Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,6
door. “I’m sorry but…”
The boys crowded forward around her, pressing cheese-smeared hands to the doorjamb and Hannah’s jeans.
Amend that. Hannah could handle anything except…
Stilton slid under her arm and beamed up at her. “When you said you needed divine in-inner…intention, I knew just what to do, Mrs. Bartlett.”
“Why…” Hannah’s shoulders slumped. Her heart sank. The corners of her mouth tightened into a smile as she strained a pleasant tone though clenched teeth, “Thank you, Stilton, but you shouldn’t have. Really.”
“Oh, no trouble,” her guest gushed. “That’s why we got Stilton a cell phone—so he could use it in case of emergency.”
Hannah forced a weak, empty laugh. “Emergency? Oh, this hardly qualifies as an—”
One of the boys shoved the phone toward Hannah.
“I don’t know what this guy’s problem is, Mrs. B.” A man’s voice, probably one of Aunt Phiz’s fellow travelers, blasted out through the receiver a Cantonese cootchie-coo.
The dog rolled over on her back, rubbing greasy orange cheese residue on two boys’ new soccer shoes at once.
And Tessa sneezed, spewing bright red juice directly into the face of none other than Lauren Faison—aka Stilton’s mom.
“Oh, who am I trying to kid?” Hannah motioned the world’s most perfect mom into the chaos of her home and said, “Come on in, and heaven help us all.”
3
Subject: Good News/Bad News
To: ItsmeSadie, WeednReap
CC: Phizziedigs
Hi, there y’all—
The good news: They’ve found our furniture!
The bad news: I think I’ve lost my mind.
What other explanation can there be for Payt and me standing at our back door just after dawn on Saturday, wadding up sliced cold cuts into little ham and salami bombs and lobbing them into the garage to lure Squirrelly Girl in there? You know, that dog might not be quick on the uptake, but as a greyhound she’s not slow. That’s one thing she had over us in our scheme to get her in the garage then hit the door opener—in this case, door closer—and trap her safely inside. We’d no sooner land a lump of deli meat on the garage floor and hit the button when she’d gobble it down, race out to the driveway and look at us standing in the half-open door with an expression on her dopey adorable doggie face that said “Hey, y’all should come out here. It’s raining ham!”
So we’d load up and try again. We must have stayed at it for a good half an hour before we finally left her outside and let the chips—and I don’t mean nachos—fall where they may.
In our defense, it did seem like a really brilliant idea at the time.
—Hannah, skunk-sprayed dog owner
Sam staggered sleepily into the living room and pinched his nose. His voice sounded like a cartoon character with a cold when he asked, “What stinks?”
“The dog.” Hannah held their fawn-colored greyhound’s bright pink leash out as far as her arm would allow. Once they’d cornered Squirrelly Girl they hadn’t dared let her run off and hide—or worse, have another run-in with her new stinky play pal.
The boy grimaced and maneuvered around to keep from getting on the tail end of the beast. “What’ja feed her? Rotten eggs?”
“It’s not coming from her.” Hannah laughed. “She had a run-in with a skunk.”
“A skunk?” He looked around but wisely did not take his fingers from his nose. “Where?”
“It was under the back deck.” She pointed to the ground-level redwood decking jutting out from the sliding glass doors at the back of the living room. “We tried to get the dog into the garage, but—”
Hannah stopped. The kid thought he was living with two bright, capable, clear-thinking individuals at last. Why shake his faith with the retelling of the ham-bomb story?
“But we couldn’t get the dog to stay in the garage, so Payt ran off to the grocery store to get some tomato juice.”
“Huh?”
“Hmm, guess that made about as much sense as saying, ‘I lost my shoe so I ate a sandwich,’ huh?”
“You lost your shoe?” Sam looked down at the fuzzy pink slippers on her feet.
“No, it was a non sequitur.”
“I thought you said it was a sandwich?” He looked decidedly worried.
“No, the sandwich is just a…” She tried to think how to explain the concept in terms Sam would get right away.
Before her brain would engage, though, the dog, spotting the only human in the house likely to be on her side in the whole “what’s a little stink when you’re having fun?” issue, lurched for Sam.
Jerked forward, Hannah fought to stand her ground. That was all she wanted at