Something in the way he approached Angel’s afternoon walks made her think he did view her as that unbending. “I’m really sorry, Mom,” he told her after his first week trying to walk Angel with Lola alongside. “I don’t think it’s doing a lot of good. Lola’s so freaking slow, Angel could probably do an army crawl and still keep up.”
The girl was like that on their walk to and from school, too, and it was driving him crazy. They had to leave much earlier than he wanted to in the mornings, and they were getting home so late in the afternoons that it was hard to fit in Angel’s walk and Lola’s homework before Patty rushed the girl home. “I’m going to ask Mrs. Saint to take the dog walking off my list,” he said. “I’ll just do it on my own after dinner every night.”
But the following Monday afternoon, he was home from school as early as he used to be when he was walking alone. Markie asked how he’d finally managed to get his charge to walk faster.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I piggybacked her.” She couldn’t believe it, and he saw it in her face. “Desperate times,” he said, shrugging, and before she could respond, he told her he would be back in a minute and raced inside. He returned sometime later with a cobweb-covered scooter and helmet he had dug out of a box of old toys in the basement. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.”
That afternoon, after their tutoring session was over, he attempted to teach Lola to ride the scooter. Markie could hear them from the patio, bickering like siblings as they went up and down the sidewalk, Angel running behind, yapping. “I’m not sure it’s going to save us any time,” he told Markie later. “She falls off every few feet, and then she spends about ten minutes griping, and I’ve got to practically beg her to give it another shot. She’s not nearly as into it as I thought she’d be. Which is weird. I’ve seen a bunch of kids her age ride scooters to school. You’d think she’d want in on that, but . . .” He sighed. “Guess we’ll be walking again tomorrow.”
She didn’t have to ask him how the walk went the next day—he was stretching and rotating his neck as he walked in the door. “Maybe the scooter lessons will go better today,” she said, trying to cheer him up.
“Guessing they will,” he said as he made his way to the basement door, “because I think I might have figured out what the problem is.” He was back upstairs soon after, stuffing a wad of bills in his jeans. “Leftover birthday money from Grandma and Grandpa,” he said, seeing her expression. “I’ll be back in a bit. I told Lola to let Mrs. Saint know I’d be there a few minutes late today.”
He left, and when he returned, he was carrying a brand-new scooter—bright pink with white-and-yellow daisy decals; white, pink, and yellow streamers on the handlebars; and a matching helmet. “I took a closer look when we got to her school this morning,” he said. “She’d have been the only girl riding an old black scooter with a scuffed-up boys’ helmet.”
“Jesse!” Markie said, standing. “You bought her—?”
He put a finger to his lips and gestured across the fence. “I want to surprise her.”
She watched as he carried them across the lawn and over the fence. When he was about five feet from Mrs. Saint’s side door, he stopped and put his arms behind his back, trying to conceal the gifts. He had only taken a single step forward when the door burst open and Lola came flying out.
“I been waiting for you!” She threw herself at him, hugging him around his waist, and Jesse, laughing, dropped the surprises to the ground as he staggered backward, trying to regain his balance.
“These are for me?” Lola said, falling to her knees. Not touching them, she looked up at Jesse, waiting, and the look of disbelief on her face made Markie lift both hands to her throat. Jesse nodded, and Lola dove for the scooter, clutching it to her chest as she rolled on the grass, kicking her feet and screeching.
“Yeah, you’re nuts,” Jesse said, and Markie could see the corners of his mouth pull down as he tried not to smile. “And no going even six inches on that thing without wearing your helmet.”
Lola stopped her rolling and screeching, let go of the scooter, and snatched up the helmet. She put it on, buckled it closed, and jumped to her feet. “I’m calling them Pinky!” she said. “The scooter and the helmet!”
“Sounds like something you’d come up with.”
She put a hand on her hip. “Or I could call them Jesse!”
He brought a fist down gently on the top of her helmet, pretending to clobber her. “And I could take them both back to the store.”
She squealed and clutched her helmet tightly to her head. “Let’s go show everyone!”
Grabbing the scooter, she ran for the side door, but instead of turning the knob, she withdrew her hand from it, spun around, raced back to Jesse, and threw her arms around him again. “You are the very best one!” she said, before she released him and turned back for the door, a hand extended behind her.
Shaking his head, he said, “And you are the very weirdest one.”
But he took her hand and let her drag him to the door, and when he turned back to Markie to wave goodbye, he was no longer trying not to smile.
Markie swallowed her last luxurious sip of coffee and set her cup in the sink. She let Angel out of her crate, picked up the leash, and said the magic word—“Walk!”—before realizing she had dumbly forgotten to change out of her pajamas. Commanding the dog to stay put, she ran up to dress. Not surprisingly, Angel followed, amped up by the sound of her favorite word and not happy about the delay.
“Okay, okay!” Markie told her, pushing the animal off her as Angel nudged. “I’m going! I’m going! Get off me!” she said as they approached the top of the stairs, and the next thing she said was, “Oh no!” as the dog pushed too hard, knocking Markie sideways and down.
The first thing to hit the floor at the bottom was her left ankle. She heard a loud snap, and in the same instant, she felt a bolt of excruciating pain shoot from her leg to the top of her head. Crumpling, she howled in agony, cursed, then howled some more. The dog, sensing trouble, whimpered and sat nearby.
“Now you decide to sit still?” Markie shouted.
She was launching into a second round of cursing when there was a knock at the side door. The French accent came shortly after. “Markie? Is everything okay? We have heard a lot of noise!”
Angel made a move for the door, but Markie shot her hand out and grabbed the dog’s collar, holding her in place. “Shhhh!”
Mrs. Saint knocked again, louder this time, and Markie gripped the collar tighter and pressed her other hand over her own mouth to keep herself from crying out as the pain in her ankle went from unbearable to torturous. Finally, the knocking stopped, and moments later came the sound of the neighbor’s side door opening then closing.