Summer plans were going to be made weather we liked them or not. Caroline was going to learn to dance. She was to wear a perfect pink dress and polished pink shoes and she was going to be as graceful as the crystal swan Mom had on the polished mahogany table.
I was going to study English literature with some professor from Harvard. I was going to wear pressed trousers and fitted button down shirts.
But Mom was not the only one who had plans for us.
We’d never seen Rufus until the June morning I opened the door to find him wagging his tail on our tidy front step. He was big as a pony and had dirty strands of curly white hair that straggled like old wool from his body. He studied me with one blue eye and one brown eye. Then with a woof he stood on his hind legs, and placed his filthy front paws on my starched shirt. He gave me the biggest wettest kiss I’d ever had. Without waiting for an invitation, he nudged past me, and ambled inside.
From that day, Rufus made our home his own.
Our lives were never the same.
Kathleen Dougherty lives in Scotts Valley California with a dog, a cat, two chickens and a couple of kids. She has written a young adult fantasy novel, which she hopes will be published some day.
© 2007 Kathleen Dougherty. Original for CCF (Dougherty grants CCF first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).
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