Honny
Everybody owes me a Coke.
Mom
I didn’t know that Cherry was on this thread, but God’s hand is in all things! Cherry, you should know that we all love you and that we’re praying for you! And we love Tom, too! He’ll always be part of our family!!
Honny
I still can’t believe you got yourself a boyfriend, and you didn’t tell anybody.
Hope
I can.
Chapter 20
Cherry spent almost the whole weekend with Russ.
She slept over at his house for the first time on Saturday night. Then she came home to spend time with Stevie, and went right back to Russ’s and slept over again. She was glad to be away from her house. It was just toomuch.
Stevie didn’t run to say hello when Cherry got home from work on Monday night. Tom must have worn her out. It was a relief that he was walking the dog on weekdays. Cherry hated having to walk Stevie in the dark after work.
Cherry kicked off her shoes and took her takeout into the kitchen. Chicken soup, from a homestyle restaurant downtown. She’d ordered enough to have the leftovers tomorrow night. That counted as meal-planning for Cherry. She almost never had food in the fridge.
She’d cooked all the time with Tom, but it never seemed worth cooking—or shopping—just for herself. She was lucky her office building had a nice cafeteria.
Cherry decided to change out of her work clothes before she ate. She headed up the stairs. As she turned the corner, she ran into Tom coming down the other way.
Cherry jumped and yelped.
“Sorry!” Tom held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was.” Stevie was behind him on the stairs. She started barking and getting excited. She knocked into Tom, and he fell forward a little into Cherry.
Cherry stepped back. “It’s okay. You just startled me.”
Stevie squeezed through Tom’s legs and tried to squeeze through Cherry’s. Cherry wobbled. She pushed Stevie aside. “I can’t believe you got her to come all the way down the stairs...”
Normally Stevie would goupstairs, but would then be too afraid to come down. Even the two stairs on the front porch were a problem.
“We’ve been practicing on the basement steps,” Tom said. “Every time I went down there to work, she’d sit at the top and whine.”
Cherry let Stevie herd her backwards, down to the foyer. “Look at you, Stevie. I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be too impressed,” Tom said. “She’s still afraid of water.”
It was an ongoing joke between them that Stevie’s Great Pyrenees and Newfoundland genes canceled each other out—that she’d be a terrible mountain doganda terrible water dog.
Stevie jumped up onto Cherry, and Cherry ruffled the fur at her neck. “Aw... what good are you? You’ll never save a toddler drowning in the Seine.”
Stevie kept charging forward. Cherry stumbled back. “Okay, enough,” Cherry said. “Down.” She pushed Stevie’s paws away. “Down, Stevie!”
“Off,?” Tom said in a commanding voice.
Stevie dropped down immediately.
“Wow.” Cherry looked up at him, surprised. “She really listens to you.”
Tom was dismissive. “She just doesn’t know those other words. I taught her ‘off.’?”
