Part 4
Owen put the pot back on its warming plate without pouring anything.
Behind him, Bernard shifted on the sofa. The leather pouch gave a small creak.
“Everything all right in there?”
Owen turned.
Bernard regarded him over the back of the sofa. “I thought I ought to ask before you sold my truck.”
A short breath came out of Owen’s nose. He walked back to the doorway, keeping his arms at his sides this time.
“The medicine needs collecting tomorrow. Who do you want to ask?”
Bernard’s expression closed, then paused.
“Who?”
“Russell. Me. Somebody else. Your choice.”
“And if I choose nobody?”
“I’m going to object.”
“You’re very good at that.”
“I’ve had practice.”
Bernard looked toward the fire. “Russell’s going into town.”
“All right.”
“I’ll cover his gas.”
Owen nearly pointed out how close Russell lived to the pharmacy. He caught himself with his mouth open and closed it again.
Bernard noticed.
“That’ll do,” he said.
That night, the smallest puppy made another attempt on the basket. Owen saw the whole escape, from the forelegs hooked over the rim to the undignified landing on his belly.
He waited.
The puppy reached his chair and tried to climb onto his boot. After a brief struggle, he settled across the toe instead.
Bernard lowered his coffee mug.
“The basket’s over there, if you’ve forgotten.”
“He’s asleep now.”
“Remarkably quick, these puppies.”
Owen looked across at him.
Bernard took a drink.
The puppy’s warm belly rose and fell against Owen’s laces. Owen kept his foot still until the coffee went cold.
The following morning, sunlight struck the window hard enough to show every nose print on the glass. Bernard stood beside it with his cane and watched snow fall from the eaves in loose clumps.
Owen noticed how heavily he leaned on the sill. He went on fastening his boots.
Russell arrived after nine with a report from the line crew. The damaged connection had been made safe, but full power would take another day. The house was unharmed. Behind it, two rafters in the small shelter were cracked and several roof panels needed replacing.
Bernard reached for his coat.
“I’m going home.”
Russell looked toward Owen.
Owen held Bernard’s coat while he worked his arms into it.
Bernard glanced over his shoulder, plainly prepared for an objection that didn’t come.
Russell drank from his thermos. “I’ll go ahead and take another look at that back corner.”
“Convenient time to leave,” Bernard said.
“I’ve survived this long by recognizing one.”
Owen drove Bernard and the dogs. Tess sat against the old man’s leg in the rear seat. The puppies rode in their carrier, secured behind the empty passenger seat.
The smallest complained until Owen glanced back at a stop. Then he fell silent. As soon as the vehicle moved again, he resumed.
Bernard listened with evident satisfaction.
“He’s worked out who answers.”
“He’s five weeks old.”
“Fast learner.”
Beyond the disused rail grade, the land leveled among spruce and cedar. Bernard’s house had a narrow porch, pale siding, and a covered passage connecting it to the workshop. Even under snow, the yard showed order: covered firewood, lengths of cedar stacked clear of the ground, a wheelbarrow turned so water couldn’t collect in it.
Russell was already examining the damage. Near the porch, a woman knelt beside an open equipment bag.
Bernard saw her and slowed.
“Lydia.”
Dr. Lydia Haines stood, brushing snow from one knee. She was forty-six, with dark blond hair tied at her neck and the economical movements of someone who spent her working day making frightened creatures hold still.
“I hear you’ve been inspecting the drainage,” she said.
“Russell ought to mind his own business.”
“He’d be unbearable with that much spare time.”
She introduced herself to Owen while he lifted out the carrier. Then she crouched beside it and waited for Tess to approach.
The shepherd smelled her hand. Lydia did not move until Tess touched her fingers.
Bernard watched that more closely than he watched the equipment coming out of the bag.
The puppies were weighed and examined first. Lydia listened to their chests, checked their mouths, and ran gentle fingers along their small bodies.
“They’ve handled the cold better than they might have,” she said. “We’ll keep watching them, but this is encouraging.”
Bernard’s shoulders lowered a little.
Tess stood for her examination, though she leaned toward the open carrier. Lydia checked her paws and gums, then felt along her abdomen.
“Small meals more often for a day or two,” she told Bernard. “Don’t try to put everything back with one enormous bowl.”
“I know how to feed a dog.”
“Then we’ll both enjoy being right.”
Owen looked away toward the damaged roof.
Lydia rubbed behind Tess’s upright ear. “Of course, you only agreed to feed one.”
Bernard made an unenthusiastic sound.
The dog had belonged to a friend of Bernard’s late wife. After a stroke, the man had moved into assisted living and could no longer keep her. About three months earlier, Bernard had promised to take Tess.
“Six weeks after that, I explained that the arrangement included passengers,” Lydia told Owen.
“She didn’t advertise it,” Bernard said.
“You didn’t ask.”
“I fed her.”
“Excellent. A bowl is still not a pregnancy test.”
Bernard pointed toward her bag. “This is why I put up with the equipment, not the conversation.”
Lydia smiled and returned to her examination.
Later, with the dogs settled inside, Owen helped clear materials from beneath the broken section of shelter. Bernard worked from the doorway whenever he could. Instead of telling him to sit, Owen moved the heavier pieces before the old man reached them.
Bernard noticed that, too, but limited himself to an occasional look.
“The insurance folder’s in my desk,” he said. “Upper left.”
The little room off the kitchen smelled of cedar dust. The desk had been built by hand, its drawers fitted well enough to slide without a scrape.
Inside the top drawer, Owen found receipts, a tape measure, knife-sharpened pencils, and a large white envelope. A regional German shepherd rescue’s name was printed across it. Tess’s name had been written near the flap.
The insurance folder lay beneath it.
Owen took both to the kitchen without opening the envelope.
Bernard came in on his cane. When he saw what lay on the table, he stopped and then pulled out a chair.
“I wondered when I’d have to talk about that.”
He opened the envelope himself. There were intake forms, notes about transferring a dog and litter, and a placement agreement without a signature.
Owen read only the pages Bernard turned toward him.
“When were you thinking?”
“Once the pups could leave their mother.”
Tess slept near the doorway, one puppy sprawled across her foreleg.
“You want her placed somewhere else?” Owen asked.
Bernard looked up sharply. “Want has nothing to do with it.”
Outside, something metal struck the ground, followed by Russell’s muffled complaint. Bernard smoothed the corner of a form.
“I fell in the kitchen this year. And behind the workshop. Before this business in the ditch.”
“Were you injured?”
“Nothing worth a fuss.”
Owen glanced at the cane.
Bernard followed his look. “Some days I could still work a full shift. Some days it takes me two tries to get out of bed. I’m not pretending that’s going to improve forever.”
He laid the forms down.
“Tess waits at the workshop door if I’m late coming in. Ten minutes, and there she is. If I take too long in the shower, she plants herself outside the bathroom.”
A brief smile touched his face and went away.
“One night I could go to sleep and not get up again.”
Owen stayed against the counter.
“That isn’t the part that troubles me,” Bernard said. “I’ve had seventy-four years. Plenty of good people never got that.”
He watched the sleeping dog.
“She wouldn’t understand. She’d sit by the bed. A day. Maybe two.” His thumb pressed into the paper until it bent. “Still expecting me to get up.”
Tess moved her paw in her sleep. The puppy rolled off it and burrowed against her chest.
Bernard turned his face toward the window.
Owen looked at the blank signature line. He could think of several ways to arrange Bernard’s life. He could almost hear himself explaining each one.
He pulled out the chair across from him instead.
“What would need to change so you and Tess could both stay here?”
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