Part 5
Daniel laid the copied notes on his kitchen table that evening. Beneath it, Alder slept stretched out along the rug while Otis rested against his side.
The papers gave him an address, a telephone number, and a man’s name. Until that afternoon, he had pictured the puppies’ lives as beginning at a kennel gate. Now he kept seeing the empty porch and the feeding dish left beside the wall.
He called the rehabilitation center to ask about arranging a visit. When he put down the phone, Otis lifted his head from Alder’s flank.
“Tomorrow,” Daniel told him.
The center had a small sitting room overlooking a strip of lawn where the first green shoots were appearing beneath last year’s leaves. Walter Keene waited there the next morning, one hand resting on the arm of his chair. His clothes were neat, his shoes fastened carefully, but getting up cost him an effort Daniel did not let him make.
“Please. I’ll come to you.”
Daniel introduced himself and said Nora had given him Walter’s name in connection with two shepherd puppies.
“Alder and Otis?” Walter asked.
“Yes.”
Walter looked toward the window. His fingers closed around the chair arm.
“Where are they?”
“With me at the moment. Together.”
Walter’s hand eased.
Daniel sat opposite him and explained the foster trial before asking what had happened. He kept the copied pages folded in his pocket. Walter did not need an officer taking notes across from him.
The puppies had been in Walter’s care from the time they were very young. They had slept together from the beginning, trailed each other through his rooms, and crowded into the same spots beneath his furniture.
“Alder would go see what was happening,” Walter said. “Otis figured he’d hear about it soon enough.”
He smiled a little, then looked down at his hands.
His illness had arrived without much warning. He had expected a short hospital stay. Instead, there had been more treatment, then rehabilitation. A friend had offered to look after the puppies, but the arrangement had stretched far beyond what either man anticipated.
Two young shepherds needed more care than the friend could manage. By the time Walter learned they had gone to the shelter, they were already there.
“He told me he explained about keeping them together,” Walter said. “Said they’d do their best. I thought that meant they had.”
Daniel chose his words with care.
“Alder was placed separately. Three times. Each family brought him back after a couple of nights.”
Walter’s head came up.
“Otis?”
“He stayed at the shelter.”
Walter looked at his hands again. For several seconds, the only sound was a cart passing in the hall.
“Yes,” he said at last. “That figures.”
Daniel waited.
“People saw Alder. He’d walk right up, and that coat of his…” Walter lifted one shoulder. “Otis didn’t argue about it. He’d just wait.”
“That’s what I’ve been seeing.”
Walter rubbed a knuckle with his thumb.
“Mind you, if a pan fell in the kitchen, Alder was the one looking for Otis. Wind got under the loose window one night and rattled it something fierce. Alder climbed over half the room to get beside him.”
“He looked for Otis?”
“Every time he was unsure. Otis didn’t have to do much. Just be there.”
Daniel looked down at the folded corner of paper protruding from his pocket. He thought of the confident puppy who had followed him around all day, then stood helpless at an unfamiliar door once the house grew still.
“Would you like me to bring them?” he asked.
Walter’s answer came before Daniel had finished the question.
They arranged the visit with the center’s staff. Later that afternoon, Daniel returned with the puppies on their leads and a towel folded over one arm.
Walter was in the same sitting room.
Alder caught sight of him and surged forward, tail swinging so hard his whole back end followed. Daniel loosened the lead enough to let him reach Walter’s knees.
“Well, there you are.”
Walter bent as far as he could. His hand moved over Alder’s head, down his neck, and back again. Alder pressed into the touch, scrambling to get closer without quite knowing where his feet belonged.
Otis had stopped several feet away.
Daniel felt the slack in his lead and looked down. The puppy was watching the reunion, his body angled slightly behind Daniel’s leg.
Walter saw him.
“Otis.”
He said it once, plainly. Then he waited with his hand resting open on his knee.
Otis shifted forward. One step, then another. Daniel stayed where he was.
Alder moved enough to leave a narrow opening. Otis reached Walter, sniffed his trouser leg, and stood beneath the offered hand.
Walter stroked the top of his head.
Otis remained still for a moment before pressing his shoulder against Walter’s shin. Walter’s other hand stayed on Alder. Neither puppy tried to dislodge the other.
Daniel laid the towel on the floor so they could settle beside the chair. Walter watched them lie down, one on either side of his feet.
He sat with them for a long while.
When they spoke again, Walter did not ask when the puppies could come home. He asked how much they were eating, whether they had started learning to walk on leads, and how Daniel was managing them around his shifts.
Daniel answered honestly. There was help from Judith for puppy breaks. There would be training, separate practice as well as time together, and plenty he hadn’t worked out yet.
Walter nodded.
“I’d like to be the man who could take them back,” he said. He adjusted his foot, carefully, before continuing. “Getting dressed this morning wore me out.”
Daniel didn’t offer him a bright answer about getting stronger soon. Walter knew what his days required.
“They’re doing well with me,” he said.
“I can see that.”
Before Daniel gathered the leads, Walter asked him to wait. A staff member fetched a small bag from his room. Walter opened it on his lap and searched inside, moving aside a folded handkerchief and a packet of papers.
He brought out two puppy collars.
One was light-colored and plain. The other was dark, with a fuzzy place along its edge where small teeth had worked at the fabric. Walter ran his thumb along it before holding both out.
“They’ll hardly fit them now,” he said.
Daniel accepted them. The collars weighed almost nothing in his palm. Behind his leg, Alder rose and Otis rose with him.
Walter looked from one puppy to the other.
“Keep them together…”
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