The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal

you do to my dog? Give him a love potion? He’s not usually all that friendly.”
    “I met him before I met you, actually,” she said, and traced the line of black on the tip of his ears. His eyes were half closed, and he suddenly fell over on his back and turned his belly up to her. She rubbed the silky tummy as she weighed how much to say. “He was chasing a rabbit, just outside of town.”
    “Jeez, I’ve never seen him act like this.”
    Tessa met the dog’s blue eyes. Kept his secret. “Dogs like me.”
    “We want to go swimming, Daddy!” said the middle girl, a slim brown pencil with a white-blond braid that swept her butt.
    “Hold your horses, babe. Let your sister change her clothes.”
    “Can we just wade right there at the edge?”
    “To your ankles, that’s all. Hold Hannah’s hand.” He dropped a pack and yanked a zipper open. From within, he grabbed a bottle of sunscreen and stood up. To Tessa he said, “Don’t run off, huh?”
    “The dog and I will hold down the fort.”
    “Pedro is his name,” Vince said.
    Tessa met the dog’s eyes. “Pedro and I will hold down the fort.”
    The other dog, who had a terrier face, hauled herself to her feet to take an endless drink from the lake, then wobbled back to the shade and collapsed not far from where Tessa sat. The girls stood with their feet in the water, knees like cypress trees reflecting back on the surface, holding their arms out and tilting up faces for sunscreen, rotating by degrees to let their father rub lotion from strap to strap. He was very thorough. The baby was very fair, and Vince dabbed lotion under her eyes, along her scalp, and rubbed a second helping over her tiny shoulders. She giggled and danced away. He hauled her back, patted her bottom. “Scamp.”
    Impossible not to like a man who could be that tender. Genuine.
    She hummed “Rescue Me” under her breath and stopped the instant she heard what it was, her cheeks flushing.
    Out of the trees came the oldest girl, poured into a red one-piece. Her tummy jutted out in a little Buddha shape. She dropped her shirt and shorts in a pile next to Pedro and paused, looking at the clear blue lake shining like a mirror in the bright, hot afternoon. She sighed.
    Tessa asked, “Don’t you like to swim?”
    “Have you ever
been
in that lake?”
    “No, I don’t live here.”
    “It’s cold,” she said, and rubbed her arms.
    “Really? Like how cold?”
    “Like filling-up-a-bathtub-and-pouring-ice-cubes-in cold.”
    “Oooh, that’s pretty bad. Maybe it would help if you got really, really hot first? Lie in the sun with me for a minute, and then when we can’t stand it, I’ll dive in with you.”
    The girl blinked. “I don’t even know you.” She primly walked barefoot across the sand to join the other two girls.
    Tessa leaned into Pedro. “She told me, huh?”
    He licked her nose, his blue eyes direct and adoring.
    “Wow,” she said, “you are some dog. I’m glad to meet you.”
    He stuck by her side while the girls splashed and played for a half hour. Vince hovered nearby, but none of them wanted to actually swim, just dance along the shallow water, and after a few minutes he sat down with Tessa. He smelled of sunscreen and sun-dried laundry and a note that was entirely his own, a watermelon scent of freshly cut grass. His bare arm was only inches away from her own, and she fancied she could feel the heat of it.
    “Tell me their names,” she said.
    “Natalie, the oldest. Jade, the middle one, and Hannah is the baby.” They were splashing one another, and Natalie, despite her protestations, was as splashy and playful as the other two once she let down her guard. “Do you have sisters?” he asked.
    “No, I’m an only child.”
    “Me, too, and I think it’s a disadvantage as a parent. These guys fight like the Crow—counting coup if they can’t draw blood. It’s crazy.”
    “I think kids just do that.”
    “So my mother says.” He looked at her. “No