Mom Over Miami Part 2

The dog pressed her entire lean muscled body against the sliding gla.s.s window. She gave out a mournful high-pitched whine begging to be let inside, and Stilton-who probably thought this qualified as helping-obliged.

Every other boy in the living room leapt up, bowls of food held above their heads.

Over the uproar, Aunt Phiz shouted, "What's that, dear? I didn't catch you at a bad time, did I?"

Hannah considered using the receiver like a hammer and pounding it against her forehead; instead, she trapped it between her head and shoulder and got to work. First, she kicked the fridge door open with the toe of her shoe, then kept it from closing again with a well-timed swing of her hip. "I have Sam's soccer team here, and Tessa seems to be getting a cold and I need to take her a juice bottle."

"Then take me along with you. I a.s.sume you're on a cordless?"

Hannah pushed aside juice boxes and milk jugs to retrieve the prepared bottle. "Yes, I'm on the cordless but..."

"Good. I'll tag along and goo for the baby in Cantonese. The tour group is celebrating our departure for India tonight, and I don't know when I'll get near a phone again."

Hannah sighed and braced the phone wedged against her shoulder in place with her "free" hand. "If there's a celebration, maybe you should get back to it, Aunt Phiz."

She could just picture the tall, robust woman leading a wildly energetic dragon dance-the locals laughing and chanting as they wound this way and that behind her. "Hey, that could work."

"Of course it will work, just take the phone with you and-"

"Grab your nachos with both hands, boys, and get in line. We're snake-dancing all the way to the baby's room."

Even as the boys hurried to get a spot in line and still keep their bowls above greyhound-head height, someone called, "We never do stuff like this at my my mama's house," mama's house,"

"I told you before, this is not your mama's house."

"Nacho Mama's house!" The boys laughed and wriggled behind her down the hallway.

Aunt Phiz gave a quick rundown of the time she expected to arrive in Cincinnati two weeks hence.

Hannah made it to the crib. She scooped her daughter up. Somehow she managed to cradle the phone against the child's ear while getting the bottle into Tessa's mouth and and steering the soccer team back into the hallway with only a couple chip spills-which Squirrel happily lapped up. steering the soccer team back into the hallway with only a couple chip spills-which Squirrel happily lapped up.

Everyone was being fed.

Everyone was happy.

Hannah sighed. Maybe she was getting a handle on this motherhood thing after all.

"Oops!" The phone slid out from under Tessa's warm pink cheek.

Aunt Phiz, her unfamiliar dialect sounding to Hannah like a cartoon watch spring breaking, kept right on babbling in Cantonese baby talk.

Hannah came to a full stop to catch the phone. Only after she did that did she realize the consequences.

Th-whap!

Thud.

Crunch.

"Ouch."

Then a momentary silence before: "Hey, the dog is licking the back of my head."

"That's because it's got cheese on it."

"Cheesehead! Cheesehead!"

"Boys, boys!" Hannah spun around to find melted cheese product stuck in hair, all over s.h.i.+rts and even on the dog. Crushed chips littered the floor. One kid had stepped in his dropped bowl and had it stuck to his shoe.

Unsure which disaster to tackle first, Hannah ordered, "n.o.body move!"

Tessa heaved the bottle to the floor.

Squirrel cowered.

"Okay, change of plan. Move Move. Everybody into the kitchen!"

The boys started to do as she said, but about that time the dog, who was crouching at the back of the line, noticed the bounty of chips on the plastic floor covering. Just as the group did as Hannah had asked, sixty-two pounds of long, strong, determined greyhound decided to begin belly-walking between the boys' feet.

The few bowls that had not fallen to the floor were goners, and so were the boys holding those bowls.

Down in a pile they all went like...like...like a load of broken chips poured from G.o.d's greatest corn chip bag.

Hannah groaned.

Then the doorbell rang.

"Oh, great." She checked the clock. Still too early for parental pickups.

At least that that was on her side. was on her side.

She could deal with the door, get the boys cleaned up, tend to Tessa and pull up the ruined plastic drop cloth before any of the other mothers saw what a big fat failure she was at handling even the most simple of mommy duties.

"Bye, Aunt Phiz, I've got to go," Hannah hollered at the receiver lying on the floor.

Aunt Phiz, never missing a beat, went right on chattering in Chinese.

"Hang that up, Sam," Hannah said as she hoisted Tessa on her hip and headed for the door.

Whatever they were selling or soliciting donations for, she would get rid of the caller, then get this household back under control. She had three years of college journalism under her belt. She had lived with a nutty father in a small-town fishbowl. She had even recently survived discovering that the mother she had lived a lifetime hoping to find had died not long after the family broke up. Hannah had run a rural pediatric clinic. She had overcome disappointment and infertility, begun motherhood at an age when a lot of women were done with that sort of thing, and still managed to meet the standards of the Foster Parent program.

Hannah could handle anything.

She flung open the 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 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."

CHAPTER 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 b.u.t.ton 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 from her." Hannah laughed. "She had a run-in with a skunk." 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 gla.s.s 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 this point, wasn't it?

In her family life and in her relations.h.i.+ps and responsibilities? To simply stand her ground. To simply stand her ground.

And maybe not get skunk smell on her house shoes.

She reined in the dog and smiled at Sam. "Forget the sandwich, honey. Payt went to get the tomato juice so we can bathe the dog in it."

Sam's expression went from worried to bewildered.

"The juice gets the smell out." She struggled to keep Squirrelly still, which was about as easy as trying to hold a kite motionless on a windy day. "Or at least that's what Aunt April said when I called her for advice."

"You're going to give Squirrelly Girl a bath in tomato juice?" tomato juice?"

"We're going to try."

"This I want to see!" I want to see!"

Hannah glanced down at the lean, muscular animal and winced. "Oh, don't worry. I'm counting on you to help."

"I like to help." Sam grinned. "In fact, I wish you'd waked me up so we could have all gone to the grocery store together!"

"I almost did, but then..." But then she'd come to her senses.

They'd chosen Loveland and this particular subdivision in the town for the closeness to schools, shopping and church. They could find all of those things within a few blocks of the house. This helped them "create the ambience of community while still enjoying the larger context of the city setting." At least that's what the Realtor had told them.

And it had sounded grand at the time. After all, Hannah and Payt had grown up in a small town with its own unique "ambience." They had returned to that town for Payt to put in his years as an intern and a resident. They liked community.