Part 2
“Did he put anything else in there?” Calvin asked Auggie as he cleared the supper plates.
“Just my flashlight.” Auggie glanced at Reuben, who smiled and told him a good player never gave away all his tricks. Calvin let the exchange end. If there was more to find, an argument at the table would only warn the person who had hidden it.
He washed the plates while Louisa practiced a student’s recital piece in the front room. Through the open doorway he could see Reuben help Auggie sort bricks by color, making a tower that leaned and fell between them. Reuben was good with the boy. Whatever else Calvin feared, he could not pretend the laughter was staged. Baxter watched from the hall rather than joining them. His front paws stayed at the bedroom threshold even when Auggie offered him a brick to sniff.
The following afternoon a stranger waited by Calvin’s paddock gate. Broad shoulders filled his jacket, and his eyes kept returning to the house. Calvin came out of the shop with a hoof knife still in his hand, set it on a fence post, and asked what he wanted.
“Reuben. Someone told me he was staying along this road.”
“Your name?”
“Wade. Tell him Mr. Fain wants his property.” Wade watched Calvin’s face. “He won’t ask nicely another time.”
Calvin said Reuben could be found through his own phone, then stood at the gate until Wade drove away. From the front window, Baxter watched the car disappear around the bend. Calvin had no reason to think the dog understood who had arrived. The man had looked at the house long enough to make Calvin wish Auggie were somewhere else.
After bedtime he found Reuben on the porch with the black phone cupped in one hand. When Calvin repeated Wade’s message, Reuben rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I’ve been paying a debt,” he said. “Fain sent somebody to scare me. I didn’t know they’d come here.”
“What property did you take?”
“I didn’t take anything. That’s how those people talk.”
“You let somebody who talks that way come to my gate without telling us,” Calvin said.
“I thought I could keep it away from you.” Reuben put the phone facedown on the porch rail. He seemed to have an answer ready for every part of the conversation except the one Calvin had asked first.
Reuben offered to leave in the morning. He even sounded ashamed. Calvin had heard enough of the Sageley family’s old stories to know his shame could be sincere and his account still false. As Reuben denied taking anything, his eyes flicked toward the hall and returned to Calvin. It lasted an instant. Calvin remembered Auggie’s game.
He went inside after Reuben and stopped outside the boy’s room. Baxter lifted his head. The brick bin stood on the far side of the closed door, against the wall near Auggie’s pillow. Calvin could open it and look. He could also wake his son, confront his brother-in-law with whatever he found, and leave Louisa to choose between them on the strength of a stranger’s threat. For one more night he watched the door instead.
In the morning he asked Auggie, while they waited for the bus, whether his uncle had gone into his room without him. Auggie thought about it. “Sometimes to get the flashlight back,” he said. “It’s our game.”
Calvin watched his son’s boots draw a crooked line in the gravel. At seven, Auggie could describe a rule perfectly without knowing when it should be broken. Calvin wondered whether asking him outright about a secret would make him think he had done something wrong. The dog pressed his flank against the boy’s leg. Auggie reached down and smoothed the ear that would not stand.
“Does he come in when you’re sleeping?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sleeping.”
Calvin wanted to ask another question. The bus rounded the hill, Baxter began to wag, and Auggie ran off with his lunch box before Calvin could decide how to phrase it. On the walk home the dog returned to the hall, though there was no one in it.
That night Calvin told Louisa about Wade. She set a stack of sheet music on the piano and listened until he mentioned the boy’s room.
“You think Reuben has hidden something in Auggie’s things because a stranger came by?”
“I think Reuben lied to me about what the stranger wants.”
“Then ask him to leave.”
“I did. He offered.” Calvin rested his hands on the back of a chair. “Baxter only reacts when Reuben goes near that door.”
Louisa looked toward the hall. Her mother’s last request was in the room with them, although neither spoke of it. She had kept that promise through years of embarrassments. This was a different question, and Calvin could see how hard it was for her to let the distinction in.
“You’re asking me to decide he’s dangerous,” she said. “On the word of a dog.”
“No. I’m asking you to watch where he stands.”
She shook her head. In his room Auggie dropped a book onto the floor and called for Baxter. The dog stayed at his post. Calvin sat down beside him after Louisa went to bed. Baxter placed his chin on Calvin’s knee, then raised it whenever a floorboard moved near the spare room. Calvin remained there until the windows lost their blackness.
By dawn his back ached. He had learned nothing he could show Louisa, and now even his caution felt like a choice with consequences. He meant to search the bin with Auggie beside him after school. First he had to finish the job he had promised Ruth Ann, and he left with the boy’s room shut behind the dog.
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