Miracles Retold (4 page)

Annie grabbed some napkins
and placed them near the salad dressing. She looked around and
realized that everyone in the family was cleaning up the kitchen,
storing cookies, or getting ready for the pizza to arrive
—
everyone except her
youngest.

“Where’s Carter?” Annie
asked.

“Caaaaarter!” Ryder yelled
from the kitchen.

“That’s helpful,” Hannah
said and rolled her eyes.

But no Carter
appeared.

Annie checked the boys’
room and bathroom
—
then walked through the house twice, calling Carter’s name.
Lon looked for him in the backyard.

“Where’s Carter?” Annie
asked again, this time her voice in a higher pitch.

“The front door was
unlocked when I came home,” Lon said, moving in that direction. “I
thought it was odd. Maybe he’s in the front yard or went to a
neighbor’s house.”

The whole family hurried
outside to the driveway.

Lon called Carter’s name.
Annie wrapped her arms around herself.

“I can check with the
Bergers,” Ryder said.

“I’ll ask the da Silvas,”
Hannah said. The two older kids left for the neighbors’
houses.

“I’m going to walk around
the Cohen’s,” Lon said. “They’re on vacation. I’ll just check their
backyard in case Carter chased Angel there.”

Annie stared after him.
“Those are the only neighbors with kids around their age they all
play with,” Annie said to Grace. Then Annie opened the garage door
to check that Carter didn’t end up there when she was stashing
gifts
—
even
though he could have come inside through the door that led from the
garage. But no little boy was there.

Lon came back shaking his
head. Hannah and Ryder returned with the word that none of the
neighbors had seen Carter.

“You know,” Grace said,
“All this time that we have been in the driveway looking for
Carter, we’ve left the front door wide open, and Angel didn’t try
to escape as usual. Do you think she got out and Carter went
looking for her?”

“Oh!” Annie exclaimed. She
put her hand to her forehead. “The presents!” she whispered to
Grace, turning away from Hannah and Ryder. “When I was carrying
Christmas gifts inside and hiding them, I bet Angel got out then
and I never noticed.”

“Let’s drive through the
neighborhood,” Lon said. “If Carter is looking for Angel, we’ll see
him.”

Annie covered her eyes with
her hands, then pressed her hands together while Lon and the kids
went back inside for the car keys. “This is all my fault,” she said
to Grace.

“Don’t go blaming yourself,
honey,” Grace said. “I blame the cat!” She put her arm around
Annie. “We’ll find Carter. The kids and I will stay here in case he
comes home.”

Lon came back outside, and
he and Annie rushed to get in the car. The air had turned
crisp
—
a
50-degree Florida winter night considered chilly by most
Floridians. Annie and Lon would have enjoyed the change in the
weather if they hadn’t been worried about Carter’s
disappearance.

“He might be cold,” Annie
said as Lon drove the car slowly down the street. They both aimed
flashlights to shine between houses as they passed by, looking for
Carter, Angel, movement, anything. Most of the houses in their
neighborhood were built close together, and most yards weren’t
fenced. “It’s dark, and he’s alone and cold!” Annie
moaned.

“He’s probably not far,”
Lon said, one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a
flashlight out the window. “Carter!” he called.

“We don’t know that!”
Annie said. “We don’t know where he is! Sure, he could be
nearby
—
and tied
up in someone’s closet, and we’d never know it!”

Lon slowed the car but
didn’t stop it. “Annie. We have to stay positive. For Carter’s
sake.”

“It’s my fault,” Annie
said. She gulped to keep from sobbing. “If I had waited until the
kids were asleep to bring the presents in from the car…. Or if I
had carried fewer things at a time and made sure the door was
closed.… I don’t even remember the last thing I said to him. I
don’t know if I even hugged him today. I might never hug him again.
I’m a terrible mother. I should be a better mother!”

Lon stopped the car and put
his arms around his wife. “Darling. It’s not your fault. You’ll hug
him again. We will find him,” he said.

Lon’s voice was soothing,
his tone confident. Having his arms around her made Annie feel more
secure, better able to focus. Annie calmed herself with a few deep,
slow breaths. “We have to find him,” she said. Lon nodded and
continued driving down the street. Annie traced the beam of her
flashlight along a low wall and loudly croaked Carter’s name. “We
have to find him,” she repeated.

They went down all the
streets in the neighborhood, then called Grace to ask if Carter had
come home. He hadn’t. Lon and Annie circled around again, calling
Carter’s name and praying they would see him. Lon drove through
other neighborhoods and nearby shopping centers, and he and Annie
hung out of their windows and called for their youngest
child.

“I guess…” Annie whispered,
“I guess we should call the police.”

Arriving at home, Annie and
Lon saw Grace, Hannah, and Ryder in the front yard with the
Bergers. Annie dashed out of the car. “Have you heard something?”
she asked.

“No,” Grace
said.

“We came by to see if you
had found Carter yet,” Kate Berger said.

Annie wrapped her arms
around herself, clenched her toes and bit her lip. She couldn’t
look at Hannah, Ryder, or anyone standing in her yard. She needed
to know where Carter was. Not knowing was making her feel as though
parts of her being were falling away, like yarn pulled from a
sweater, unraveling, pulling and circling around, leaving nothing.
She tried to dig her feet into the ground, but even that didn’t
seem to stop the feeling of coming undone. People were talking, but
she couldn’t hear them. She forced herself to breathe: in, out, in,
out.

