Page 86 of Clara Knows Best

“Oh, great. I was thinking I’d have to go buy those on my lunch break.”

“She said they know the dog’s owner, a neighbor of theirs. She called him up. Guy’s willing to pay to have the dog euthanized,but otherwise doesn’t want anything to do with it. Said it must have found a hole in the fence.”

“So, I can keep her?” Clara asked in surprise.

He stared at her. “Do you want her?”

“Yeah,” she realized. “Yes. What’s her name?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I’ll think of a good one. Oh, my gosh, Anthropologie has the cutest dog collars,” she remembered suddenly, turning to her computer. “I’ll get her a pink one.”

“Might want to wait and see if she comes out of surgery.”

“No way, I’m manifesting it,” she answered.

“In that case, guess I better ride fence. Been awhile since we had a dog.”

She looked up with a smile. “Thanks, Dad.” He looked so dependable and lovable, she thought, standing there next to the big crate. She had a sudden thought. “Did you watch the security footage from out there, around six o’clock last night?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t,” she advised.

He sighed faintly.

She grinned at what constituted a fairly dramatic reaction from him. “Don’t sigh at me. You’re lucky to have me, you know. I could have been another Hart.”

“Hart’s all right.”

She laughed, and he cracked a brief smile. There was probably no one on earth who could improve her mood like this guy could.

Well, the guy in surgery was pretty good at it, too.

“Jesse’s been in there almost an hour. I wish I knew how it was going.”

“Sometimes no news is good news,” the Colonel said.

31

In slow motion and with painstaking care, Jesse placed his bandaged, unconscious patient in the large crate that had appeared out of nowhere and arranged her broken leg beside her. Then he latched the door and straightened, stretching stiff back muscles and working his sprained shoulder as he looked down at his work.

It was only then that he noticed his foster mother. She was sitting on the little round stool beside the counter and looking quite at home, though he didn’t remember seeing her come in. Her walker stood against the wall near the door.

“How long have you been here?” he asked curiously.

Dr. Wilder smiled while Yoli sputtered in disbelief. “She’s been handing you instruments for half an hour! Y’all discussed the Fallopian tubeat length.”

Well, he stayed in the zone when he was operating, so hearing that didn’t surprise him. “You shouldn’t have told Clara that I’m a miracle worker.”

“I think maybe you are,” Dr. Wilder replied. “That was worlds better than I could have done.”

“That dog is going to die,” he said flatly.And Clara’s going to blame me.

She was smiling again. “I don’t think so.”

He rubbed the back of his neck wearily, and as he looked at her he remembered the first time he’d ever seen her. She’d been somewhere around forty, a working professional with unlimited interest in her four children, and so much energy and love to spare that she’d turned her hand to raising other people’s kids, too. And she’d been lovely, so lovely, with a barrette in her shoulder-length dark hair, pretty, conservative clothing and short, polished fingernails. He hadn’t known mothers could be like that outside of TV sitcoms. As the son of a heroin addict, just looking at Grace Wilder had been a form of therapy. He’d worshiped her from Day One.

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