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“Buttercup will be fine. She spends most of the day in Claire’s room anyway. We just have to make sure to leave the door open so she can get to her litter box. Which we’ll need to clean, on account of Mom can’t do that anymore because she’s pregnant and Claire always forgets on purpose.”
Right. Clean the litterbox. Luke made a mental note to have Cameron take care of that little duty.
“What about Toby?” Luke bent down to scratch behind the mutt’s ears. He was a funny looking dog. Part boxer, part who knew what. Mimi had told him the story of how they’d come to adopt him. Zeke had been promising Cameron a dog forever and Mimi had finally given in. The family had made a visit to the animal shelter, determined not to get a dog that shed, only to come home with the world’s biggest drooler, and a surprise cat.
“We usually crate him when we leave the house. On account of all the drool he leaves around. Mom hates cleaning drool.”
“I don’t blame her.” Luke took the dog by the collar and led him to his crate in the laundry room, but Toby dug in his heels and refused to be put inside. The dog began to whine like something was wrong, his brown eyes darting anxiously from Luke to Cameron. “Why doesn’t he want to go inside his crate?” Luke asked.
“We’ve only had him about six months now. It’s the first time Mom and Dad have left him. Maybe he’s worried he’ll end up back at the shelter.” Cameron wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck. “Don’t worry, boy, Mom and Dad will be back.” He looked up at Luke. “Can we take him fishing with us?”
Luke scratched his chin. “Not a good idea. Unless Toby is used to being around the water, he’ll probably run around barking and end up scaring off all the fish.”
“Oh. Yeah. I hadn’t thought about that.”
Toby looked up at him with his big, pathetic dog eyes as if he could understand what Luke was saying. “Maybe after we go fishing we can take him for a run on the beach,” Luke offered.
Cameron’s face lit up. “He’ll like that. He loves being outdoors.”
Luke glanced out the laundry room window to study the fenced backyard. “Then why don’t we leave him in the yard?” Luke suggested. “It’s warm out, but there’re lots of shady trees. We’ll put his water bowl out there and he can spend the day chasing squirrels instead of being locked up in a crate.”
“Good idea!” Cameron said.
Luke ruffled the top of his nephew’s head. “Now let’s go catch us some fish.”
* * *
The fishing trip was, by all accounts, a huge success. Luke taught Cameron which bait to use, showed him the correct way to toss the line, and stressed the importance of being patient. He told Cameron how he was refurbishing Gramps’s old boat, the Martha Sue, and Cameron had expressed interest in going out for a ride once the boat was sea-worthy. The kid had proven to be a chip off the old block. Together, they’d caught enough grouper to fillet for tonight’s dinner and thrown back more fish than Luke could count. Gramps would definitely be proud of his great-grandson.
They sat now on the edge of the pier, drinking root beer and sweating through the mid-day August heat like a couple of regular guys. Luke discovered that Cameron and his best friend, Henry Donalan, had both just made the cut to join a highly competitive traveling soccer team.
“Sounds like fun,” Luke said. “I used to play soccer when I was a kid.”
“Yeah?” Cameron finished off his soda then laid the empty bottle between them.
“Sure. And baseball and football. Like your dad, I played all the sports.”
“You and Dad were in the same class, right?”
“Yep,” Luke said, hoping that Cameron didn’t want to delve too deeply into that subject. Zeke Grant had been a brilliant baseball player in high school, but he’d also been a mediocre student and a well-known pothead. He’d been the last guy at Whispering Bay High Luke would have wanted for his sister. That had all changed, of course, but it didn’t alter the fact that he and Zeke hadn’t exactly been high school chums.
“My dad was a badass,” Cameron said.
Luke choose his words carefully. “Oh, yeah? How so?”
“I know he used to cut class and broke a lot of rules and rode a motorcycle.”
That ain’t the half of it, kid. Luke grinned. “That was your dad.”
“What were you like when you were a kid? Mom says you were always the best at whatever you did.”
Luke finished off his soda and neatly laid his bottle alongside Cameron’s. “I always tried my best. Everyone should.”
“Yeah, but I bet Grandma really rode your butt. Didn’t she?”
Luke couldn’t help but laugh at Cameron’s spot-on assessment. “That she did, Little Man.”
Cameron beamed up at him. Little Man was the nickname Luke had given his nephew at birth. When was the last time he’d used it? And when was the last time the two of them had spent a day together, just hanging out? He’d taken his nephew to a Braves baseball game, but that had to be at least a few summers ago.
