“Don’t be silly. I’m happy to help. It’s just as well I didn’t bring Toto with me. He’s such a bouncy puppy that he’d be covered in sparkles, too.”
“You have a puppy?” Jack looked at Shelley with eyes that were as wide as saucers.
Shelley nodded. “We picked him up from the animal shelter last weekend. The first person we introduced him to was Paris.”
“I was wearing my Dorothy costume from The Wizard of Oz, and he loved it. That’s when Pastor John and Shelley decided to call him Toto.”
Jack ran to the doorway and looked down the corridor. “Can I see him?”
Shelley glanced at Richard before replying. As soon as he nodded, she handed Paris the vacuum cleaner. “It’s all yours. I have another introduction to do.”
Jack looked at his dad. “Do you want to come?”
“I’ll join you after I’ve helped Paris clean the rest of the room.”
She opened her mouth to say he didn’t need to do that, but Shelley spoke first.
“What a good idea.” She rested her arm across Jack’s shoulders. “I hope you like wiggly puppies?”
“I love all kinds of puppies.”
His wistful reply made Paris smile. If his reaction to Toto was as besotted as hers, he wouldn’t want to leave Shelley’s office.
After Jack and Shelley left, Richard put away the chair they’d used. “On a scale of one to ten, how cute is Toto?”
Paris rolled a plastic tablecloth into a ball. “If ten is as cute as apple pie, he’s a twenty.”
Richard was worried she’d say that. “I promised Jack we’d get a kitten after we move into our new house, but he really wants a puppy.”
“He might change his mind when he sees a kitten he likes.”
“I hope so, but he grew up with my parents’ dog. Marley never left Jack’s side.”
“That sounds like a wonderful friendship. How long did you and Jack live with your parents?”
He glanced at Paris before throwing some green foliage in the garbage bag. It was the type of question most people would ask, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable answering it. “Jack lived with my parents for ten months before I came home from my last tour of duty. We stayed with them for a couple of years after that. Dad died last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer in January. By then, it was too late for treatment. He died peacefully in the local hospice a few months later.”
“That must have been hard.”
Richard swallowed the knot of grief in his throat. “It was. I don’t know how Mom coped with everything, but she did.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
His eyebrows rose. “You mean all the other questions weren’t personal?”
“I’m not that bad,” she muttered.
She looked so worried that he smiled. “It’s just as well I’m used to your inquisitive mind. Ask me anything. If I don’t want to answer, I’ll tell you.”
“Other than what you’ve told me about your parents, you don’t talk about your life before you came to Sapphire Bay. Why?”
He picked up the vacuum cleaner. “Because it isn’t interesting.”
“It might be.” Paris frowned. “How long were you in the army?”