Suddenly Annie’s skin
prickled. She sensed something. Her breath caught as she jerked her
head to look down the street. She started walking in that
direction. She heard herself calling Carter’s name. Soon she was
running, and Lon and the kids were running after her. Coming around
the corner from the intersecting street was Carter, with a
dog.

A Nose Knows

Ryder got to Carter first,
on his skateboard. “Where have you been?” he asked. “Mom and Dad
went looking all over for you. I can’t believe you!”

Annie and Lon reached
Carter and pressed him close.

“You’re squishing me,”
Carter said.

“You’re safe,” Annie said.
“You’re safe. What happened?”

“Look
—
it’s cold,” Lon said. The
temperature had fallen. “Why don’t we all get inside
first?”

The family started walking
back home. Grace and the Bergers were in the front yard, watching
and waiting for them.

“Is this dog following
you?” Hannah asked. She reached her hand out to the mutt, who
sniffed it. He wagged his tail as he walked alongside the
family.

“This dog helped me! He
showed me the way home!” Carter said. “Mom, you said there are no
more miracles, but this dog made a miracle!”

“What do you mean?” Annie
asked. She looked at dog: medium-sized, a little shaggy, definitely
in need of a bath. And food.

“I’m so tired of walking,”
Carter said, ignoring Annie’s question for the moment. “Dad, can
you carry me?”

Lon bent and picked up
Carter to walk the rest of the way home. “It’s so far,” Carter
said. “I’m sorry I got lost.”

Once the Bergers told
Carter they were glad he was home and safe, they went home and
everyone went inside to the warmth. Annie’s shock melted into
liquid emotion.

“You scared me to death!”
Annie said to Carter. Tears of relief stung her chilled cheeks with
their warmth and salt, and she stood on her knees to hug Carter.
“Why did you run off? In the dark?”

Carter looked at the floor.
“I saw the front door was open, and Angel got out. So I tried to
catch her. But she kept running away from me.” He looked up. “I
finally caught her, but then I wasn’t sure how to get home until
this dog showed up.”

The dog had come inside and
was sitting up near Grace. Annie released her hold on
Carter.

“He was real friendly and
acted like he knew me, but I’ve never seen him,” Carter said. “He
was running away from me, then coming back, running away and coming
back, like he wanted to play.” Carter made a zigzag motion with his
fingers. “So I tried to play with him and keep up with him. But
just like Angel, he kept running!” Carter heaved a sigh. “So I
followed him for a while and realized where I was and … figured out
how to get home. Because of this dog.”

“That is so weird,” Hannah
said. She stroked the dog’s head. He rolled over, and Hannah rubbed
his tummy. He closed his eyes. “He’s a nice dog. Doesn’t look like
he has a collar.”

Grace opened her mouth,
then closed it. “I need to make a confession,” she said. “When I
take my walks around the neighborhood, I see this dog almost every
time. I … may have given him a treat or two. It was the least I
could do for him for keeping me company.” Carter and Ryder stared
at her, and she smiled at them as she rubbed the back of the dog’s
neck.

“But this dog doesn’t know
Carter,” Lon said.

“No, but it looks like
Carter took my jacket,” Grace said, smiling. “This little guy must
have smelled the jacket and remembered where I live.”

“Wow,” Hannah
said.

“That’s like, a miracle!”
Ryder said.

“That’s what I said!”
Carter exclaimed.

“Dogs have an excellent
sense of smell, you know,” Grace said.

Benji looked around at all
the family members and sniffed.

Annie sniffed too, done
crying. “So where’s Angel?” she asked.

“I caught her. I did. All
by myself,” Carter said. “But when the dog came around, she ran
away again. She hid in a bush, and I couldn’t get her out. She was
too far inside and there were spiders and stuff …
probally
.”

“Do you think you could
show me where Angel is?” Lon asked.

“Uh…. Not sure I can
remember how to get back there. There was a big hill.”

Lon nodded. In a part of
the state not known for being hilly, hills stood out. There was a
hill at a nearby park, created as a barrier between the edge of the
park and the neighborhood. “I think I know how to get there. We
should go look for her now.”

“I’ll put the pizzas in the
oven to warm up,” Grace said.

“Pizzas?!” Carter shrieked.
“I’m so hungry.”

“What about the dog?”
Hannah asked.

“Oh, the dog probably likes
pizza too,” Grace said with a wink.

“No, I mean what do we do
with the dog?” Hannah asked. Everyone looked at Lon and
Annie.

“We’ll have to see,” Lon
said.

“That always means no,”
said Ryder, “because you’re not fun.”

“He probably belongs to
another family,” Grace said. “Come on, kids, let’s get something
warm to drink while your parents get that darn cat.”

Annie wasn’t sure she
wanted to let Carter out of her sight, but as she watched him
disappear around the corner into the kitchen with his siblings, she
knew he would be all right. He was home, and safe. Grace followed
behind, and the dog trailed last. The dog that just might have
brought Carter back home to her.

Once back at the park only
a few minutes’ drive away, Lon and Annie walked around and called
for Angel, finally coaxing her out of her hiding spot. Annie
shivered when she looked at the wooded area and thought of her
small son lost there and what might have happened to him. But
settling Angel on her lap in the car, her thoughts turned to the
dog.