Part 2 of 4
Graham turned right.
He told himself it was because of the marker. It sat in the cup holder beside him, blue cap snapped tight, the shelter’s logo printed in white along the side. Returning it was a reasonable errand. A clean errand. The kind of errand that did not require a man to examine why he had slept badly after receiving a photograph of a puppy in a food bowl.
His phone rang before he reached the shelter parking lot.
“Ellis,” Rick said when Graham answered through the truck speaker. “Tell me you’re not still on the road.”
“I’m on the road.”
“You’re supposed to be at the east gate in five minutes.”
“I’ll be late.”
A pause. Rick had a particular kind of silence that always sounded like a chewing motion. “We’ve got concrete guys, a plumbing subcontractor, and two trucks waiting on access. This isn’t the Navy. We don’t have a backup plan named after every letter of the alphabet.”
“You’ll have coverage,” Graham said. “I’ll call Shane.”
“Why are you late?”
“Personal errand.”
Rick laughed once, without humor. “You don’t have personal errands.”
Graham pulled into the lot and parked facing out, old habit, automatic as breathing. “I do today.”
He ended the call before Rick could ask another question.
Inside the shelter, Claire was at the front counter with a stack of intake forms. She looked up as soon as the bell over the door rang, and whatever greeting she had been about to offer changed when she saw his face.
“He didn’t eat much this morning,” she said.
The marker suddenly felt ridiculous in his hand. Graham set it on the counter anyway. “You lead with that for everyone?”
“Only the ones who ask at ten-thirty at night.”
“I asked one question.”
“You asked the right one.”
She came around the desk, and he followed her down the hallway without pretending he had stopped by only for the pen. The small animal room was quieter than the front, warmed by a space heater and lined with blankets, towels, and labeled bins. Scout was in a low enclosure near the window, awake but still. He looked smaller in daylight.
Then he saw Graham.
The change was immediate. Scout got his feet under him, bumped into the side of the enclosure, corrected course, and made a determined sound somewhere between a squeak and a command. Claire opened the gate before he could climb it.
“Take it easy,” she told him.
Scout ignored her, crossed the room, and pressed both front paws against Graham’s boot.
Graham crouched. “You’re supposed to eat.”
The puppy sniffed his hand, dismissed the lecture, and shoved his nose into the pocket of Graham’s work jacket. Before Graham understood what was happening, Scout had seized a folded receipt from the hardware store and staggered backward with the prize in his mouth.
“Hey.”
Scout turned and fled at the speed of a damp sponge sliding downhill.
Claire put a hand over her mouth. Graham stared for half a second, then went after him. The puppy darted behind a tub of clean towels, lost his footing, recovered, and dragged the receipt like evidence. Graham could have caught him in one step, but something about Scout’s terrible confidence made him slow down.
“Oh, so now we steal documents,” he said.
Scout sneezed around the paper.
Claire laughed then, not at the puppy alone, and Graham heard himself laugh with her. It was fuller this time. Less accidental. He reached down and lifted the receipt from Scout’s mouth with two fingers, and the puppy released it easily, as if the point had never been possession. It had been pursuit.
Graham smoothed the damp paper against his knee. “You’re bad at this.”
“He got you to play,” Claire said. “From his perspective, that’s excellent work.”
Graham looked at the puppy, who had sat directly on his boot. “He’s five weeks old. He doesn’t have a perspective.”
“He has opinions.”
“He has teeth and poor balance.”
“Also opinions.”
His phone rang again. Rick.
Graham stood, stepped into the hallway, and answered. “I’m not coming in this morning.”
For once, Rick seemed to have no reply ready. When he found one, it was sharp. “You want to say that again?”
“I’m taking the morning. Call Shane, give him the gate codes, and mark me down for unpaid time if you need to.”
“On delivery day?”
“On delivery day.”
“What’s going on with you?”
Graham glanced through the doorway. Scout had made a nest of Claire’s shoelace and was chewing with grave concentration. Claire was pretending not to watch Graham, which meant she was absolutely watching him.
“I said it was personal,” Graham said.
Rick exhaled hard enough for the speaker to distort. “Fine. I’ll cover it. But don’t make me guess next time.”
