Part 4
The first noise Daniel heard was Otis snoring.
He lay awake long enough to identify it, a tiny uneven rasp that came and went beneath the ordinary sounds of the house. The furnace clicked off. A pipe ticked inside the wall. Neither puppy got up.
At the usual overnight puppy break, he carried them outside into wet grass. They did what they needed to do, came back in, and climbed into the same bed. There was no pause at the front entrance, no pleading sound from the hall.
Daniel woke once more before dawn and stood in his bedroom doorway.
Alder’s chin lay across Otis’s back. Otis had one rear foot sticking over the edge. Daniel returned to bed without sitting down beside either of them.
In the morning, he sent Nora a photograph of the unused bed.
Under it, he wrote: Quiet night. Both comfortable. Apparently I bought twice as much furniture as necessary.
Over the next few days, Alder behaved as though he had never spent two nights conducting a vigil at the door. He raced toward the kitchen when a cupboard opened, investigated the vacuum from a prudent distance, and slept wherever sunshine reached the floor.
Otis was content enough. He ate, played, and curled against Alder at night. Still, Daniel began noticing how often he waited.
When Daniel called both names, Alder arrived first. Otis came afterward, usually stopping behind him. A toy placed on the floor belonged to Alder until Otis discovered whether there was room to join in. When Daniel bent to pet them, Otis seldom pushed his nose beneath the offered hand.
On the fourth afternoon of the trial, Judith Pike stopped by.
She lived nearby, was sixty-seven, and had retired from the town library with an enduring interest in everybody’s unfinished business. Daniel had asked whether she might help with occasional puppy breaks when he returned to work. She had agreed, then announced that she ought to inspect the beneficiaries.
“I heard you went shopping for one,” she said while Daniel opened the door.
“That was the original budget.”
Alder hurried forward. Judith bent immediately, her gloves still in one hand.
“Well, look at you.”
She admired his pale coat and let him nose the cuff of her jacket. Otis started toward her, paused, and backed into the space beside Daniel’s armchair.
Judith noticed him almost at once.
“And you. Don’t let this fellow take the whole reception.”
She crouched and offered her hand. Otis came partway forward.
Daniel watched him from the doorway. Judith hadn’t ignored him for more than a moment. Yet he had withdrawn before she could do anything about it.
Later, while Judith discussed the timing of short workday visits, Otis lay behind Alder with his paws tucked neatly beneath him. Daniel moved his chair enough to leave a clear space beside his own feet.
He did not pull Otis into it.
The next morning, he offered Otis a treat first. In the afternoon, he sat on the floor and waited while Alder explored a cardboard carton. Otis watched Daniel’s open hand for a while before approaching it.
Daniel scratched his chest without reaching over him toward Alder.
He made a practice of giving each puppy brief time alone with him. Nothing elaborate: a few minutes learning his name, a little handling, a quiet rest. Alder objected to missing anything, but Daniel kept the separations short and ordinary.
One evening, Otis left Alder asleep beside the sofa and settled near Daniel’s chair.
Daniel kept reading. He turned the next page slowly, careful not to make the visit an event that required Otis to reconsider it.
The puppies refused to cooperate with his more expensive efforts at fairness.
He bought two identical rubber toys and put them down well apart. Alder seized one. Otis inspected the other, gave it a thoughtful sniff, then crossed the room and took hold of the end hanging from Alder’s mouth.
Within seconds, they were tugging together while the untouched duplicate sat at Daniel’s heel.
He lifted his coffee out of reach of a wagging tail.
“Good. A spare for your spare.”
A few mornings later, he picked up a lead for a short walk. Alder dashed to the entrance. Otis stopped behind him and waited.
Daniel walked past Alder and knelt beside Otis.
When the clip clicked onto his harness, Otis looked down at it. Then he looked at Alder.
Daniel stood without tightening the lead.
“Come on, Otis. Your turn.”
Alder tried to squeeze between them. Daniel put him behind the nearby puppy gate with a chew, then returned to Otis, who still hadn’t moved.
He waited.
At last Otis stepped toward the door. Outside, he spent a long time examining the damp seam where the walk met the grass. Daniel let him. They went no farther than the quiet edge of the property, but before they turned back, Otis was walking with the lead loose.
That afternoon, Daniel called Nora.
“Do you know much about where they were before they came to you?”
“Not enough,” she said. “I can check the intake.”
The first page gave a rural address outside Dunleigh and the name of the man who had delivered them. He had described himself as a temporary caretaker, not their owner. The location was all Nora could confirm from the summary.
Daniel wrote it down.
The following afternoon, he drove out with both puppies secured in the back. He wasn’t expecting them to guide him across the county. He wanted to see the place and perhaps find someone who could fill in the blank spaces on the form.
They passed small fields still flattened from winter, sheds with stacked firewood under their eaves, and houses set back behind bare lilacs. Both puppies watched without much interest.
On a narrower residential road, Otis suddenly got to his feet inside his carrier.
Daniel saw the movement in the mirror. Otis stretched his nose toward the mesh. Alder lifted his head a moment later and became alert too.
Daniel slowed and pulled over near a cluster of older houses. After checking the address Nora had given him, he put both puppies on their leads and let them out.
Otis pulled toward a house well back from the road.
He did not stop to investigate the ditch or the neighboring driveway. Alder followed, quickening as they approached a porch with peeling paint along its bottom step.
The house was shut up. No car stood beside it. Daniel stayed on the approach rather than letting the puppies range around the property.
Otis stopped at the steps. Alder came alongside him, and both began working their noses along the lower boards.
Two low hooks had been screwed into a porch post. Near the wall sat a weathered feeding dish. There was nothing remarkable about either object, except that the puppies lingered there instead of trying to explore somewhere else.
Daniel looked at the closed door. He knocked, waited, and received no answer.
“All right,” he said, gathering the leads. “We’ll ask somebody who knows.”
At the shelter, Nora brought the original intake packet into the office. Daniel described the house while the puppies investigated the underside of her desk.
She checked the address against a second sheet, then turned to a page of handwritten notes that had not been included in the summary.
“There was a call after they came in,” she said. “The man who brought them wasn’t the person they’d been living with. He’d taken over while someone was ill.”
She followed a line with her finger.
Daniel waited as she checked another page. Otis had settled on his shoe. Alder was trying to get a look into a wastebasket.
Nora slid the paper toward him and pointed to a name.
“Walter Keene. Seventy-two. That’s his house.” She turned the page so Daniel could read the remaining note. “He went from the hospital to a rehabilitation center. He’s still there…”
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