talking,” Luke said quietly. “And it seemed to me he’d kinda like to have a dog.”
“Dogs are a lot of responsibility.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And they cost money to keep.”
“They do. But we have a couple of them at the shelter who need homes. Little ones. They don’t eat much.”
“Kids want a lot of things they can’t have.”
Yeah. They did. Luke knew all about that firsthand.
“There is a fifty-dollar adoption fee,” Luke said. “But I think we could work on that.”
“No need. If I decide he can have a dog, I’ll pay the money.” Then she looked at Todd and sighed. “I keep thinking he’ll forget about it. Maybe not want one so much.”
Luke shrugged. “Maybe he will. But if you ever decide it’s time to get one…well, you know where the shelter is.”
He thanked Myrna once again for the Gatorade, then said good-bye to Todd. As he was putting the supplies back in his truck, he wondered where the boy’s mother and father were, and how either of them could have left a kid like Todd the way they had. Thank God for Myrna. It wouldn’t be easy for Todd, but if he had at least one person in this world who loved him, he was going to be just fine.
As he pulled away, Myrna looked at the wall, then back at Luke. Then she raised her hand and waved good-bye before hobbling back into the store.
Late that afternoon, Shannon was leaving the office through the back door and passed the laundry room. Luke’s laundry basket was sitting on top of the dryer. She noticed a pair of his jeans in it, and those jeans had a smear of paint on them.
She stopped and stared at that paint for a long time, slowly putting two and two together. She’d been by the Pic ’N Go earlier. The graffiti on the side wall had been painted over. The paint on Luke’s jeans was precisely the same color of beige that was on that wall now. And what had he asked her earlier?
Do you mind if I borrow that ladder in the equipment shed?
When it finally struck her what he must have done, she was shocked. As far as she knew, Myrna didn’t like Luke in the least, yet he’d taken the time and trouble to paint over the graffiti on the side of her building? Shannon didn’t know what was going on, but it made little tingles of awareness flow through her, giving her the most amazing feeling of delighted disbelief.
First Manny, and now this. Luke had professed to have no heart. If that were true, it was only because he’d given it away, one piece at a time.
With Shannon’s blessing, over the next few weeks Luke did everything he could to get the animals adopted. When a woman came in with her six-year-old daughter one afternoon to adopt a kitten, he told them they were in luck. Three to four o’clock on Thursdays was Kitten Happy Hour—two for the price of one—and the kid ended up going home with a pair of litter mates. With kittens, sending two home together was the best situation of all. They would keep each other company when the family was at work or school, and two weren’t much more effort to keep than one. Yeah, the shelter got only half the adoption fee, which distressed Shannon a little, until Luke pointed out that one less mouth to feed meant less money seeping out of the bank account. And—amazingly enough—whenever somebody came to adopt a kitten, it just happened to be Kitten Happy Hour.
A lot of the time, Luke made things up—harmless things, like telling a kid he got the feeling a particular dog might have been in the circus at one point because he could roll over on command, even though he’d taught the dog the trick himself. People lapped it up, though, and pretty soon Circus Dog had a new home. But there was one very special dog Luke had a plan for, and he decided it was time to put it into action.
On his lunch hour, he grabbed Barney and headed for the Pic ’N Go. When he got there, he went inside, Barney limping along behind him on three legs. One of Myrna’s employees was manning the counter, a tall, gangly teenage kid. He rang up a couple of hot dogs for Luke.