Brendon pulled me into his chest and held me and I let him even though some part of me was screaming about something I couldn’t say out loud.
“We’re going to find her,” he said into my hair. “I promise you we’re going to find her. And if we don’t—”
I pulled back.
“If we don’t,” he said carefully, reading my face, “we will find the same breed, same coloring, same everything. I will find you the closest thing possible—”
“Don’t.” I stepped back completely. “Don’t ever say that to me again. You cannot replace her. She is not a thing that getsreplaced. She is my dog and there will never be another Goldie and you shouldn’t even be thinking like that right now.”
He held his hands up. “You’re right. I’m sorry. That was the wrong thing to say.”
“Yes it was.”
“I’m sorry baby.”
I turned away and pressed my hand over my mouth and stood there for a second trying to get myself under control. He meant well. He always meant well. That was just Brendon, trying to fix the unfixable, trying to offer a solution when there wasn’t one yet. I knew that. It still made me want to scream.
We posted on three neighborhood apps and two lost pet Facebook groups by the time we got back inside. Brendon made flyers on his laptop in twenty minutes, a good photo of Goldie I had on my phone, our numbers, a reward amount that he put higher than I suggested because that was also just Brendon. We printed them at the home office and he said he would put them up on his way to work.
I called into work while he was getting ready. Told Ashley to handle the training class and to call me only if something was urgent. She didn’t ask questions because she could hear my voice and she knew what it meant.
Brendon kissed my forehead before he left. Told me he loved me, told me to call him the second I heard anything, told me again that they were going to find her.
I watched his car back out of the driveway.
Then I picked up my phone and called Griz.
It rang. And rang. And went to voicemail.
I stood in my living room and looked at the empty dog bed in the corner of the room and called again. Voicemail again.
Now I was moving from grief into something else. Something that had sharper edges. I was getting pissed.
I got in my car and just drove. No destination, just moving through the neighborhood and the surrounding blocks with my window down calling Goldie’s name at intersections like she was going to come trotting around a corner. I drove for forty minutes and covered probably a two mile radius and found nothing and nobody and came back home and sat in my driveway and called Griz again.
This time it picked up.
But he didn’t say anything. Just dead air on his end and then background noise filtering through and I was about to say his name when I heard it.
A voice. Female. Laughing at something. Talking in that easy familiar way that women talked when they were comfortable around someone.
I sat very still.
And then underneath the woman’s voice, underneath the background noise and whatever was happening on his end without him knowing the call had connected—
Barking.
I knew that bark. I had heard that bark every single morning for years. The specific pitch of it, the pattern, the way it went up at the end like a question. I knew my dog.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen like it was going to explain itself to me.
Then I put it back.
The woman laughed again.
I hung up.
I sat in my driveway and I felt something move through my body that started in my chest and spread outward and I recognized it immediately because I hadn’t felt it in a long time but I had grown up feeling it and it was the specific heat of being played.
