Triplets Find a Mom. Annie Jones

feel the longing in her own bones.

      “No.” Sam’s insistence told a story of something more going on than his simplistic explanation. “He is not ours.”

      “He should be ours,” Hayley said firmly.

      “He could be ours.” Juliette spoke a bit more tentatively.

      Caroline fixed her eyes on her father and added, “If Mama was alive, he would be ours.”

      Sam pressed his lips into a thin white line.

      Maybe she was overly sensitive because she’d been so lonely last night, or because she felt so guilty about Sam’s hat, or maybe because she honestly liked Sam and felt a connection to his daughters. Whatever the reason, Polly couldn’t stay quiet another minute. She hurried to the driver’s side door, her keys jangling in her hand.

      “You know,” Polly said as she rushed to his rescue and put the key in the lock, “I think I’ll just take care of him until we find out if someone is looking for him. Right now I’ve got to go. The teachers aren’t supposed to be here when the kids and parents start to show up. Bye, girls, it was so nice to meet you.”

      The girls all groaned.

      Sam mouthed a thank-you that made her feel good and a little sad at the same time. How she longed to point out those missed clues with the girls. Why wouldn’t he allow them to have a dog? And the no-matchmaking deal?

      Suddenly instead of seeing a funny, kind man of faith she perceived the hurt he hid even from himself.

      As she drove away from the family scene, her gaze fell on the hat that she had left in the car last night. She couldn’t talk rules or matchmaking with Sam, couldn’t interfere with his parenting, but she could help him out here. She could do everything within her power to get this puppy back to his real home so that she could give the dog and the girls a happy ending. But to do that she had to act fast.

      “You know, for someone who came to Baconburg to slow down the pace of her life—” she told her passenger, who woofed softly in response “—I sure have been in an awful big hurry ever since I met that Sam Goodacre.”

      “So?” Sam’s younger brother, Max, called out the second Sam came blowing through the back door of Downtown Drug.

      He had taken the girls back to the farm after they’d gotten their class assignments. The whole process had taken longer than he’d expected and he was late getting in to open the store. The girls had actually taken their assignments pretty well. Hayley and Juliette patting Caroline on the back as a kind of congratulations, even, and saying they didn’t mind. Until they learned just who the new teacher was.

      Sam had met the cries of “unfair” and pleas for him to go to the school and let them all be in Miss Bennett’s class with his usual “let’s not let this slow us down” answers, which hadn’t helped much. Maybe it was because for the first time in a long time, he hadn’t really believed his own proclamations. In finding out Polly had this connection to his children, it wasn’t just the two girls in the other classes that felt just a little bit cheated.

      “So?” Max’s voice rang out again. “Just how cute is this new teacher?”

      The first thing Sam encountered was the last thing he had the time or patience to put up with.

      “I spoke with her for five whole minutes in front of the school this morning.” Sam slipped the long white lab coat he kept hanging on the door of the pharmacist’s station over his street clothes. He strode farther into the old store where his little brother, Max, stood amid a disarray of power tools, how-to manuals and a row of still-crated restaurant-grade appliances. “Do not tell me it’s all over town already?”

      “Hey, you belly crawl across the new lady in town’s driveway one evening, then get spotted talking to her in front of the school the next day?” Max grinned his famous cocky grin, and gave an unconvincing shrug. “People are gonna talk.”

      “She’s Caroline’s teacher.” In Sam’s mind that was the end of the discussion. He moved on toward the front door, flipping on display lights and setting things in their rightful spots.

      “So?” Max called after him, not budging so much as an inch to help prep the place for the coming day.

      So. Max had a way of asking something that Sam had no way of formulating an answer to.

      “Look, it’s Baconburg. Everyone is somebody’s teacher or scout leader or church youth-group leader or cousin or … You get it. As long as you keep things on the up-and-up and don’t give anyone reason for concern vis-à-vis the whole teacher-as-a-role-model thing, I think you could manage a few dates with the lady.”

      Sam gripped the door’s ice-cold metal handle until the chill sank through all the way to his fingertips. He clenched his jaw and looked out at the town where he had grown up, the place that had cheered him in his youthful triumphs and embraced him in his time of deepest grief. He had fully prepared for his faith and this town to sustain him as he raised his girls and they grew up and had their own triumphs. That had been his sole priority.

      Then he’d seen Polly Bennett trying to rescue that stray dog from under her car and for a split second his whole life hit Pause.

      “She takes in strays,” he said loud enough for Max to hear, but not so much for Max’s benefit. “Raggedy, sad-eyed, not-too-great-smelling strays.”

      “Great. That means you might actually stand a chance with her.”

      “Very funny.” He glanced back and laughed at the brotherly jab. Max had always been the ladies’ man of the Goodacre boys, so Sam could understand why Max’s mind would immediately jump to the romance conclusion. “But really, how could I ever get involved with someone who wouldn’t hesitate to take in a lost dog, an animal she might have to give back if the real owners showed up? I can’t put my kids through that.”

      “Then let them have their own dog, like lots of kids their age do.” Max sifted through the plans and pencils scattered on a makeshift table in the soon-to-be lunch-counter area of the store.

      Sam’s throat constricted just enough to strain his words as he shot back, “Lots of kids their age haven’t suffered the kind of loss my girls have.”

      “Did you ever think it might be good for them to have a dog to take care of, not to mention a nice lady in their life—in your life?” Max took up a pencil and tucked it behind his ear. “It might help them find a new kind of normal.”

      “There’s a piece of the puzzle you’re not seeing.” Sam turned and headed back through the store. Time to get this subject and this day back on track. “This dog she’s found could be the model for the dog in those bedtime stories Marie used to tell the girls.”

      “The ones Gina has written up and wants to publish?”

      “The triplets have grown up with an idealized version of an adorable little dog who never gets sick, never gets old, never …” Sam gave a thumbs-down gesture rather than say what he meant. He met Max’s gaze and gave his final word on the matter. “No dog could live up to the one in their imagination. It wouldn’t be fair to the animal.”

      Sam headed back to the pharmacy.

      Max moved around the work space, putting himself in a place to make sure Sam could hear him as he folded his burly arms over his broad chest and asked, “Have you noticed, big bro, that every time you give an excuse for not letting the girls have a dog, it changes a little?”

      “I have work to do.” Sam stood still for a moment, aware that Max had a point but that he also didn’t have any say in Sam’s life. “You have heard of that, right? Work?”

      Max withdrew the pencil and a tumble of his shaggy, sun-streaked hair stuck out over his tanned ear. “Hey, I’m working on this.”

      “If that were true we’d have an operational lunch counter by now.” Sam didn’t mean to sound mad, but he’d