Read Comet's Tale for Free Online Page B

decision to join the family was a great idea. Freddie also made it clear that my part in this whole venture was highly irresponsible and bordered on lunacy. I was very lucky the end justified the means.
    Much too soon, Freddie prepared to return to Omaha. The ladies, new best friends, eagerly anticipated their next meeting. As she waited at the front door for the airport shuttle, Freddie advised Comet, “Be patient with Wolfie.” Then, after a pause, “Keep an eye on him for me.”

4
    MAY 2000—ARIZONA TO NEBRASKA
    The shuttle delivered Freddie to my doorstep again in the first week of May. During her brief absence, spring had arrived in Sedona. Electric blue rosemary flowers in my front garden buzzed with bees, and the tangy scent of new sage drifted across the yard. Walnut-sized quail chicks waddled in the lacy shadows of a manzanita bush, as momma quail encouraged a quicker pace. A twelve-foot agave stalk bursting with fuzzy yellow nest-shaped blooms towered overhead. Freddie stepped from the van and stood for a moment admiring the desert diorama. She inhaled deeply, then hoisted her luggage from the back of the shuttle and headed for the house. I stood in the shadowed doorway, wishing I could leap to the sidewalk and grab those bags from her hands. While I balanced on my canes, Comet spun in gleeful circles behind me.
    â€œWolfie! Comet! Hello!” Freddie shouted, laughing as Comet squeezed past me to greet her. It was a scene straight from a Hallmark card, but my only thought was, Comet’s never that excited to see me.
    Yes, I was grumpy. More accurately, I was worried. Freddie had come to drive me and Comet back to Omaha, where we would gather for the summer at the lake house with our three daughters (and now, three dogs). Kylie, soon to be twenty-one and living mostly at college, and Lindsey, who would be a high school senior in the fall, lived and held jobs in Omaha from June through August, but they loved spending weekends at the lake. Jackie was fifteen and still lived at home. According to the master plan, the family would enjoy the same kind of carefree summer we always had in the past. But I had a strong suspicion that my homecoming might be more like a bad high school reunion, the kind where the star athlete returns as a balding blob of middle-aged mediocrity. I couldn’t imagine how the girls would react to my bent spine and crooked gait, which were much more pronounced than they had been the last time they saw me. Freddie had carefully avoided discussing my health with them for the eight months I had been gone. The girls had not pressed her for details.
    Sedona was safe because people only knew me as the broken-down neighbor who owned Comet. Home was different. I treasured my daughters. I was far from perfect, and they were the first to point out my weaknesses, especially my inability to dress myself tastefully. But before my fall on the basketball court and subsequent decline, I had always tried to be a man they looked up to, their own flawed hero. I wanted to be the man in the poem “He,” written by a much younger Lindsey during one of the girls’ childhood adventures to my law office:
    He is like a sun that brightens up my life
    He can always make me smile when I am down
    He always encourages me to do my best
    He loves me for who I am
    He is the best man I have ever known
    He is my best friend
    He is my Dad
    I was scared that I would never be He again. I was petrified that my family might decide that their old memories of me were more comforting than a reunion with a disabled shell of a father.
    â€œDid you make sure the neighbors have keys so they can check on the house once in a while?” Freddie’s question penetrated the quiet twilight of the backyard where we sat, exhausted, after clearing the cupboards of food and readying the place for my absence.
    â€œWolf ! Anybody home?” My mind slowly bobbed to the surface.
    â€œSorry. I was just