ONE MONTH LATER
The Papillon flew.
Tiny body, enormous ears, all nerve and precision. The handler barely seemed to move; a flick of fingers, a shift of shoulders, and the little dog snapped into a tight wrap around the first jump standard before launching cleanly over the bar.
No hesitation at the weave poles. No stutter at the tunnel entry. It burst out the other end like it had been shot from a cannon and skimmed down the contact zone without missing a beat.
The crowd murmured appreciatively. Beside me, Chris inhaled sharply.
“Oh, that’s early,” he muttered. “Too early on the cue. He’s going to overrun the next— see? See?”
The Papillon adjusted mid-stride and nailed the turn anyway.
Chris clicked his tongue. “Lucky.”
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “You’ve doneonedog show.”
“I did not just do one dog show,” he said, affronted. “I trained for one dog show.”
“You didn’t even finish it.”
He ignored that.
“Pampi would’ve crushed that wrap,” he continued, gesturing vaguely toward the course. “She would’ve collected tighter and saved at least half a second before the dog walk. And that tunnel entry? Please. She would’ve committed way earlier.”
I resisted the urge to remind him that Pampi had once tried to detour off a practice course because someone had opened a bag of treats three rings over.
Chris slumped back in his seat with a long, dramatic sigh. “Pampi would’ve done so much better.”
Over the past month, ever since the finals had been postponed and then officially reinstated without us, I had endured a steady evolution of Chris’s coping mechanisms.
Denial had lasted three days. He’d insisted there was some loophole, some appeal process we hadn’t considered. Bargaining had involved an alarming number of emails.
Today, he was firmly in what I privately categorized as competitive delusion. The stage where every single dog in the ring was inferior, and he and his “princess” could obviously outperform them all.
Being officially disqualified because of our involvement in the investigation had not suited him.
He’d responded by building makeshift agility obstacles behind the pack kennels. Poles fashioned from PVC piping. Jumpsassembled from spare lumber and a concerning amount of zip ties. He’d run drills with Pampi at dawn and again after dinner. They ate together, trained together, and more than once I’d woken in the middle of the night to find both of them sprawled across my bed, snoring in sync.
He’d even handcrafted Pampi a new collar. Bright blue. It matched the shirt he was wearing no.
He hadn’t bought this one from Peter’s Hill’s website like the others. This one he’d had custom made at some print shop in town, Pampi’s face emblazoned across the front in high resolution.
I had not come with him when Chris had it made. I had standards.
On the field, the Papillon finished its final jump cleanly. The buzzer sounded. Applause rippled through the stands.
Chris sighed again, lower this time, almost mournful. “He drifted on the dog walk. Pampi would never drift.”
I was beginning to feel something dangerously close to pity. With a resigned breath, I slowly unbuttoned my jacket.
Chris didn’t notice. He was too busy dissecting imaginary flaws in a nearly flawless run.
I cleared my throat. He hummed distractedly. I coughed, louder this time.
Chris turned to me, and then his gaze dropped. For a full three seconds, he simply stared at my chest.
“You—” He blinked. “You wore it?”
