June had the crate half folded when Otis stepped into it. He turned on the bare plastic tray, found that his tail wouldn’t fit, and looked at her. She caught the wire panel before it could fall across his back.
“That’s for Saturday,” Ruth said. “He doesn’t have to get in it now.”
June knelt and opened the other side. At ten, Otis needed room to turn; she had explained this to the rescue volunteer twice. The couple from Newark, Ohio, had a fenced yard and no other animals, which Ruth repeated whenever June found something wrong with the arrangement.
Her sister stood beside three grocery bags of dishes. There were six days left on June’s lease, and Ruth had cleared her sewing things out of the small bedroom in her apartment. Her landlord had refused permission for a forty-pound dog.
“He’ll need this under the tray,” June said, pulling a folded towel from the laundry basket. “It rattles in a car.”
“I’ll write it down.”
“I already wrote it down.”
Ruth looked at the sheet on the refrigerator. June had filled both sides: food, the ear he didn’t like touched, the way to get him past a bicycle without hauling on his neck. At the bottom, she had written her phone number twice.
Otis walked out of the crate and stood against her. His coat left short brown hairs on everything, including the black pants she wore to clean offices at night. She rubbed the hollow above his shoulder until he shifted his weight and rested one back foot.
For fourteen years June Bell had driven the morning van for West Mill Neighbor Ride, taking passengers across Licking County. She could get a nervous passenger down its steps without making him feel carried, knew which houses had railings loose enough to betray a hand. Six months without that work had taken her savings. The cleaning jobs brought in less than half her old pay.
Her landlord had agreed to wait until Friday before offering the apartment to another tenant. Ruth thought that was kindness. June wished the woman had simply said no; she kept catching herself measuring what she owned against one more month’s rent.
“The rescue lady said it’s a trial,” Ruth said. “You can see how it goes.”
June fastened Otis’s leash. He had started watching the front door whenever the bags came out, and she wanted to give him an ordinary walk before Ruth carried anything else away. She put two treats in her coat pocket, then took out one. He was getting heavy.
“Where are you taking him?”
“Around the school.”
Ruth moved a bag so they could get through. June was grateful enough for that small accommodation to kiss her sister’s cheek, something she had not done when Ruth offered the bedroom.
The school route crossed the older part of West Mill, where narrow houses stood close to the sidewalk. A maple had filled the Dent family’s wheelchair ramp with wet leaves. Diana Dent was sweeping them toward the street while her father waited inside the glass storm door.
June slowed before she meant to. In May, Walter had climbed her van’s steps with a hand under his elbow. Now Diana kept a chair near every doorway for him, and the new ramp took up most of the front yard.
Diana saw her and stopped sweeping. June could have turned down the alley, but Otis had already found something worth investigating in the grass strip. She waited while he sniffed, holding the leash with both hands.
“Those leaves get slick,” she said.
“I know.”
Walter tapped the glass with his cane. Through the door he told his daughter that she’d put the broom away from the wrong end again. Diana leaned it against the rail with the handle up, where he could reach it from his chair.
He had always corrected June’s turns on the noon return, even when she took the street he recommended. She almost raised a hand to him. She couldn’t tell whether he had seen her, and she let it remain in her pocket.
“I used to bring the van right up to your back gate,” she said. “If you need somebody to move those pots—”
“We’ve got it.” Diana glanced at Otis. “Please don’t let him come up here.”
June shortened the leash, although the dog hadn’t moved toward the ramp. She said goodbye too brightly and crossed the street. Behind her, Walter began telling Diana that she would break the broom leaning on it.
The account in the paper had said that June failed to check her van and left an elderly passenger inside on a hot afternoon. The agency dismissed her. Nobody had charged her with a crime, but at the grocery store she sometimes reached the end of an aisle and found a neighbor suddenly interested in another one.
She had checked every seat. She remembered Walter standing in the office doorway when she put away her clipboard, waiting for Diana, who was running late. She had said those things until Ruth began asking whether saying them again was helping her sleep.
At the next corner, Otis turned toward the old fire station. June said his name and kept walking. He stopped with his front feet together, the leash stretched between them.
Neighbor Ride rented the station’s two bays and the rooms behind them. Before May, Otis spent June’s shifts under the office counter, where Beth Raines, the director, kept his water bowl away from the phone cords. June picked him up after her last run, and they left by the loading door. She had been crossing the street before this corner for months.
“Come on. We’re going to the school.”
Otis looked over his shoulder at the door. Then he sat on the damp concrete, facing the door. June could drag him, or she could walk twenty feet and let him discover that the door no longer opened for her.
She took the twenty feet. Before she reached the bay, a woman came out carrying a dented coffee can, and Otis pulled so sharply that June had to brace her foot.
“Hey, Oats.” Lena Cruz crouched and set down the can. “You remember me?”
His tail struck the metal jamb. Lena put both hands on his chest, and he leaned forward until she sat down on the step, laughing once as she caught him. June remembered those hands fumbling with the van’s stiff seat buckles during Lena’s first week, and how patient she had been with Lena then.
Lena’s jacket was the same green one, washed pale around the cuffs. She looked up without standing. June had last seen her across Beth’s desk, beneath the framed county safety certificate, after Lena signed the account used to dismiss her.
“He could use some water,” Lena said.
“He’s had water.”
Lena nodded. Otis shoved his muzzle under her sleeve, looking for the soft treats she used to keep there. June almost told him to stop, then watched Lena show him her empty palm.
“Ruth said you’re moving.”
“Ruth tells everybody everything.”
“She asked if I knew anybody with room. My place allows dogs. I told her I could keep him while you got settled.”
June remembered Beth staying past closing to find a ride for Lena when her car broke down, remembered all of them pooling leftovers for lunch. She had belonged to those small exchanges. Then the statement appeared, and Beth stopped returning her calls, and Lena’s signature sat beneath a sentence June knew was false.
“Give me his leash,” June said, though it was still in her own hand.
Lena stood. She had been hired at twenty-two, kept on after the incident, and had not called again after June told her what she thought of her. Otis pressed his nose against her knee while she tried to find somewhere to put her hands.
“I wasn’t trying to take him from you.”
“You think I could leave him here? With you?”
Lena looked toward the office, then reached behind her and pulled the door shut. June felt the small movement of air against her wrist. For once, Lena wasn’t looking to see whether Beth would answer for her. “June. About Walter.”
“I let him into the van,” Lena said. “After you went home.”
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