Down Home Carolina Christmas. Pamela Browning

personally when I bring the dog back tomorrow? With her name on it and everything?”

      “Not a bad idea,” Whip allowed. “Once she sees the offer in writing, that could change her mind, due partly, of course, to your movie-star charm, Luke.” He shot Luke a calculating grin.

      “My so-called charm and a couple of dollars won’t even buy me a latte at the Eat Right Café,” Luke scoffed good-naturedly.

      “They have latte?” Whip asked on a note of hope.

      “Doubtful,” Luke said. And even though he was angry with Carrie about leaving the dog wandering around alone, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to stay that way for long.

      A FEW DAYS after the casting call, Carrie had barely started to pick tomatoes and peppers in her garden, when the phone rang inside the house. She let it ring. Family and friends knew to call back or stop by Smitty’s if they were phoning about anything important.

      She lifted the basket of vegetables and hurried to the back gate of the white picket fence, heavy with Carolina jasmine. On the other side of the fence was the house, a big rambling white Victorian with a deep porch hugging the front and sides. In the back, a screened porch jutted past a yew hedge, ending just short of a sundial on one side of the path, a birdbath on the other.

      Carrie was grateful to whoever designed the home place back in the early 1900s; the porch overhang kept out the hot summer sun, and tall windows admitted a fresh breeze. Seventeen-foot-high ceilings coaxed hot air up above the inhabitants, who at present totaled only two—Carrie and her resident rabbit.

      After setting the baskets on the big table where her great-grandmother had served meals to farmworkers long ago, she wiped her sweaty forehead with one arm. She’d have to hurry if she wanted to get to the garage at her usual time and set these vegetables out to sell. They brought in a few extra dollars from customers, and every cent counted these days.

      The kitchen phone rang again, and this time she answered on the first ring.

      “This is Mike Calphus,” said the young voice on the other end.

      “Oh, Mike,” Carrie replied, wondering what was up. Mike was just ten, and she felt a worrisome niggle of alarm at the sound of his voice.

      “Carrie, Shasta wasn’t at the garage this morning. Do you know where she is?”

      “Why, no, Mike.”

      “Me and Jamie, we looked all over. Hub wasn’t there yet.” Mike sounded as though he might cry.

      The Calphus boys had become mightily attached to Shasta in the short time that she’d been hanging around. They’d been stopping by in the mornings on their way to baseball practice to give her treats and play catch with her out back of the garage.

      “Oh, Mike, I’m sorry. Tell you what, we’ll hunt for Shasta as soon as I get there, I promise.”

      “Mom went to work, and Grandma doesn’t drive, but if you ride us around the neighborhood and we holler out the windows, maybe Shasta will come.” Mike still sounded perilously near tears.

      “I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so,” Carrie said. She hung up in dismay. Last weekend, the boys had carried the dog home with them, but Ginger Calphus, a single mother, had put her foot down and refused to keep her. The boys’ grandmother, who lived next door, had too many other responsibilities to take on a dog, and despite Carrie’s best efforts, no one else had offered a home.

      Killer, Carrie’s lop-eared rabbit, so named because of his aggression toward almost everyone but her, hopped into the kitchen and wiggled his nose hopefully. “If it weren’t for you,” she told him sternly, “Shasta would live with me.” Carrie had developed a true affection for the pup, but Killer would not have much chance of survival if the two ever found themselves in the same room together, even though the rabbit owed his name to a deadly hind-leg kick.

      Leaving Killer happily chomping on a newly harvested lettuce leaf, Carrie headed for town. She called ahead on her cell phone to inform Hub that he’d be doing the brake job and drove straight to the Calphus house. Ginger Calphus had been a classmate of Carrie’s and lived next door to the house where she’d grown up. This simplified child-care arrangements for Ginger, who had been divorced for a couple of years and worked at the bank with Joyanne. Ginger’s parents, Edna Earle and Fred Hindershot, kept an eye on her two boys during the day, and Carrie stopped to ask Edna Earle if it was okay for Mike and Jamie to come with her to look for the dog.

      “Sure, go ahead. They do love that dog, but Ginger’s devoted to those cats of hers and can’t consider adopting another animal. I’d give Shasta a home myself, but Fred says I don’t need a pet, considering that I’m busy enough taking care of Mike and Jamie and him, too.” Fred had retired on disability and could barely get around anymore.

      “I know, Edna Earle. I always figured that I’d find the perfect person to adopt Shasta if I let her hang around long enough. She’s a sweet little old thing.”

      “Well, maybe she’ll turn up.” Edna Earle called into the house, “Mike! Jamie! Carrie is here. Y’all come on out.”

      The boys erupted from the house, and Carrie held the SUV door open for them as they swarmed in.

      “Can we drive down Begonia Street? Sometimes Shasta goes down there to drink from the creek,” Jamie said, sounding worried.

      “Of course we can,” Carrie assured him. “Then we’ll check Memorial Park and make sure she isn’t having a good old time chasing ducks around the pond.”

      They drove slowly down Begonia, waving to Mrs. McGrath, who was kneeling in the dirt, deadheading her marigolds. On the corner of Cedar Lane they stopped to talk to Jason Plummer, a high-school athlete who was jogging around the block. He hadn’t seen Shasta, but he promised to notify Carrie if he did.

      Finally, after driving up and down every street in Yewville calling the dog’s name, Carrie gave up.

      “Maybe Shasta found a real home,” Mike suggested.

      “Yeah,” Jamie said mournfully. “With her own yard and everything. But how are we going to play catch with her if we don’t know where she lives?”

      Carrie had her own private concern, namely that the dog had wandered out to the bypass and met with a gruesome fate that she’d rather not discover while in the company of two small boys.

      “Tell you what,” she said. “Let’s get some ice cream.” She hoped she didn’t sound as forlorn to the boys as she did to herself.

      “I’d rather find Shasta,” Mike said, showing a hint of stubbornness, but Carrie convinced him to accompany them inside the Eat Right, anyway. They all sat down in a booth, where the boys ordered rocky-road ice-cream cones and Carrie asked for a dish of chocolate and strawberry. The ice cream distracted them from thinking about their failure to turn up any evidence of the missing dog.

      Kathy Lou Watts, the waitress behind the counter, was in a cheerful mood. “I hear Luke Mason stopped by your gas station a couple of Sundays ago,” she said chattily.

      “He did,” Carrie answered. She watched helplessly as ice cream dripped onto Jamie’s spotless blue T-shirt.

      “Is he as handsome as he is on the screen?” Kathy Lou asked.

      “Handsomer,” Carrie answered without really thinking about it. “Imagine! Luke Mason himself was right here in the Eat Right this morning. The girls on the early shift said he ate eggs and bacon for breakfast, just like any ordinary person. And link sausage. He must really like sausage ’cause he asked for three orders to take out.” Kathy Lou scrubbed energetically at a stain on the counter with one corner of a damp dish towel.

      “I suppose just about everybody around here will get a gander at Luke Mason before they’re through filming that blamed movie,” Carrie said.

      “I heard that the casting director is going to interview local people for minor speaking parts,” Kathy