Chapter 1 - The Last Thing He Made
The first motel refused Ranger before I finished asking about a room.
The second had a sign advertising weekly rates and a receptionist who looked at his gray muzzle, then shook her head.
“Owner’s rules.”
I wanted to ask whether the owner had ever stood in a parking lot with everything she owned getting wet.
Instead, I thanked her.
By the time I returned to the car, Ranger had curled himself around my duffel bag. His cloudy eye followed me through the windshield.
“I’m working on it,” I whispered.
He thumped his tail once.
I had forty-three dollars in my checking account, twenty in my wallet, and a credit card I had stopped using when Grandpa’s prescription costs began climbing.
My car heater blew warm air only when the engine was running.
I could afford gas or a room.
Probably not both.
For a few minutes, I sat behind the wheel and watched rain crawl down the glass.
Then I remembered June.
She had run the bookstore where I worked before Grandpa’s stroke. We still exchanged Christmas cards, though I had missed answering her last message.
I called before shame could talk me out of it.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Elena?”
“I’m sorry it’s late.”
“What happened?”
That was all it took.
My throat closed.
I managed the words dog, funeral, and nowhere.
“Come here,” she said.
“I have Ranger.”
“I heard you.”
“He’s old. Sometimes he has accidents.”
“So does my plumbing. Come here.”
Her apartment stood above the bookstore, with an outside staircase slippery from rain. June came down holding an umbrella and a faded quilt.
She wrapped the quilt around Ranger first.
For some reason, that made me cry harder.
Upstairs, she heated soup while I dried him with towels. He drank water, ate three spoonfuls of chicken, and fell asleep beside the radiator.
June put a bowl in front of me.
“Eat.”
“I can pay you back.”
“For soup?”
“For staying.”
She sat across from me.
“We can discuss arrangements tomorrow. Tonight, you’re cold.”
I ate because she watched until I did.
Later, after she made up the sofa, I knelt beside Ranger to remove his wet collar.
The leather had darkened in the rain. Grandpa’s stitches ran along the inside edge, uneven where his left hand had struggled.
I remembered finding him bent over it beneath his bedside lamp.
He had smiled when I asked what he was making.
“For the boy,” he said.
I assumed he meant Ranger.
Now, turning the collar over, I felt something stiff between its layers.
A rectangular shape.
Not part of the leather.
I brought it closer to the lamp.
One short section had newer thread. The stitches were clumsy, pulled tight enough to pucker the lining.
My hands began shaking.
June looked up from the kitchen doorway.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
She brought her sewing scissors.
I hesitated before cutting the first stitch.
Grandpa had worked so hard on it.
Then I thought about his eyes the night he handed it back to me. How he had held my wrist until I looked directly at him.
“Keep,” he said.
I thought he meant the collar.
I slipped the scissors beneath the thread.
Inside was a small brass key wrapped in a folded piece of waterproof paper.
On the outside, in Grandpa’s difficult handwriting, were two words.
For Elena.
I sat down on the floor.
June said nothing.
The note inside contained an address on Mill Road, a number, and a sentence that wandered crookedly across the paper.
Ask Thomas Bell. He has the rest.
Beneath it was something longer.
I had to read it twice.
Ranger knows the way home. You do too.
I pressed the paper against my mouth.
Grandpa had known I might need somewhere to go.
The thought brought comfort, then anger.
Why hide it?
Why let me sit through that reading believing I had been forgotten?
I turned the paper over.
There was one final line.
I tried to finish everything. If I didn’t, show Thomas this.
June crouched beside me.
“Who’s Thomas?”
“I’ve never heard the name.”
Outside, rain struck the windows.
On the rug, Ranger lifted his head and stretched one paw toward my knee.
I took it gently.
For the first time since Larissa shut the door, I had somewhere to begin.
And tucked inside the paper, so thin I almost missed it, was a second item.
A business card.
Thomas Bell, Attorney at Law.
May you like
Across the back, Grandpa had written a date.
It was the morning after his funeral.
