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Just then, my flip phone rings.
I dig it out from under a stack of newspapers. “Hey, Momma.”
The woman’s voice on the other end sounds concerned. “Checking on my girl. Everything good? You need anything?”
“Momma, I love you, but you’re in Corpus Christi. What would you do if I did need something?”
“Well, I just want to make sure you’re OK, money-wise. Just want to make sure you don’t want to hang on to your day job.”
I smile. “But if I keep waiting tables, I won’t have enough time to get this place to where I want it.”
“You could hire help? I hate seeing you do this all by yourself.”
“If I hired help, then I wouldn’t have enough money to fix up the house, install a new fence…do you see where this is going?”
Momma sighs.
The pack of canines focused on the activity on the road only gets feistier and louder as the creator of that plume of dust approaches the gate to the driveway in a shiny red, late-model Chevy pickup. My stomach relaxes. It’s not the puppy mill dudes.
Fancy truck, I think.
“Molly, darlin’, do you have a five-year plan? Ten-year plan?”
I don’t, but I make one up on the fly to calm Momma’s nerves. “Five-year plan: to have a fancy permanent sign out by the road that says ‘Molly’s Canine Daycare and Sanctuary.’ Ten years? I don’t know. Hopefully all of Texas will have their pets neutered by then and I can remove the ‘Sanctuary’ part.”
“That’s not much of a business plan.”
I’m not gonna lie; that hurts.
“Well, it’s true that I’m no pink-Cadillac-driving, executive grand poobah for a cosmetic pyramid scheme. But MeMaw believed in me, or why’d she give me her land when she died?”
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nbsp; My mother clucks her tongue at me. “It’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s called a Christian multi-level marketing company. And it paid for your braces, missy.”
She has a point.
The fancy truck comes to a stop at the gate and the furry, smaller monsters are about to lose their damn minds, barking their fool heads off. It’s Terrence the boarding dachshund’s fault. He’s always starting shit.
“OK, Momma, sorry.”
“Apology accepted. I worry about you being so alone. You have protection, though, don’t you?”
I smile. “Condoms? No. You never did explain those things to me…”
She gasps, “Molly Chambers!”
“Love you; gotta go.” You must admit, she walked right into that one.
I hang up and silence my cheap flip phone, shoving it back under my stack of newspapers.
I maybe take longer than necessary to stand up and greet our visitor. But the driver who exits the truck while waiting on me looks like he has a strong back; he can wait.
I continue to size him up. Could be a potential new client looking for doggy daycare, or it could be someone with very bad news. The bad news could be anything from a county official delivering a noise complaint, or it could be someone with a rambunctious husky that was too cute as a puppy but who made the mistake of growing up into being a less-cute escape artist.
I sit tight and sip my coffee and keep humming my music.
The driver shuts his door and I get a better look. No dogs follow him out, which disappoints me. From this angle, he looks like a tall, well-built fella, though he’s dressed somewhat nerdy in Dockers and a golf shirt.
