Part 3
Daniel put the unanswered phone back in his pocket and took Mica home. He would soak her breakfast before bed and collect what Elise had prescribed on Friday. Those dates stayed in his head without effort; the appointment he’d canceled remained canceled.
By February, Mica sometimes finished a meal while he was still in the kitchen. She slept beside the radiator on good nights and returned to cover after a slammed car door. On those evenings Daniel found food behind the curtain again, small pieces arranged close to his boots.
Walt Mercer first came to see her carrying a radio that worked perfectly.
He lived next door, a sixty-eight-year-old retired lineman with white hair under a red wool cap. Forty years of utility work showed in the scars across his hands and the way he glanced up at every pole when he walked. Retirement had given him more time for Pinewater County’s winter outreach rounds and for inspecting things Daniel hadn’t asked him to inspect.
Daniel switched the radio on. Music filled the kitchen.
“Didn’t do that at my house,” Walt said.
“Did you try the switch?”
Walt put a bag of cinnamon rolls on the counter. “You planning to let me stand here all morning?”
They ate and talked about a transformer brace that needed attention. Walt didn’t bend toward the table or put his hand out for Mica. He left space between his chair and the wall, and she watched him use it without once having to retreat.
On the fourth visit, she stayed outside her hiding place. On the sixth, she came close enough to sniff the red leather lineman’s glove sticking out of Walt’s back pocket. He let her investigate while he complained about Daniel’s coffee.
“That’s progress,” he said after she’d gone.
Daniel looked at the glove. “Check you’ve still got both.”
Mica had begun collecting things on their walks: a child’s mitten, a mail carrier’s cap, a wool scarf from Edith Kline’s front steps. She carried them gently for a few yards, sniffing, then left them beside Daniel or turned toward home. Nothing had tooth marks when he returned it.
Edith came over for the scarf herself. She was seventy-nine, lived in a yellow house, and made it clear that she hadn’t needed anybody to fetch her property.
“I’ll take that,” she told Daniel, pointing beside Mica’s bed.
Before he could reach down, Mica pushed the scarf toward Edith’s shoe. Edith stood with her hands on her hips a moment longer, trying to preserve the complaint she’d brought. Then she crouched carefully to pick it up.
The blue Lakeshore Home Support van was outside the community center when a driver’s work glove fell near its rear tire. Mica had it in her mouth before Daniel could shorten the leash. The driver turned from his insulated grocery bags and shouted.
Mica dropped against Daniel’s leg.
“Get that off her,” the man said, advancing. “You ought to have that dog on a leash.”
Daniel raised the hand holding it. “Stay there. I’ll get your glove.”
Daniel held his ground until the driver gave up approaching. The glove dropped onto the pavement, leaving Mica’s mouth empty and her body trembling. At home she stayed close to her hiding place through dinner. When Daniel checked on her around midnight, scraps of the meal were tucked behind the mudroom curtain.
Daniel sat on the kitchen floor until she came to lie just beyond his reach. He didn’t ask her to come closer. After a while he stretched his legs out, leaving his hands on his own knees.
Walt heard about the van from Edith. The next morning he arrived empty-handed, accepted coffee, and said Lakeshore had been losing drivers.
“Doesn’t excuse hollering at a dog,” Daniel said.
“No. There’s something else, though.” Walt took out a small blue spiral notebook. “Janet Halsey called Edith about a home visit they said they’d completed. Edith told her nobody had come.”
Janet coordinated the county outreach work. Walt had asked around his volunteer route afterward; two more residents remembered no visit on days Lakeshore’s records showed one. He opened the notebook to the names he’d written down.
Daniel read them. “People forget.”
“That’s why I want to check.”
The radio interrupted them with the next evening’s forecast: severe lake-effect snow. Walt tapped the six names. He meant to check on those residents while their roads were still open, whatever the county’s examination of Lakeshore’s records eventually established.
Daniel pushed the notebook back. “Take my tracked rig. Tank’s full.”
“I need another pair of hands.”
“Then you need somebody who isn’t sick.”
Walt’s fingers tightened around his mug. “You could drive. You could help me call. I’m not asking you to carry a transformer.”
“You don’t get to decide what this thing leaves me able to do.”
Mica got up by the radiator. Walt glanced at her, then set the mug down with half the coffee still in it. He put his gloves on slowly.
“I’ll make the rounds,” he said.
Daniel watched the red cap cross the narrow yard between their properties. Walt went into his workshop, where he kept his outreach supplies. Daniel could have followed and offered an hour in the driver’s seat or a few calls from his kitchen.
He pulled the curtain shut.
The following afternoon, the storm came six hours ahead of the forecast. By dark, snow filled the spaces between the streetlights, and the wind drove it against the siding hard enough to make Mica pace. Daniel checked his generator and exhaust vents, carried in wood, and kept finding another small job to finish.
At eight he texted Walt: You through being stubborn?
At eight-thirty he tried calling. The ringing stopped at voicemail, and he told himself Walt was out with one of the county crews. He put the phone on the counter where he could hear it.
At nine, Mica began scratching at the mudroom door. Daniel clipped on her long line and stepped outside with her, expecting the usual quick trip along the shoveled edge of the house. She pulled straight toward the fence between the yards.
The line caught on a buried shrub. When Daniel stopped to free it, she lunged, one shoulder working partly out of her harness. He caught the chest strap and went with her into the drift.
She came up with a red leather glove in her mouth. Back at his threshold, she dropped it at his feet, then turned and strained toward Walt’s dark workshop.
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