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“I tried.” Her hands were stained with dirt, her nails torn, her face streaked with sweat. Amazingly, she was more beautiful than ever. “We have to do something. They probably haven’t eaten. They could be starving.”
Daniel strained to move the logs, but she was right. Time and the elements had turned the mud between the logs into mortar, creating a perfect home for rabbits and other wild things.
Meanwhile, Tasha hadn’t wasted any time grabbing the shovel and climbing over the tangle of rotting wood to start digging. He recognized a spark in her that reminded him of his mother—that selflessness, that willingness to run as fast and as far as she could for some poor, trapped animals. Their cries had brought tears to her eyes.
He wanted to take the shovel from her, but Tasha’s generosity wasn’t the only thing he identified. His mother had never been afraid of hard work. She’d never categorized tasks as men’s work versus women’s work. She’d always expected everyone to pitch in, whether they were cleaning toilets, cooking dinner, or chopping wood.
Bumps. The word came at him, a word he’d been deliberately ignoring since yesterday’s conversation with his mother. Every relationship has its bumps, even if no one but the couple ever knows about them.
Daniel shook his mother’s words out of his head—he didn’t have time to start analyzing her strange comments again. Not now. The important thing was helping Tasha rescue the puppies.
He moved to the other side of the logs, taking the towels with him. “I’ll stand over here in case they hear the noise and get scared enough to run out this way.” He wanted to do the digging for her, but she was so intense, so fierce, he realized she needed to do it herself.
“Good idea,” Tasha said, slamming the spade into the earth. “I wonder if they were abandoned by their owners. Or brought up here from the city and dumped.”
“Who would do that?” Daniel asked, even though he knew full well how evil people could be. “Drop off puppies in the wilderness just because you don’t want to take them to an animal shelter?”
The look she leveled on him was pained. “People can be thoughtless and cruel.” She turned back to dig with renewed vigor, until she finally said, “I think I’ve got it!” The hole was now wide enough for her to lie on the ground and wriggle her arm and most of her torso inside. “I can see the light shining through,” she called to him. “Can you reach them?”
“They’re coming back your way.” His voice echoed between them over the puppies’ increasingly frantic mewls.
“Okay, I can just about reach one of them.” Her side of the hole darkened. “Yes, yes, I’ve got him!” Triumph sparkled through her voice.
Daniel reached for another that had
been backing away from Tasha’s questing hand, locked onto its soft scruff, and pulled it out. The poor little mite cried, but didn’t squirm, as though it didn’t have enough energy to put up a fight. “I’ve got another one,” he called to her over the tangle of logs.
“They’re so skinny. And weak. And cold.” She sounded utterly heartbroken as she curled the towel around the small, shivering bundle in her arms.
“Take this one too, and I’ll try to get the last one out.”
She carefully bundled both puppies together in the towel, holding them against her chest. “It’s okay, little ones,” she crooned. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll take care of you. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
She hadn’t wanted his tools or his help to fix her house, but she was willing to beg him to save these poor little puppies. Put some helpless animals in front of her, and she threw everything aside to rescue them.
He squirmed as far into the hole as he could, but the last puppy backed in the opposite direction, terrified of the big intruder. “I can’t do it without you,” he called through the hole.
“Let me set these two little ones down. I don’t think they’re going to run away. They seem too exhausted.”
A moment later, her flashlight beamed against the dirt walls and floated across the tiny body huddled between them. It cried in terror, backing away from Tasha’s searching fingers…and right into Daniel’s waiting grip.
He dug into the scruff and pulled the little guy out. “Got it.”
“Let’s make a burrito-style wrap for them,” Tasha suggested. With the dogs safely wrapped, she cuddled them close. “Look at them. They can’t stop trembling.”
She swiped at her face, and Daniel realized it wasn’t dirt she was wiping away but tears. Her mouth wobbly, she looked at him with damp, brilliantly blue eyes.
“Thank you. I couldn’t have gotten them out on my own. They might have died in there.”
“They’re going to be fine.” He touched her cheek, drying the last streak of a tear, his heart feeling too big in his chest as he gazed down at her. “And you don’t need to thank me. We work well together.”
She nodded, then leaned into him for a brief second. “Everything’s going to be okay now,” she whispered.
He couldn’t help but wonder—was she talking to the puppies?
Or was she trying to convince herself that everything was going to be okay in her life too?
* * *
