The Lost

I wanted to hear all about the visit to Hope Springs. How was I? What was my prognosis this week? Did Be

But what was taking Sam and Monica so long? I didn’t like the look of them, standing too close in the doorway, talking in earnest voices too low to hear. Although at one point Monica clapped her hands at some comment of Sam’s and said distinctly, “Oh, that would be great.” What would? Having me put to sleep?

At last Sam turned and started toward the car. Well, this was it. The moment of truth. I searched his face for anger, indignation, but he was smiling, no doubt savoring some bon mot of Monica’s. Who, just then, thought of something else she must say to him and jogged out to the car, too.

“Oh, Sam, don’t forget the, um…” Suddenly she was tongue-tied. Sam finished buckling Be

“I won’t,” he said.

“Don’t forget what?” alert Be

“Don’t forget… to tell me how Sonoma got out,” Monica said, clearly improvising. She reached in to ruffle Be

“She is really, really smart,” he agreed.

Monica looked at me and lifted one eyebrow. She wasn’t trying to communicate-sending ironic signals to a dog was the last thing on her mind. But to me, that private, raised brow was as good as a wink.

She hadn’t ratted on me.

Well, great. Just great. What was I supposed to do, thank her? And for a second, actual gratitude welled up in my retriever heart. I yawned at her. I gri

Then I got a grip on myself. What naïveté. How could I fall for such a slick trick? I wasn’t one of those dogs you could smack around and then give a bone to and everything was hunky-dory. Forgive and forget-that’s what dogs do, but I was still Laurie. If I wanted to keep my family, I had to hang on to what I knew: Monica Carr was not my friend.

“I wonder why she came over to your house,” Sam said, settling in behind the wheel. “Although I’m glad she did-she could’ve gotten run over on Wilson Lane.”

“Maybe she’s in heat,” Monica suggested. “You should think about having her spayed.”

“I’m going to. I’ve just been too busy. I’ll call and make an appointment tomorrow.”

“Ah-r oooooo!” Oh, noooooo!

Monica thought that was a riot. “Ha ha ha! It’s like she heard you!”

At home, somebody had stuffed a large white envelope through the mail slot in the door. I got a whiff of a familiar smell, and just before Sam snatched it up, I recognized the preprinted logo in the return address: S &L. Of course-the familiar smell was Ron, my boss at Shanahan & Lewis. Fu

Normally I’d have gone with Be

He was pulling paper-clipped pages out of the envelope when his eye caught the blink of the answering machine light. He tossed the papers on the couch and punched the button.

Ron’s voice. “Hey, Sam, it’s Ro

What a mensch. At the end, Ro

I put my head on his knee. Sam. I nudged his elbow so he had to uncover his face and look at me. Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry. He gave me a twisted smile of affection, absent-minded at first but gradually focusing. “You,” he said-and my heart stopped. Did he see me? Did he know me? Sam. He leaned closer, stared harder. “How the hell did you get out?”

They say you don’t know what you have until you lose it. I found out in that moment that that includes the ability to cry.

Sam gave my head a pat and stood up slowly, his shoulders slumped. “Hungry?” he said, and headed for the kitchen to start di

I followed a few minutes later. Not quite as hungry as I had been.

“Daddy, what does ‘spayed’ mean?”

We were in my favorite place, at my favorite time of day: on the couch after di

Fu

I wasn’t technically allowed on the couch, but I had perfected the art of the stealthy creep, the discreet, painfully slow advance whose key element is patience. It almost always worked, and sometimes, when he noticed it in progress, it even made Sam laugh. Tonight I’d been especially successful by ending up between him and Be

Sam let a lot of time go by without answering Be

“Daddy, what does ‘spayed’ mean?”

Sam put the paper down. “Spay. It’s an operation they perform on a girl dog so she can’t have any babies. Any puppies.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why can’t she have any puppies?”

“Because they fix her so she can’t. They tie things up in her stomach. No puppies can come out. Say, how many more days till your birthday?”

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“But Sonoma would make good puppies. She’d make great puppies. How did she get out?” Be

“I guess she got out while we were leaving this morning. That’s all I can figure-she slipped out the door and we didn’t notice. We’ll have to be more careful from now on.”

Sam had checked every window and door in the house-I went with him. He found the open casement window over the oil tank and closed it, but not once did it cross his mind that it might’ve been my escape route. No dog could be that clever or that dexterous, he was thinking. I felt so proud.