Autumn Calling by T. Lynne Tolles Page B

scarf, making her look like a Gibson girl right out of the
pages of a 1890’s magazine. Every once in a while she’d pick a stem
of herb or a flower and smell it as she sauntered on her way.
    Evenings were spent with Daniel, whether
playing with Sully or talking on the porch under the stars.
    * * *
    It had been well over a week since Summer
had her last words with Tori when she woke to find her coffee table
leaning hard to the right.
    “What the heck?” she said as she inspected
it closely. Deep gouges were gnawed into the disfigured leg as well
as some singeing.
    “Sully. Did you do that?” she said angrily.
His sad looking eyes looked at her finger then to the table leg and
back to her as if to say, “Uh, yup.”
    “No chewing on the furniture, Sully. That’s
a bad dog,” she reprimanded, tripping over a chew bone and a triple
knotted rope. “It’s not like you don’t have things to chew on,” she
said, picking up the toys that littered the area and depositing
them into a heavy duty canvas bucket she’d found at a garage sale.
It looked to her like it could handle some serious chewing; at
least more than the grapevine basket that held Sully’s toys before
that was more or less a nub of twigs after he got done with it.
    As she was picking up things, she found a
book that looked like the back of a porcupine, as well as her
favorite sunglasses that disappeared. At least she thought they
were the remnants of her sunglasses.
    She stood with the evidence in hand and one
hand on her hip in front of the obvious perpetrator.
    “What is this?” she said, holding the items
in front of him. “Did you do this too?” she scolded. He cocked his
head to the right, perking up his ears, and then licked her toes as
if to apologize.
    “I like kisses, Sully. That’s a good dog,
but this,” she shook the mutilated book and sunglasses, “This is
not all right. Don’t chew on my stuff, Sully. Okay?”
    He wagged his tail as his tongue hung out
over his lower canines, and she couldn’t help herself; she patted
him on the head. Sully had her wrapped around his dewclaw, and he
and she both knew it. All he had to do was lick her or flash a sad
face, and she melted. Of course, he had a perpetual sad face on all
the time, so he basically got whatever he wanted.
    When she finished cleaning up Sully’s toys,
he ran over to the bucket and started retrieving the items as if it
were great fun to re-scatter them about the room. Summer ignored
him, curled up on the couch, and read her emails for the morning as
she sipped coffee.
    She often received funny antidotes or comics
from Sister Margaret, so she didn’t think twice when she saw her
name in her inbox. She clicked on the name only to find a short
letter to her.
    “My dear Summer. You know I love you
dearly.”
    Oh, no. Whenever Sister Margaret started a
sentence with “You know I love you dearly,” there was always a
“but” to follow with some kind of reprimand.
    Summer continued reading. “But I felt it
necessary to intervene in this squabble you and Victoria have
concocted. In my opinion, your actions are very unlike you. Why
would you not find the time to visit your best friend in the
hospital? Didn’t the sisters and I teach you better than that? I’ve
never known you to be unsympathetic to those in need. I just don’t
understand this change in you. Have you forgotten our teachings?
God would be very disappointed in you, my child. I think he’d want
you to mend your fences and repent for your misdeeds.”
    “I expect to hear happy tidings next time I
speak with Victoria, instead of the sad scuttlebutt of our last
communications. I hope you will agree.”
    “In all things glory be to God.”
    “Sister Margaret.”
    “Oh boy,” Summer thought. Tori must have
given the sister an earful. She hadn’t expected that, but she
didn’t know what the fallout would be of her exaggerated
falsification. It brought the wound it had made to the forefront
yet again, and