After the Fire by Jane Rule

drift that freedom would bring.
    But if there really was a plan to this life, these last years of Hart’s life might have better been allocated to Peter. Yet Peter might have been badly damaged rather than killed, and so perhaps Hart was living out a limbo his son had been spared. If you could just know that, if you could see the use, then not so much of life would seem such a terrible waste. Henrietta could not quite convince herself. Suffering so isolated people that it was hard to believe they might be doing it for each other. Henrietta could certainly understand why you’d want to believe that.
    I’m like a three-year-old, she thought as she got dressed, still asking why, why, why of God, a bored grown-up whose attention is almost impossible to get.
    When she remembered Red was due this morning, her tiredness lifted. She was always better off with her attention focused on someone else.
    The puppy bolted through the door ahead of Red, nails clattering across the linoleum of the kitchen floor, eager and then suddenly cautious, backing up against Red’s legs.
    “This is Blackie,” Red said. “I had to bring her, but I’ll tie her up outside.”
    “I’ve heard about you,” Henrietta said, offering her hand to the puppy to sniff and then to lick, while Red refastened her leash.
    “I just more or less have to put up with her for another month until she’s old enough to learn to behave,” Red said.
    There was a faint blush of color under Red’s usually very pale skin. Scarlet, Henrietta suddenly remembered and was surprised at how the name didn’t suit Red so much as describe some new life in her face, a pilot light glowing that hadn’t been there before.
    “What made you decide to get a dog?” Henrietta asked when Red came back from tying Blackie up.
    “For company,” Red said, “and I want her to be a watchdog, too.”
    Red’s answer to putting her money in the bank? Often Red took Henrietta’s suggestions and turned them to her own purposes.
    The puppy began to bark, outraged at being shut out and tied up. Red frowned.
    “She needs a shoe,” Henrietta decided.
    She went to Hart’s closet. She’d thrown out all his old gardening clothes, but she had not been able to get rid of clothes he might wear into town; yet going to the theater or a concert was as much beyond him as mowing the lawn. She ought to decide what he should be buried in and dispose of the rest. She took one of his oldest black dress shoes.
    “Oh,” Red said, “isn’t there an old slipper?”
    “He might still need those,” Henrietta said.
    “But somebody else could get wear out of this.”
    “Just this pair,” Henrietta said, “I’d rather give to the puppy to chew. I’m sure Hart would, too.”
    Reluctantly, Red took the shoe out to her indignant dog.
    “Now don’t get any fancy ideas,” Henrietta heard her say, “about chewing anything else as good as this.”
    For the moment, Blackie was pacified. The shoe was substantial enough to be a friend or an enemy or a teething comfort.
    Henrietta watched Red as she came back inside. “You know, you’re looking awfully well these days. I think you’re finally putting some flesh on those bones.”
    “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’m pregnant.”
    Of course she was. The moment she said it, Henrietta greeted the fact as something she already knew, but she didn’t know what to make of it.
    “I want to be,” Red said. “I want a baby.”
    “And the father, does he …”
    “I want to have it just by myself,” Red said. “I can take care of it.”
    “I’m sure you can,” Henrietta said. “Have you been to see a doctor?”
    “I don’t want to be fussed at about it,” Red said firmly. “I know what to do.”
    “You get a puppy.”
    Red grinned. “Partly. By the time the baby’s born, Blackie will be old enough to help.”
    “Dogs can be jealous of babies.”
    “That’s why I got a bitch. They’re less likely to be, and I can train her.”
    Only when