Learning to Trust: Changing Places Read Free Page A

"Like old times?"
    "Absolutely," I said. Despite his sudden intensity, Roland was being sweet again.
    He smiled and walked into the kitchen. I let out another enormous sigh and pulled up my panties.
    I sat there and suddenly recalled an event from my past that seemed painfully relevant, even more so because I had happened to say the lie about my family dog dying earlier.
    Growing up, my dad had done his best with gifts for my mom, sometimes enlisting the help of his mother to decide on what to get . I didn't remember it well —I was maybe 5 -years-old at the time— but our dog died and it really affected my mom. So , for my mother' s birthday the following year, my dad decided to go out of his way to do something really special for her—he would surprise her with a puppy, and her cute little daughter would present it to her.
    My dad and I picked one out for my mom and waited until it was old enough to leave the litter. We put the puppy in a box with a blanket and my dad did a really haphazard wrapping job, mostly because we didn't want to leave it in there more than a couple of minutes. Anyhow, the plan was to, you know, surprise her with the puppy. She'd open the box and it would jump out and lick her face. It would be like the typical feel-good family movie and she'd be so thankful.
    Everything was in place—I didn't remember this perfectly , but I've relived it through my parents' words on more than one occasion—and I took the puppy in the box and carried it toward my mom, clad in the cutest pink dress I had. She was sitting in our living room, totally oblivious to what was going on.
    At that age, I tried pretty hard to keep secrets, but I really wasn't very good at it. When warm yellow liquid started streaming from one of the corners of the box, I started screaming, unable to contain myself. No, I wouldn't be able to keep this secret.
    My mother had jumped up and run toward me, terrified of what was going on. Honestly, she didn't know that we had been arranging any of this. To her, I looked like a victim of chemical warfare, her daughter dosed with anthrax and about to die and—
    "Hon, what's the matter?" she had shouted, yanking the box out of my hands and tossing it onto the floor. Her expression of fear was the thing that I remembered most about the event.
    "The puppy peed on me!" I had screamed. And that folks, was the death of the surprise.
    My mom just about had a second heart attack after realizing she had thrown a box with a puppy in it onto the floor immediately following what she thought was a terrorist attack on her daughter . It was a similar experience for my dad. He later told me about how everything went into slow motion , how he just froze up , unable to make a decision. He could spoil the surprise and protect his daughter, or just try to keep quiet. Inaction had won in the end .
    Thankfully, the puppy was just fine. We had padded the box so much that the puppy barely had any space to move. The fall was fully cushioned. When my mom opened the box, the puppy did jump out, but we had to give it a bath after its accident. Things could have turned out a hell of a lot worse.
    That dog survived until I graduated college, a beagle that had been everything my family could have wanted. It was strange that I had re-invoked the memory of the dog right before I had to keep a secret again. Only this time, the secret was a million times greater and the repercussions a million times more serious.
    A test of loyalty . What could that possibly mean? I know I had only been a child during the puppy incident, but it still seemed so fresh in my mind. If faced with a ton of stress and discomfort, could I possibly keep myself together? What would I do if he made me do something questionable or illegal? Could I really keep my lips sealed under duress?
    I wiped my face clean of any expression just before Roland returned to the kitchen. Neutral . "Here you are, pet," he said. I took a big sip and smiled. Nostalgia washed over