The Simple Wild (Wild 1)

Despite the fact that he and Agnes aren’t even together.

They have a genuine father-daughter relationship.

Mabel glances at the clock on the wall and says with reluctance, “Fine.” But then adds with a devilish spark in her eye, “I’ll let you win tomorrow.”

“That’d be a nice change.”

“It’s on. See ya.” She leans forward and plants a quick kiss on my dad’s forehead, with not a hint of hesitation, as if it’s something she’d done a thousand times.

How will she react when she finds out he has cancer? The fact that everyone has sheltered her from that grim truth so far tells me it won’t be well.

She grabs the sweater she draped over the back of my dad’s chair. “Hey, Calla, you should come berry picking with me tomorrow. A bunch of us from in town are going in the morning.”

I push aside my dark thoughts. “Yeah, maybe?” I can’t remember the last time I did that.

“Okay.” She shrugs, like it doesn’t matter to her one way or another, but based on what Agnes said about me being the shiny new thing, I’m guessing that’s an act.

Just as quickly and easily as Mabel strolled through the door, she now strolls out, leaving a palpable calm in her wake.

“I hope you liked the pasta,” I murmur, biting into my apple. “There’s enough left to feed twenty people.”

“To be honest, I can’t tell the difference between this week’s and the last eight weeks’ worth,” my dad murmurs, eying my empty plate, which I filled twice with my own dinner. “Too bad you can’t help me with it. Seems like you can put away a lot, for such a tiny person.”

“I think the time difference is messing with my appetite,” I admit. “Plus Jonah’s trash panda ruined my lunch, so I didn’t eat much today.”

My dad frowns. “Trash panda?”

“Raccoon.”

“Ah.” My dad nods knowingly, smiling. “So you’ve met Bandit.”

“He’s keeping that thing as a pet. You know that, right?”

Dad chuckles. “Jonah found him living under his house last year. He was just a kit; guess he’d lost his family. So he started tossing him scraps of food to help him out until he moved on his way. But he never did.”

“Of course he didn’t. No one’s going to leave an all-you-can-eat buffet to starve in the wild.”

“Jonah built him a little den on the porch and he lives in there. Seems quite comfortable.”

“He was petting it today.” I cringe.

“Bandit’s a friendly enough little guy. He likes the attention.” Dad sounds like he approves of this.

“You guys do realize that raccoons carry disease, right?”

Dad waves my concern away. “Nah, he’s fine. Jonah’s friend is a vet. She gave Bandit his rabies shot. Boy, did they have a time of it. Jonah had to put a sleeping dart into him.” He pauses. “’Course, I don’t think Marie’s supposed to be vaccinating them so, as far as anyone knows . . .” He gives me a look of warning.

“Who am I going to tell?” Besides my mother, and Diana of course.

Dad shifts checker pieces around absently. “What about you? I remember you being pretty set on getting a dog, way back when. Did that ever happen?”

“No. Simon’s allergic to pretty much everything on four legs. That’s fine, though. I have too much going on in my life anyway. I had a fish one time, though. For Christmas.”

He frowns in thought. “You know, I think I remember that.”

“His name was Guppy. He was . . . a guppy.” I roll my eyes at my childish simplicity. “He lasted a week before he went for the golden flush.”

“So . . . no pets.”