“Did you know Dalmatians are born without spots?”
Sheri looked up from her book. “What are you talking about?”
“Baby Dalmatians. They’re spotless.”
“We’re not getting a dog.”
“No, I know. They’re messy. I don’t mean they’re spotless spotless. I mean they are born all white with pink bellies and looking a lot like fat little rats with round paws.”
“So.”
“What do you mean, ‘so’?”
“I mean so. So what? Who cares whether Dalmatians have spots or not when they are born?”
“Well, if you get a Dalmatian puppy, you don’t have any idea what it is going to look like when it is a full-grown dog.”
“Doesn’t it look like its parents?”
“Not necessarily.” Blanca leaned forward in her chair, her hands balled into little mallets, drumming the air. “I mean, it will be white with spots. But it could be a lot of spots, or a few, or only on one side. Mom might have black spots that look like eyebrows and a moustache, and baby dog could have an all-white face and a little bow tie. If dad has spots all over, baby dog could just have them on his right butt cheek. You never know.” She pressed her knuckles together under her chin.
Sheri closed her book and reached for the remote on the table. “Do you want to watch the dog show again?”
“No.” Her hands thudded onto her thighs. “It’s just… You just never know.”
Sheri beat a rhythm with her thumbs on the book. Its plastic dust jacket rattled.
Blanca looked at her festive manicure, silvery blue with chubby white snowmen painted on the ring fingers. “I think I saw my daughter today.”
Sheri clutched her hands together, capturing one thumb with the other. The firelight illuminated her squared jawline.
“I mean, I don’t know if it was her. How could I? She was eight days old when I…” Blanca dug at a ragged cuticle. “But there was this girl at the library. She was wearing polka-dotted snow boots.”
Sheri smiled tightly.
“She was having trouble with the checkout machine. And she… She…”
“She what?”
“She seemed familiar.”
Sheri softened. “Did she have your curls?”
Blanca shrugged.
“Was she at least a redhead?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. She was in a hat.” Blanca stared at her slippers.
Sheri picked imaginary lint off the arm of the chair.
“Anyway, back then, she just had fuzz.” She stepped one teddy bear face on the other.
“I see what’s happening here.” Sheri opened her arms. Her book slipped onto the floor in front of the recliner. “Let me hold you. Come here.”
Blanca sat across Sheri’s lap and buried her head against the soft fleece of her collar.
“You’re feeling lonely. This is this season for it.” She rocked a gentle cadence. “The lights. The songs. The ‘magic’.”
The fire crackled and spat as a log settled in the grate. Wet snowflakes splashed silently against the window. Sheri felt tears drip against her neck, like water from a warming icicle.
“I used to watch you from the information desk, you know.”
Blanca nestled in closer.
“You were never good at that checkout machine, either.”
Liisa Walimaa dreams of snowy holidays as she writes from the warm Arizona desert.
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