin pursed her lips and gave her mother a skeptical look. She wasn’t buying it.
“I thinkyoumiss having a dog,” she said in an accusing tone.
Piper repressed a deep sigh.
Sometimes the lies, deceit, and psyops involved in motherhood made her feel like a double agent. Pretending you didn’t care if your toddler wore shoes while desperately needing them to put their shoes onright now.
Pretending you enjoyed standing in subzero temperatures at a card table outside a grocery store with a pack of overexcited Girl Scouts selling Thin Mints when you’d rather be at home in sweatpants watchingBridgerton.
She manufactured a solemn expression and tried to pretend Caitlin had forced her into an honest admission about the real reason for this sudden trip to the pound. “Okay. Fine. You’re right. It’s all about me, and I just really miss having a dog. So let’s go inside and pick one out before I change my mind.”
That did it. The girls catapulted out of the car and into the shelter. Soon they were sitting on the floor, where exuberant puppies attacked them with sloppy kisses.
She smiled for what felt like the first time all day. This was the right thing to do. And now that she was home on administrative leave, she’d have time to train a dog.
