Molly carefully considered it for a moment. She had questions to ask Abby, ones that probably were highly impertinent and wouldn’t help any. Instead of asking them, she fell into a story telling cadence. “When I was about, oh, about Bridget’s age; my best friend Jaime and I found the cutest puppy wandering around the streets. It was white, or it would have been if it were clean, with these adorable brown patches. It had the kind of fur that you could tell, when it got brushed out, it would be soft as feather down. So, of course, Jaime wanted to keep it. I said it was a stray and probably mean and that we should leave it be. But my vote never counted on the ‘important’ things. Jaime had a bit of biscuit with him, and he tried to feed it to the dog. But the creature bit him – even though he was trying to be nice. I was immediately sworn to secrecy because Jaime’s mum would have killed him if she found out.”
“I kept my word, too, for about an hour. And during that time, the dog seemed happy and Jaime was happy, so we decided it had just been an accident. But then he went to pet it and it bit him again. Well, this time Theo found out – it was a good thing it was Theo and not Bran because Theo is much more understanding about these things. I don’t remember what happened to the dog, but I know that he took care of it; took it to someone I think.”
“Any way, that night after dinner, I thought I was going to be in real trouble because I hadn’t tattled, but Theo just turned and laughed. He said that he knew Jaime would always be the type to pick up strays. And he looked at me, so that I knew it was me he was talking about. I got really mad at him then, and I stormed off. It wasn’t until years later I understood what he was telling me.”
“Even when Jaime was nice to me, I’d pick fights with him. I’d fuss and start problems, and he’d fuss too but he always put up with it. For years. Until one day, he got tired of me ‘biting’ back. He remembered that he had money and rank and there were people who wouldn’t fight him all the time. He went out and found a girl and got married. I didn’t learn what Theo was trying to tell me in time for it to matter; but I’m trying to learn it now.”