Page 21 of 25 Alive

I keyed open our apartment’s front door with those visions in mind, but they didn’t exist in real life. There were no welcoming yaps, no out-of-control laughter from Julie. But Joe was there. He had beaten me home and was stowing the piece he used in his FBI work in the gun cabinet. He took mine, too, put it on a shelf, and locked the door.

“Talk to me, Blondie,” he said, hugging and kissing me so that I couldn’t talk at all. I loved being manhandled by this particular man.

“You talk first,” I said when I was free. “Tell me a joke. Or a shaggy dog story.”

He let loose with a long rolling laugh that was rare and welcome. We walked into the main room that squared the corner of our spare but comfortable apartment. I dropped into my Mom’s easy chair, and once I’d toed off my shoes, I looked over to Joe, who’d dropped into the chair we called Dad’s.

I couldn’t put it off another second. “What news of Martha?”

“I got a call from Dr. Clayton,” he began.

Our front door swung open and a voice I loved called out, “Anyone home?”

I answered, “Glori-ahh. We’re both in here!”

Julie, who never walks when she can run, galloped toward my voice and flung herself across my lap. I had my arms around her when I looked again at Joe, this time with a question in my eyes.

Mrs. Rose read the room, noted the tension, and said, “Well, I’ll be going. Call if you need me,” and turned back toward the front door.

I got out from under Julie and walked Mrs. Rose to the door. Joe called out, “See you in the morning, Gloria!”

She called back, “I’ll be at your door.”

Julie yelled out, “Bye!” as I reached our good friend. I hugged Gloria and asked her how she was doing.

“I’m fine, Lindsay. But you. You need some sleep.”

“I should be in bed in an hour or less.”

“Good. Me too.”

We laughed, hugged again, and I locked the door behind her.

When I rejoined the family group, Joe was saying to Julie, “Sweetie, Dr. Clayton must do some surgery on Martha. I know you have questions, a million of them, but we won’t know anything else until Martha’s doctor has answers.”

Julie couldn’t take that for an answer.

“What’d she say? What, Daddy? What?”

Joe sighed and after a moment said, “Martha has some little, uh, bumps on her spine.”

That sounded to me like tumors. Julie wanted to know what Dad meant, and I wanted to stop her from crying out, but I, too, wanted to know more.

“It’s operable,” Joe said, looking at me. To Julie, he said, “The doctor’s going to remove the bumps and send them to a lab to look at under a microscope. Martha will have to stay with Dr. Clayton for a little while longer to heal.”

“No, no, no. Martha is going to be hurt.”

“A little bit, but she will be in a nice dreamy sleep during the operation, honey. When she wakes up tomorrow, we’ll go see her if the doctor says we can, but we don’t want her to bust her stitches. Okay?”

Julie wasn’t buying much of this. She protested loudly, skated around the room on her socked feet, and pumped her clenched fists against her hips. Joe caved. He called Dr. Clayton’s office and asked the vet tech on duty if we could bring over a toy for Martha.

“We can be there in twenty minutes. Thank you very much.” Joe hung up the call and said to me, “I’ll take Julie. Okay? Let’s see a show of hands.”

“Okay, Jules?” I asked my daughter.

She ran into her room and returned seconds later withMrs. Mooey Milkington in her arms. Julie told her stuffed toy, “You’re so lucky you get to spend the night with Martha.”

Aw, Jeez. Two full-grown adults and a little girl all snuffling and wiping away tears with our sleeves.

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