“Hi, Mom. You doing any better?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet. “Sorry about yesterday.”
I wanted to ask her about yesterday, press her about what “bad days” meant to her, but now didn’t really feel like the time. Much better to have that conversation face-to-face.
“You don’t have to apologize,” I told her. “I know how stressed you’ve been about me being out here.”
“When did you want us to visit?” Dad asked.
“Ella and I put the first coat of paint on a spare bedroom for you earlier. I just need another day or two to get that finished and a few more for the furniture to arrive. Did you want to plan for ten days from now?”
“We can do that,” Dad said. “Oh, hey, we finally chose a new staff writer for the website.”
“Nice. Who’d you decide on?”
“Veronica O’Leary. She’s the woman with the ex-army husband who has TBI from his time in Afghanistan.”
“She sounds like the perfect fit. Someone who gets it.”
“She is,” Mom chimed in. “And she does.”
Combat soldiers were right up there with football players when it came to brain injury rates. My parents and I planned to expand the non-profit’s website and publish our own articles about the emerging studies on TBI and CTE, and Mom and Dad had been spearheading the hiring of staff while I’d been out here. They asked me to weigh in on some big decisions, but mostly they handled it themselves.
We spent the next thirty minutes talking about plans for the website, shooting another PSA, and the lawsuit against the USFL. Our lawyers had filed an injunction against the league’s Commissioner for his Twitter rant, and, thankfully, the judge granted it. Mom, anunforgiving edge to her tone, voiced the hope that in his hubris, the Commissioner would ignore the injunction and get fined, and/or imprisoned, and/or charged with contempt of court.
I sympathized with her. The man was a monumental jackass. He sided with the conservative team owners and the corporate sponsors, always, more their crony than a functioning figurehead. It was obvious what dictated his decisions: greed. The league would lose a lot of money if the courts decided in the favor of the players, which meant that he would lose money. Or get fired. Personally, I hoped he got the axe long before we went to trial. God knew he deserved it.
By the time I got off the phone, the puppies were up and bumbling around the living room, batting at toys, playing tug of rope with each other, and generally being tiny puffs of trouble. It had been a while since they’d gone out, so I pushed up from the couch and coaxed them toward the front door.
I bundled up and then cracked it open. Boots took two steps toward it, got hit in the face with an arctic blast of wind that blew his ears back, and then turned around and took off at full speed back into the house, his little body projecting an almost audible stream of, “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”
Doodle was a little braver. He got to the threshold, stepped his front two paws down onto the porch, and then immediately tried to reverse, crying pitifully when he couldn’t pull himself back up the step. I scooped him up, set him inside, and closed the door against the wind. He walked over to the nearby puppy pad, squatted down, and peed on it.
“Totally get it, little dude,” I told him. I wouldn’t want to piss out there either.
My phone dinged from inside my pocket. I pulled it out to see a text from Ella.
Puppy pictures. Need them. Already going through withdrawal over here.
I grinned.What’ll you give me in return?
We’re bartering now? Okay, how about more cribbage lessons so you stop being such an epic loser?
We played best out of three the other day. I’d been blessed with the skunkarooney dance again. One of these days, I needed to stealth record her doing it. The blackmail potential was off the charts.
Hmmm. What else you got?I texted back.
She sent me a picture of Fred and Sam, passed out on her living room floor. From the looks of it, Jack had managed to wear them out. Only a couple of days had passed since I’d seen them, but I missed those hyperactive weirdos. The puppies were adorable, but their personalities hadn’t fully developed yet. Fred and Sam had their own presences. I couldn’t wait to see how they interacted with Boots and Doodle. Ella told me they were even more puppy obsessed than we were, but I found that hard to believe.
Fair trade,I texted back.Hang on a sec. I have to get them in the same room.
I scooped Doodle up from where he was chewing on the laces of my discarded boots, then went to find his brother. Boots was in the kitchen, his paws up on the trashcan like he was going to knock it over for the second time today.
“Come here, trouble,” I said, hefting him. He let out a whine and craned his head around to look at the trashcan in open longing.
I brought them into the living room, set them on the blanket by the fire, and took their picture. They looked like they were smiling at the camera. I sent it to Ella.
I JUST WANT TO SQUEEZE THEM,she texted back.
