Violet Eyes Read Online Free Page B

floor. “Tracie brought that stuff with her,” he said. “She said it could be just like a sleepover.”
    In her head, Rachel thought, Well, you won’t be the one getting up at 4 a.m. to answer a whining puppy two hours before you have to get up to go to work , but she held her tongue when she saw the look in her son’s eyes. It was a look that hadn’t been there very much in the past few months. The divorce and the move had been hard on Eric. Maybe harder on him truthfully than on her—after all, this was the first time his life had been uprooted ever. He acted so grown up sometimes she could almost forget he was only ten. Just a kid…and everything he’d grown to trust in his first few years had just been ripped apart. Flushed away overnight.
    “Well…” she began.
    The puppy turned away from Eric at the sound of her voice and shimmied over to sniff excitedly at the cuffs of her capris. The warmth of his breath on her bare calf tickled.
    “All right,” Rachel laughed, bending down to pet the small head that bobbed even more frantically at her touch. “He can stay overnight. After that…we’ll have to see. Having a dog is a big responsibility.”
    Eric’s hopeful grin spread wide and he threw his arms around her. “You’ll love him, I know you will.”
    Rachel nodded with a sad smile. Loving someone didn’t always mean you wanted to live with them. But, she supposed, Eric would have to learn that lesson soon enough. It seemed that everybody did, sooner or later.
     
     
    “So, tell me about your day,” Rachel urged, as she moved back and forth from the stove to the refrigerator, trying to pull together a makeshift dinner in record time.
    Eric cooed over the puppy in the corner, scratching its head and belly. “It was fine,” he said.
    “Fine?” she laughed. “That’s all you can say about it?”
    “Well, what do you want?” he answered. His voice was sterner now. “Do you want to hear about how Mr. Verger gave me a C on our pop quiz in Earth Science because I didn’t know that paleontologists study dinosaurs? Or that this bitch Jamie Ketch…”
    “Language!”
    “Okay, this jerk Jamie Ketch flipped my lunch onto the cafeteria floor for a joke?”
    “So you’re not liking the new school so far?” Rachel said quietly, cracking an egg over the mix of breadcrumbs and hamburger meat on the plate in front of her. She’d been afraid of the adjustment he was going to have to make, transferring into a school at the end of the term. And that he might not make it, just because he didn’t want to be here.
    “It’s not all bad.” He shrugged. “I met Tracie. And her dogs.”
    “Hmmm.” Rachel nodded. “So you like her?”
    “She’s cool,” Eric agreed. “She plays DS a lot, so she was giving me some good cheats.”
    “Great,” Rachel said. “As if you need to spend more time on video games.”
    Eric raised one falsely innocent eye. “Well, if we can keep the puppy, I’ll have to spend a lot more time with him .”
    “Uh-huh,” Rachel said. “I’m not cleaning up dog crap from the backyard every day. I’ve already got to clean the dishes and your laundry.”
    Eric bent down and cradled the pup in his arms, and was quickly rewarded by a wet, pink tongue in the face. “I’ll take care of him, Mom, just like you take care of me.”
    Something in Rachel’s chest melted, and she found she couldn’t say a word. Instead, she just blinked back tears as she smashed the hamburger mix into meatballs and dropped them into the hot grease of the pan.
    She knew in her heart that no matter what she said, the dog wasn’t going back to Tracie’s tomorrow. And maybe that was okay. Life was moving on. And new life moving in. That’s why she’d come here, right?
    To start fresh.
     
     
    After dinner, Rachel cleared the table and led them to the front room to the couch. “C’mon,” she called. “It’s been a long day.”
    As she sank into the cushions with a deep sigh, Eric grinned and