Page 14 of Snowed in at Santa's Lodge
“The chains are good, and I’m going slow. And, yeah, it does take some getting used to, I suppose. When I was a kid, I loved it, it meant I got to spend more time with my grandfather.”
“He sounds like he was a pretty awesome guy.”
“He was. He was the best.”
When we reached the actual town area, the roads were a little bit better, which meant that we were able to get a decent parking spot, my only real worry about the trip. There was only street parking and, when roads weren’t plowed, that didn’t exist.
I helped Aspen out of the truck and took his hand. “Is this okay?”
“Very.”
I gave it a squeeze, and we walked inside, each of us grabbing a basket.
“Anything you want that I don’t have, grab it.”
“Okay,” he said. But we went through the entire produce aisle, and he selected nothing. And then we went to the deli and the same thing.
“Please put something in the baskets. It’ll make me feel better.”
He looked me in the eye, holding my gaze for a solid half minute before saying, “I think I’m gonna go get some turkey from the deli.”
I don’t know what he saw in my eyes, but whatever it was, he was now putting items inside his basket to the point where we almost needed to get a third one.
Groceries acquired, along with a pack of light bulbs that worked in the pantry and nowhere else in the house, and we loaded everything into the truck.
“Did you hear that?” Aspen asked.
I listened. There was the crunching of snow, a car pulling up beside us, the door opening, and someone coming out with their groceries.
“Meh, nothing unusual.”
“I don’t think so. I think it came from back there.”
And before I could ask for clarification, he was already walking around the side of the building. I followed him and caught up to him just as he squatted down.
“What do you see?”
“There’s a puppy here.” He scooped him up and said, “I don’t feel good leaving him here. Let’s see if he has a collar.”
He didn’t.
“Maybe he has one of those microchips,” Aspen offered.
“Not likely around here. They’d be helpful, but I doubt that the eighty-year-old vet in town has invested in that kind of technology.”
We went back in the general store and asked if anybody recognized the puppy. No one did. And we did the same thing at the diner and at the gas station.
“We can’t leave him here.” Aspen had him snuggled in close.
“I agree.”
We went back to the general store and bought every single kind of dog-related item there was. We had snacks, we had food, we had a collar, a leash, and toys… Oh, so many toys. They even had a book on how to care for a puppy. It looked like it was geared to children, but my knowledge about dogs was equivalent to what a small child might have. But they were cute and fun, and that was it, so the book was perfect for me.
We talked about checking online to see if anybody reported him missing, but from the looks of it, he’d been dumped.
“Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have pets,” Aspen grumbled under his breath and I couldn’t agree with him more.
“What do you think we should name him?”