“I won’t.”
He ended the call and stood there for a moment, phone in hand. A decision had weight after it was made. He had forgotten that. Most of his life had become maintenance: keep the job, pay the bills, answer his sister when necessary, avoid anything that asked for more than routine. This was not routine. This had fur, a poor appetite, and an interest in stolen paper.
Claire came to the doorway. “That sounded expensive.”
“I’ll make it up.”
“I didn’t mean money.”
He slid the phone into his pocket. “I know what things cost.”
She studied him, not with pity. He was grateful for that. Pity made him mean, and he did not want to be mean to her.
“My dad used to repair the same fence panel behind our house,” she said. “He’d sand it, tighten the screws, repaint the latch. That panel was the strongest structure in Latah County by the time I was sixteen.”
Graham leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Maybe he liked fences.”
“He liked anything that didn’t ask him how he slept.”
The hallway hummed softly with fluorescent light. Somewhere in the building, Abby’s former kitten’s cousin or twin or spiritual accomplice let out a complaint from behind a closed door. Graham should have had a dozen replies. He had carried men twice Claire’s size, worked through pain, given orders under pressure, and kept calm when calm had been the only useful thing left.
All he had was, “Sleep is overrated.”
Claire’s expression changed, but only slightly. “No, it isn’t.”
Scout waddled out and parked himself between them, one paw on Graham’s boot as if claiming jurisdiction.
Graham looked down. “What happens to him?”
“For now? Foster care. He came in with the rest of his litter, but he’s behind the others. Small, not eating well, too young to be adopted outright.” Claire crossed her arms, the clipboard tucked against her side. “If he stabilizes, he can go home permanently when he’s old enough. Until then, he needs someone who can handle feedings, warmth, and a lot of cleaning up.”
“That sounds like a warning.”
“It is.”
“Good.”
She waited.
Graham looked from her to the puppy and back again. The answer had already formed. He disliked how quietly it had done so, as if some part of him had signed before his hand ever touched a pen.
“What do I need to do?” he asked.
Claire did not smile right away. He respected that too. “For fostering?”
“For whatever gets him out of here and somewhere he’ll eat.”
“That isn’t a small thing, Graham.”
“I didn’t ask if it was small.”
“No,” she said after a moment. “I guess you didn’t.”
The paperwork took longer than he expected and not as long as he needed. Claire walked him through feeding instructions, warming routines, emergency contacts, the vet appointment already scheduled for Monday, and the terms of a foster-to-adopt placement. Graham listened the way he had once listened to mission briefs, asking practical questions and writing the answers in his notebook.
Abby called halfway through.
“Are you at work?” she asked.
“No.”
A suspicious pause followed. “Where are you?”
“The shelter.”
This time the pause became delighted. “Graham.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting. I’m observing.”
“Observe quietly.”
“Did he pick you again?”
Graham looked down at Scout, who was asleep against the toe of his boot while Claire made copies of the forms. “He’s asleep.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Abby lowered her voice, as if the phone were in a church. “You’re bringing him home, aren’t you?”
“For a while.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “For a while. Like Waffles was just temporary until he learned boundaries.”
“Your cat attacks socks.”
“So does love, apparently.”
He hung up on her before she could get worse, though his thumb lingered on the screen after the call ended.
At the farm supply store on the edge of town, Graham bought formula, puppy food, two stainless steel bowls, cleaning pads, a small crate, a blanket, and a stuffed duck he had no intention of buying until Scout put one paw on it and leaned his whole body into the display. The clerk, a man with gray hair and a pencil behind his ear, watched Graham stack items on the counter.
“First puppy?” the clerk asked.
“Foster.”
The clerk scanned the bowls. “Sure.”
“That’s what it is.”
“Didn’t say it wasn’t.”
Graham paid and carried everything out in two trips. Scout rode home in the passenger seat inside the carrier, wrapped in the new blanket, his eyes half-open and fixed on Graham as if he had been assigned to monitor him.
At a stop sign, Graham glanced over. “You chose wrong,” he said.
Scout blinked slowly.
“Just so we’re clear.”
The puppy rested his chin on the blanket and went to sleep before Graham finished the turn toward home.