Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) Read Free Page B

could say anything, Oliver pointed at the woman, “That
moron made my dad run over this cat,” he said matter-of-factly.
    The woman glared and the officer stifled a grin.
    I smiled down at Oliver. “That’s pretty much what happened,” I
agreed.  I was glad Maddie wasn’t there to be mortified.
    There wasn’t a lot of damage done to my Suburban, but I got the
woman’s insurance information.  The officer took some information down and
within 20 minutes I was getting the kids back into their car seats.  The only
loose end was the cat. He didn’t look like he was going to survive the ordeal,
but I couldn’t very well just leave him, so I scooped him up and laid him down
in the back of the Suburban. 
    On the few occasions when I’d taken the Siamese to the vet, the
bastard had yowled continuously during the short car ride.  This one didn’t
make a sound from the minute I laid him down in the Suburban to the time we
pulled into the Feline Clinic parking lot in Hollywood Park.  I feared the
worst. 
    I looked through the tinted window into the back of the car,
and was surprised to see that the cat was still alive.  Oliver disembarked, and
I unstrapped Max and Morgan again.  It occurred to me that a large portion of
Maddie’s day must be spent strapping and unstrapping kids from car seats, and I
wondered if I were her, if I’d even bother to venture out unless it was an
absolute necessity.  Even the most trivial of outings became a huge hassle with
that many kids. Tack on a dying cat, and I was definitely feeling overwhelmed. 
    I had Morgan in one arm and the cat in the other, and Max
holding my pant leg.  Good thing Oliver was going through a phase where he
liked to show off his muscular strength; he  had become the official family
door opener.
    “What do we have here?” the woman behind the desk asked.
    “I ran over this cat,” I said, handing him over to her.  “He
was limping before I hit him.”
    “A moron made us hit him,” Oliver added.
    The woman looked at me with raised eyebrows and I shrugged my
shoulders.  She cradled the cat in her arm and made some cooing sounds that
reminded me of Penny, and the cat actually started to purr.  The four of us
followed her into an exam room. 
    “How’s the Siamese?” she asked, feeling the cat’s stomach and
hind legs.
    “He’s fine.  What about this one?  Do you think he’ll make it?”
    “She,” the woman corrected.  She gave the cat the once over and
shook her head.  “I don’t know.  Can you leave her here for a couple of hours?”
    A couple of hours? And then what?   I’d never considered
that the cat might actually survive. I’d just sort of assumed we’d be putting
him out of his misery.  I didn’t want another cat but I wasn’t about to say
anything in front of the boys.
    “A couple of hours?  Sure.  Should I call you or do you want to
call me?”
    “We’ll call you.”
    We left the cat and went through the car seat ritual again, and
I decided right then that car trips would be kept to a bare minimum for the
rest of the weekend.  There was plenty to do around the house.
    But for some reason, the house seemed so empty without Maddie. 
She was almost always home when I got there after work, and if she wasn’t, it
was never too long before she arrived.  It had been an easy change, adapting to
the lifestyle of a husband and father; coming home to the aroma of a
home-cooked meal, with a beautiful wife to greet me.  It was something that I
had not yet taken for granted, and walking into the house, knowing that Maddie
wouldn’t be there for days, bummed me out.  The baby had fallen asleep in the
five minutes it had taken to drive from the vet’s office, and notwithstanding
Oliver’s explicit instructions on how to get her out of her seat without waking
her, I’d managed to wake her.  She was screaming again, and I was at a loss
what to do.  I laid her on the floor on a blanket while I heated a bottle, and
Oliver