Page 6 of Family Bonds- Kelsey & Van

Her cousin left after that. She and her pup went into the house. She set him down and he ran for his bowl. Poor pup was probably hot under the deck and now was draining the water as fast as he could.

She went to her room on the first floor of her house. Frankie couldn’t get up the stairs as she had it blocked off by a gate. She didn’t go up there much either but no reason to have the newest addition to her house making a mess since he liked to explore.

When she was coming out of her room in a blue shirt and another black skirt that was close enough she hoped no one noticed the change, she found the dog still drinking water. At least Frankie was occupied enough that she could wash her foot off better in the bathroom connected to her room.

Next, she wet a washcloth and gave her dog a quick little wipe down, then made a sandwich, ate it while she walked outside to get her shoes and carefully looked on the ground.

After her sandwich was done, she gathered her pup, put his collar on him and clipped the leash, then left to return to the office.

Frankie was always a big hit when she brought him in. Maybe she should just do it every day at this point and someone would watch him while she was out.

She just didn’t want to have to ask her staff to babysit and shouldn’t have to.

She had no one to blame but herself for this mishap.

“There is the little guy,” Kara said when she set the puppy down. Frankie went running to her receptionist, his long copper-colored ears blowing in the wind like a model in front of a fan. No dust or cobwebs in sight. “He’s just so stinking cute.”

“Yeah,” she all but snarled. “Cute.”

“Oh no,” Kara said. “What happened? You changed your shirt.”

Alex was right. She was going to tell everyone what happened because it was too funny not to.

“Well,” she said. “There was this small hole on the side of my deck...”

2

TOUCH OF CRAZY

“Did I hear that correctly?”

Van Harlowe looked over at his supervisor who came to stand next to his desk. He was the only 9-1-1 operator working on Amore Island right now. They had three full-time staff and three part-time that covered the hours of every day.

It was never the job he’d thought he’d have. But then again, he didn’t expect the last year of his life to happen either and was just lucky to be alive.

“What did you hear?” he asked Zac.

“That the call you just had was a puppy under the deck?”

“That was it,” he said. He wouldn’t add that the owner seemed to have a touch of crazy to her personality.

Who the hell named their dog Mr. Franklin? Here he’d thought some elderly man fell through a deck and was stuck and it ended up being a puppy playing games with its owner.

“I get why you wanted a slow life after what happened to you. Not sure if you realized that is how things would be on the island.”

“I had no clue,” he said.

The island being this close to Boston, he thought maybe there’d be a bit more action, but it didn’t appear to be the case in the two months he’d lived here.

Most of the calls he took were car accidents, injuries or calls for EMTs, fires to be reported, which normally were false alarms too.

He wasn’t getting calls for gunshots, murders, or even a lot of domestic disputes.

Granted, he worked the day shift and maybe not that much happened then. Though he’d been told more went on in the height of the tourism, which he was in, being early August. Did that mean in the winter he’d be sitting here twirling his thumbs?

God, he hoped not. Wanting a slower lifestyle and being bored were two different things.

Then he had to remind himself—he didn’t move here forthisjob. He moved here to figure out everything else that changed in his life and that meant a whole new career he could embark on.

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