Part 6
Cal drove to Beth’s town on Saturday with Scout secured in the back seat and the blue bandanna folded in his coat pocket. Ruiz had released it after the evidence technicians finished with the cloth, and Nora had repaired it during one of her longer evenings. She had not hidden the tears. Fine gold stitches crossed each split place, and the three original white bars remained at the corner. When she mailed it to Cal, her note had contained only four words: When he comes home.
Scout began whining two blocks from the apartment, though he had never been there. Cal had used Nora’s soap on the blanket in the travel crate, and the scent had been growing stronger as they drove. At the curb, Scout pressed both front paws to the window.
Cal clipped on the leash and walked him to the ground-floor door. Nora waited on the other side of the glass with a cane in one hand. She was thinner, her hair shorter where nurses had cut it near the wound, but she stood without anyone holding her.
Scout saw her and made the same small, broken sound he had made beside the phone. Cal opened the outer door. The puppy lunged, hit the end of the leash, and twisted back in frustration. Six weeks earlier, Cal would have tightened his grip and commanded him to heel. Now he stepped inside, closed the street door behind them, and looked at Nora.
“Ready?” he asked.
She set the cane against the wall and lowered herself carefully onto a bench. “Yes.”
Cal unclipped the leash. Scout did not run at once. He stood between them, panting, eyes moving from Nora to Cal and back. Cal felt the pause in his chest. He kept his hands at his sides.
“Go on,” he said.
Scout crossed the tile floor slowly, as if approaching something fragile. When Nora whispered his name, the last of his caution broke. He climbed into her lap with paws and tail and frantic breath, too large now to fit and unwilling to accept the fact. Nora folded over him, laughing and crying into the fur at his neck.
Cal turned toward the window. Outside, Beth pretended to inspect a planter while wiping her face with the heel of her hand. When he looked back, Nora was holding out the blue bandanna.
“You should tie it,” she said. “My fingers still make knots when they get tired.”
Cal knelt. Scout leaned against both their knees while Cal fastened the cloth loosely around his neck. The gold repairs caught the window light, not bright enough to disguise what had been torn.
Nora touched one of the stitches. “The prosecutor offered Grant a plea. Ruiz thinks it reflects what they can prove without making me spend days in court.”
“What do you think?”
“I asked for the weekend.” She met his eyes. “No one objected.”
Cal nodded. He did not tell her what he would choose. Before Scout found him, he would have filled the silence with advice simply because uncertainty made him restless. Scout solved the silence by stealing the rubber tip from Nora’s cane.
“There he is,” she said.
Cal retrieved it before the puppy swallowed it. Nora watched his hands replace the tip, then said, “Beth thinks I should close the shop.”
“Do you?”
“I think I want one machine at the apartment first. See what an hour feels like.” She adjusted Scout’s bandanna. “June from the bookstore kept my key. She waters the plant even though I told her the plant was dead.”
“Maybe it disagrees.”
“Everyone has strong opinions now.”
The laugh that followed was small and tired but belonged to the room, not the hospital. Cal stood and picked up Scout’s travel bag.
“His food schedule is in the front pocket. Vet number is on the fridge card. He still doesn’t like metal latches. If he wakes and can’t find you—”
“Cal.”
He stopped. Nora’s hand rested on Scout’s back. “I know how to love my dog. I may need help with the stairs at the vet, and I may call you the first time a truck scares him. But I know him.”
Cal set down the bag. “You’re right.”
“I know.” She rubbed the gold stitches between her fingers. “You can visit next Saturday, if you want. Not to inspect us. Scout needs somebody who understands why rain is difficult. And I could use a ride to the shop.”
“I can do that.”
Scout followed Cal to the door, then looked back at Nora. The old fear tightened his body for an instant. Cal waited with the door open.
Nora tapped two fingers against her knee. Scout returned to her, circled once, and lay across her feet with his chin on her shoe.
Cal walked out alone. The loneliness met him in the parking lot, clean and immediate. He did not turn it into evidence that he had made the wrong choice. He put the empty travel crate in his car, sat behind the wheel until he could see clearly, and drove home with the windows cracked to let the dog smell leave in its own time.
Nora told the prosecutor the following week that she could live with the plea. Later that summer, Grant admitted the assault and the forced ride, though he still described his actions as an attempt to bring his wife home. The sentence and extended protective order gave Nora distance, not certainty; she kept her address private and learned the route to a new grocery store in stages.
By autumn, Nora had reopened Bell & Hem three mornings a week. The plant June had refused to discard had put out two green leaves, and Scout slept beneath the cutting table, larger now. Cal was back on ordinary patrol; on domestic calls, he returned to interrupted questions and waited through answers that arrived badly. On Saturdays, he drove Nora and Scout to the paved side of the creek trail, where bicycles rang before passing and benches appeared every quarter mile.
One cool morning, Scout stopped at the edge of the farmers’ market. The crowd pressed between stalls, and music drifted from the courthouse steps. He looked at Nora, then at Cal, uncertain. Neither of them pulled the leash.
After a moment, Scout stepped forward. He moved through the crowd with his ears up and the blue cloth bright beneath his chin, checking once over his shoulder to make sure both people were still there.