LITMIR.BIZ

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Michael.” Linda smiled. “I hear you’re entering a project in the fair.”

      Michael grinned. “Sure am.”

      “That’s wonderful. What’s it all about?”

      “Uh, I want it to be a surprise, Ms. Fioretti.”

      Linda smiled again at the fourteen-year-old. He was tall and lanky with the angular build of a boy growing so fast his flesh couldn’t keep up with his bones. Like his father, Max, and his uncle Guy, Michael had dark hair and blue eyes. The Cantrell brothers were handsome men and Linda could see the same good looks developing in Michael.

      Plus, he was smart. His grades were phenomenal. He was taking advanced courses in science and math because he was too far beyond the normal ninth-grade level.

      The first time Linda had met Michael she had wished he were interested in art so he would be in one of her classes. But he was a scientist, like his uncle Guy, and Linda had heard from several sources, Guy himself, for one, that Michael spent a lot of time in Guy’s home, getting involved in his uncle’s inventions and ideas. Linda thought it wonderful training for a young man so taken with science to have someone like Guy in his family.

      All the while, she had been very curious about the project Michael would bring to this year’s science fair.

      “You’re not even giving out hints?” she asked teasingly. Michael’s cheeks got red, and she knew that she had put him on the spot. “I’m only kidding, Michael. You have every right to keep your project a secret.”

      “Uh, thanks, Ms. Fioretti.”

      “Well, I should get to work. See you later, Michael.” Linda left the boy and headed toward Guy.

      “I want tuna fish,” Samantha Kingsley declared emphatically.

      “You always want tuna fish,” Tag responded. He’d been looking for something to fix for their lunch, and obligingly he got out a can of tuna. It was healthy food and Samantha loved it. He didn’t love it, but since they were going to have hamburgers for dinner, a tuna sandwich for lunch wouldn’t kill him. “Get the bread while I mix this stuff,” he said.

      Samantha could barely reach the bread box, and Tag had to force himself to stand by and let her do it without his help. The hardest part of parenting, he was beginning to realize, was giving your child room to grow and do things for herself. Sammy was five years old and a tiny little thing, so adorable that Tag’s heart melted every time he looked at her. She had light brown hair with wispy curls that touched her shoulders and big hazel eyes; she had his eyes, Tag knew, same color, same shape. But Sammy’s eyes contained something that his did not: sadness. She had still been an infant when her mother died, and while Tag knew Sammy loved him with all of her little heart, she wished that she had a mommy. Other kids did. Why didn’t she? Even though Tag answered every question Sammy asked about her mother, he knew his answers didn’t quite fill the void in his daughter’s world.

      “No mustard, Daddy,” Samantha said.

      Tag chuckled. He had merely moved the container of mustard to reach the jar of mayonnaise. Sammy’s sharp eyes missed very little.

      “Aw, heck, I thought you’d like some mustard in your tuna today,” he said.

      Samantha giggled. “You’re teasing me.”

      When the sandwiches were made, he put them on paper plates, along with a few potato chips and a slice of dill pickle, and brought them to the table.

      Samantha scrambled up into her chair while Tag poured two glasses of milk.

      “Mmm, good,” Samantha said after her first bite.

      “Simply delicious,” Tag said dryly after his first bite. “Hey, small fry, we might have a guest for dinner today.”

      “Who?”

      “A very nice lady I met yesterday. I’m painting her apartment. Her name is Linda Fioretti, and she’s a teacher at the high school.”

      “Okay.” Samantha took a drink of her milk.

      “I think we’ll have barbecued burgers. What do you think?”

      “Does she like burgers?”

      “Everyone likes burgers. Don’t they?”

      Samantha shrugged. “Guess so.”

      “Maybe I should go to the store and buy some warthog. Maybe she would like barbecued warthog better than a burger.”

      Samantha giggled a second time. “You’re teasing me again.”

      Tag grinned. “Sometimes I just can’t help myself. That’s ’cause you’re so cute when you giggle.”

      “Oh, Daddy, you’re funny.”

      “So it’s all right with you if we have a lady over for dinner?”

      Samantha nodded and took another bite of sandwich. “We should have ice cream for dessert,” she said with her mouth full.

      “You are absolutely right. Which flavor goes with barbecued burgers?”

      “Strawberry.”

      It was Samantha’s favorite. “Yes, I believe you are right again. Strawberry it will be. We’ll go to the store after lunch, okay?”

      “Okay.”

      Tag hadn’t expected any other answer.

      Linda returned home around two. She walked from carport to apartment building humming under her breath. After much discussion and thought, the final layout for the fair was planned in a way that gave each entrant equal visibility, or as close to equal as Linda had been able to make it. She was satisfied with the results of her labor, and so was Guy. He had thanked her profusely before they went their separate ways.

      Unlocking her apartment door, she smiled because she could hear Tippy dancing around on the other side.

      Alfred woke up, realized that Linda was home again and at the same moment saw the snake. It was a tiny thing, a little tan garter snake that began slithering away the second the huge beast in the bushes opened its eyes. Screaming at the top of his lungs, Alfred jumped straight up and plowed a new trail through the bushes.

      At her door, Linda heard the screams, looked for their source and saw a grown man running from the bushes at the back of the lot. She realized after a second that he was shouting, “Snake! Snake!”

      “What kind of snake?” she called, but the guy was still running and apparently didn’t hear her. The kids playing nearby came up to her.

      “Who’s that guy?” one boy asked.

      “I don’t know, but he’s yelling something about a snake.” Linda began frowning. There was something familiar about the screaming runner.

      “Let’s go find it!” the boy said, and the children all ran to the bank of bushes to search for the snake.

      “Be careful,” Linda called to them. “It could be a rattler.”

      It wasn’t. The kids were disappointed. “It’s just an old garter snake,” the apparent leader of the group said as they left the poor snake to its own devices. “And it’s not even a big one.”

      Forgetting snake, bushes, frightened running man and everything else about the incident, the kids went back to their games.

      Linda stepped into her apartment and absentmindedly greeted Tippy the way she usually did. But her thoughts were on the grown man who had been so frightened by a little garter snake that he’d run off shrieking like a wild person. Had he been in the bushes? They were dense and scratchy and even the neighborhood children walked around them. Why on earth would a grown-up do something that children sensibly avoided? And he was familiar, although she couldn’t say with absolute certainty that he was the same man who had knocked twice on her door and then run off when she opened it.

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