“Not just for that, but I’m starving, and I want to check on the girls. What did you feed them?”
“Pizza and a fruit salad. I called Momma and asked what I could do to make something healthy-ish to go with pizza, and she said to look for fruit cocktail or something.”
He snorted. “So you made fruit salad?”
“Yeah, you had some coconut flakes and some little marshmallows. So just a few of those, and they thought it was dessert.”
Mitch rolled his eyes. “Beginner’s luck.”
“God, yes.” Cam brought him the brace. “Thank God for your Bekka. She got them all bathed and in jammies while I went out and fed and all.”
He let Cam help him into the brace, even if it rankled. “What happened to the dog?”
“I got the vet out. She went to school with someone… Diana maybe.” Cam got him up and moving. “He had a wound on his side, and he was scared to death. She gave me some stress stuff for him, and treated the cut.”
“So he’s still here?” Mitch frowned, but it was dear to get the vet out. He guessed anyway.
“Yeah, he’s not mean. He’s just scared. He doesn’t know what to do, but he’ll be fine. Rosie’s a good dog.”
He stopped short on the way into the bathroom, blinking. “You didn’t let them name it?—”
“He was named before I ever showed up.” Cam blinked at him, obviously confused.
“The girls know if we name it, we keep it.” Oh, those little nerds.
He went to pee, shaking his head as he tried to figure out how they were going to get rid of this dog.
Except he knew they weren’t going to get rid of this dog. He was going to end up with this dog, which wasn’t a bad deal except that he didn’t need a big dog right now and he didn’t need the trouble of a big dog he didn’t know.
But it wasn’t as if he could go “Okay, look, girls, I’m going to get you another dog and we’ll get rid of the current dog,” because that wasn’t how it worked with animals, and he spent his entire dad life going “You can’t replace one animal for another”.
Now he had a dog.
Fuck him sideways.
Mitch did his business and got himself cleaned up, then he headed out to find Cam still standing there with his teeth in his mouth like he just could not figure this out.
“Okay, so I got questions about this whole dog situation.”
He wasn’t sure if Cam was allowed to have questions.
He wasn’t sure Cam was allowed to be here in his house asking questions.
He wasn’t sure it was allowed because the man was a motherfucker and had called him a fuddy-duddy.
Which okay, he’d ended up getting married to a girl and having this terribly normal life and then losing said girl to a blood clot and now he had three daughters and a tiny ranch that he roofed to support, but that had nothing to do with anything. “Like what?”
“You said, they name it, they get to keep it. Wouldn’t they get to just name anything randomly they brought home? Yo, Daddy, here’s an alpaca, I named him Frank. Oh, Daddy, here’s a giant tarantula-skunk hybrid, I named him Bernie. Look, Daddy, here’s a rattlesnake, I named him Bob. Hey, Daddy, I found this badger in the middle of the road, his name is Harry. Is that not how this works?”
“No.” No, that wasn’t how it worked. That would be too silly. “Of course that isn’t how it works. You have to say the name too.”
“Pardon me?”
“If I don’t repeat the name back or another adult does not repeat the name back, then it doesn’t count. You have to have an adult’s verbal stamp of name approval. Also, why are all the animals boys?”
“Because your daughter named a huge male Rottweiler Rosie. Also, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He arched one eyebrow and leaned against the wall so it would support him. “Dumber than coming up with a giant tarantula-skunk creature and not only not calling it a tarantukunk, but not having that be your climax? Seriously, Sarah could totally teach you a thing or two.”
