Page 28 of Fake It True

She’d gotten it into her head that we needed a pet.

“Why not?” She blinked up at me.

Holy fucking hell. How am I supposed to let her down?

My reasoning behind the dog was that I could be gone for a few weeks at a time when I got called out to fires. My parents made it possible for me to have Dora and keep my job. Considering that this situation had happened on the fly for me, I’d had to just roll with it. I didn’t think I should add the responsibility of a dog to my parents, seeing as they already had an elderly one to care for.

Of course, there was Casey. I wanted to bring Casey more fully into my life. I was ready for her to meet Dora. We’d planned for it to happen this coming weekend at my parents’ house. I knew they would adore her. Who wouldn’t? She was amazing.

“Dad?” Dora prompted, bringing my thoughts back to the moment.

“What about a cat?” I asked, thinking I could handle a cat.

“Yes!” Dora practically shouted.

“Yes, what?”

“I want a cat.”

“Okay, well?—”

Before I could finish, Dora beamed. “Let’s go today!” She turned and raced down the hallway to her bedroom, coming back with her shoes and the small plastic bucket she was referring to as her purse.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The pet place. Tiffany told me about it,” my daughter said, looking at me as if I was slow.

“Ohhhh.” I finally connected the dots.

“Did you meet Tiffany with Grammy?” I asked as Dora put her shoes on.

She’d just learned to tie them last week. The amount of pride I felt at the fact she could do this seemed wildly out of proportion to the task, but I figured that was part of being a dad. Everything she learned to do herself made me so proud.

She was sitting on this little stool my dad had built for her. He’d made it out of a tree trunk, and it was the right height for her. She would get too tall for it, but she loved it. My dad promised to make her a new one when she needed it. She was very focused on her task and stuck her feet out to study the ties before she finally answered my question. “I met Tiffany with Grammy and she said there’s a place where they keep all of the pets who need a home and that I should ask you about it.”

I chuckled. “Of course she did.”

Wes, a fellow hotshot firefighter and friend, helped his mom with the local animal rescue program. Tiffany, his wife, alsohelped out and managed the local vet clinic. She was constantly trying to find people to take animals from the program.

“Here’s the deal,” I began as I looked down at Dora. She put this wallet my mom had gotten her into her bucket. “We’ll go look, but we have to wait to pick up the cat until this weekend if we find one because we need to get some things for it.”

Dora bounced up and down, her bucket swinging in her hand. “Okay!”

As I drove into town a few minutes later, I wanted to stop and see Casey at Firehouse Café, but with Dora with me, I hesitated. We had a plan. We’d gone over it with our therapist. If I stopped by with Dora now, she’d meet Casey and have a million questions when Casey later showed up for dinner.

When we arrived at the rescue program, Wes was there with Tiffany. Tiffany smiled down at Dora. “Hey, girl!”

When Tiffany met my gaze, I prompted, “Cat?”

She grinned. “No dog?”

“Tiffany, you know that having a dog isn’t the greatest option for a hotshot firefighter, especially one who’s a single dad,” I explained, keeping my voice low. Dora had already hurried over to look at the photos of cats eligible for adoption.

“Excellent point,” Wes chimed in, narrowing his eyes at Tiffany. “Not to mention, we usually have more cats than dogs,” he added dryly.

Tiffany laughed as Wes curled his arm around her waist and gave her a quick squeeze before crossing over to open the doorway into the back. “Let’s go meet the cats.”

It took Dora a mere five minutes to declare that we needed to adopt them all, but when I explained that wasn’t an option, she spun in a circle before sitting down beside two cats.

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