Part 2
Brent backed up before he seemed to realize he was moving.
Flint made no sound. His mouth stayed closed, his ears attentive. He looked at each man in turn, and the three of them abruptly found themselves with less to say.
“Flint.” Owen’s voice carried without rising.
The dog held his position.
“Get control of your—” Brent began.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
Owen crossed to them. There was no hurry in it. He shortened the leash, put his good hand against Flint’s shoulder, and looked at Vivian.
“Do you need anything handled here?”
The question was so plain that she looked up immediately. He wasn’t speaking over her or asking the receptionist. He waited for her answer.
“I’d settle for my ride showing up.”
He nodded. Then he turned to Brent.
“We’re heading out for lunch. You’ve got plenty of room to wait elsewhere.”
Brent stared at him. One of his friends found the exit first.
Owen turned toward the door, giving Flint the signal to come with him.
Flint took a step, stopped, and looked back.
“Come on.”
Instead, the dog turned toward Vivian.
Her hand was already reaching down before she made any decision about it.
Flint approached slowly enough that Owen could have stopped him. He lowered his nose into her open palm, breathed against her skin, then settled his jaw there.
She felt the hard shape beneath the fur. His eyes stayed on her.
“Oh,” she said, barely audible.
Her fingers moved along his cheek, beneath his neck, down to the leg nearest her. She found the scar without searching.
She held still.
Then she carefully turned his foreleg enough to see the place beneath the fur.
Owen had stopped beside the doors.
“Where was he before you got him?” Vivian asked.
“He came through a rescue-to-working-dog program a little over four years ago.”
“In Idaho?”
Owen’s hand went motionless on the leash. “Yes.”
She touched the crescent above Flint’s joint.
“County road eighteen. Spring. There was a ditch beside the curve, and his leg was cut. He was so small I could carry him inside my coat.”
The receptionist’s phone rang twice before she answered it.
Owen came a little closer. He looked at the scar, then at Vivian’s hand.
“What name did you give him?”
Vivian swallowed. There was no sensible reason for the question to frighten her.
“Pip.”
Flint lifted his head.
His tail struck the side of her chair once. Then again, harder. He pushed forward until his cheek was against her wrist, his whole body moving with the effort of getting closer without knocking into her.
Vivian put both hands around his face.
“Pip?”
A high, restrained whine escaped him. He pressed his head beneath her chin as far as the chair would allow.
She bent over him.
Brent was gone. So were the men who had arrived with him. She had no idea when they had left.
Owen stood a few feet away, the leash hanging loose between his hand and the harness. He looked from the dog to her, then down at the old injury again.
Flint settled against the side of her chair, shoulder beneath her arm, and stayed there.
Vivian had learned not to cry in public during acute rehab. The first few times, people had grown so careful around her that it became difficult to get anything done. She had begun saving certain things until she was alone.
Now she ran her thumb over Flint’s cheek and concentrated on the small movement, the warm skin beneath the coat.
“Where was the program?” she asked.
“Twin Falls.” Owen crouched rather than stand over her. “His original intake was through animal control. The records didn’t give much history.”
“There wouldn’t have been much. Nobody knew I had him.”
“The vet noted that leg. Said somebody had cleaned and dressed it properly.”
“I had a book and an internet connection.”
One corner of Owen’s mouth rose.
“You used them well.”
“I couldn’t afford a vet.”
“You still stopped.”
She looked at Flint. He had tipped his face up toward her, letting her touch the place behind his ear.
“He was alive down there.”
Owen rested his hand between the dog’s shoulders.
“I can get the original records. Dates, location. Whatever they have.”
Vivian traced the small scar again.
“I dressed this every morning for three weeks. I don’t need a file to tell me whose leg it is.”
Owen studied her, then gave a short nod.
“All right.”
He didn’t try to make the moment smaller. She was grateful enough for that to have to look away.
Warren finally pulled in after one. The van’s music reached the lobby as soon as he opened his door.
Vivian put her book away and turned her chair. Flint rose with her.
He followed to the entrance, Owen managing the leash, and stood while she looked out at the descending lift.
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” she told him.
His ears moved at her voice.
Outside, Warren steadied the platform while she rolled onto it.
“Therapy go all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to call today.”
“Got a whole hour of older stuff coming up,” he said, reaching for the lift control. “Good songs, for a change.”
“Lucky us.”
She heard none of them.
Her apartment was on the ground floor of a building beside a dry cleaner on Juniper Street. Her aunt Ruth had arranged the work that made it livable: a wider bathroom doorway, grab bars, a lowered section of kitchen counter. The shower threshold remained slightly too high. The closet was useless unless she left its door open and stored most of her clothes elsewhere.
Still, she could get inside without help, make food, wash, and go to bed. At the time she signed the lease, those had been her requirements.
She made coffee and sat at the kitchen table.
Her palm remembered the pressure of Flint’s jaw. She opened and closed her fingers, then reached for the laptop.
The searches began with rescue dogs in Idaho and wandered into military canine selection. She had read about working dogs before, during the long months when reading was easier than almost anything else. She knew something about the standards, the training, the bond with a handler. Now she read about them again, stopping on descriptions of how dogs learned to make decisions when a handler could not give a command.
Flint had heard those men. Or seen them. Or seen her.
He had crossed the lobby without being asked.
She closed the laptop and looked toward the coat hooks by the door. Her canvas jacket hung there drying, a damp line beneath the hem.
For a moment, she could feel a much smaller body wrapped inside another coat.
She went to bed early. At midnight, she was still awake.
The following morning, she was through the clinic entrance before Warren had finished folding the lift.
Neil, working reception that day, looked up with his customary enthusiasm.
“Look who’s here.”
“It’s on the schedule,” Vivian said.
He grinned and handed over the sign-in sheet.
She reached the therapy corridor and stopped.
Flint sat outside the closed doors. He spotted her before she had gone another foot, and his tail began brushing the floor.
“Morning, you.”
She came close enough for him to touch his nose to her knee.
“Where’d he leave you?”
“Six feet from the coffee machine.”
Owen stood behind her with two paper cups. He offered one.
“My thermos is right here.”
“Then you’re prepared for later, too.”
She accepted it. Black coffee.
Owen sat on the corridor bench while Flint lay between them, his chin across his front paws. The therapy wing wouldn’t open for several minutes. A cleaner’s cart rattled at the far end of the hall.
“I got the old intake record,” Owen said.
Vivian looked at him over the cup.
He brought out his phone, opened a document, and held it where she could see.
“The animal control entry was October, the same year you found him. No chip. Estimated age around eight months. They noted an old laceration above the left carpus.” He touched the date. “That fits a spring injury. He was in rescue care before the working-dog program evaluated him.”
There was a photograph attached. Younger, leaner, ears too large for his head. But the eyes were there.
“Who brought him in?” she asked.
“A man named Victor Sadowski. Address on Larch Street. Does that mean anything?”
“The street does. Not the man.”
“He said he’d found him loose and kept him about a week. No collar.”
Owen scrolled farther down. Vivian saw the intake officer’s note about an otherwise sociable dog pacing, refusing to settle, returning to the gate.
The officer had written that the behavior suggested separation distress after the loss of a primary attachment.
Owen let her finish reading.
“He was trying to find you,” he said…
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