I loaded Jolly into the back of my truck and gave him water. He drank deeply, then settled onto his bed with a satisfied groan. The work was over, the ball had been earned, and as far as he was concerned, the night had been a success.
The drive home took thirty minutes down the mountain and through empty streets. I pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. Sat for a moment in the dark, letting the adrenaline fade.
Inside, I went through the routine. Gear off. Boots by the door. I filled Jolly’s water bowl and set it down, then opened the back door to let him into the yard.
He didn’t go to the grass. He went straight to the fence.
Not the whole fence—the same section he’d been fixating on for days. The back corner, where I’d replaced the broken slat Saturday. He stood three feet from the wood, his body rigid, his head low and forward, ears locked. Not barking. Not whining. Just standing there, as still as I’d ever seen him outside of a trained alert.
“Jolly. Come.”
Nothing. No response. No flick of an ear, no turn of the head.
I walked over and crouched beside him. His body was tense under my hand, every muscle drawn tight. I followed his line of sight to the base of the fence. A pinecone sat in the grass at the base of the slat. Small, fresh—green at the base, scales still tight. I picked it up.
Was Jolly mistaking it for a ball? That wasn’t a good sign.
“Jolly.Hier. Let’s go inside.” I walked back toward the house.
This time, he came. Slowly, reluctantly, his head turning last, his eyes staying on the fence until his body had carried him far enough away that he had no choice but to look at me instead.
He hadn’t done this before we’d moved here. In seven years, Jolly had never fixated on a fence or a yard boundary or a random spot in the grass. His attention had always been directed, purposeful, channeled through training toward specific targets.
This was a pattern of behavior with no operational context and no obvious trigger. And when I gave a command, his response had been delayed.
Eight years old, almost nine. Belgian Malinois were supposed to work until ten, sometimes eleven if they were lucky. But I’d seen handlers lose partners at eight. Watched dogs who’d been sharp one month go soft the next, the decline so gradual you didn’t see it until you were standing over a mistake that couldn’t be undone.
He had time left. He had to. Because I wasn’t ready to imagine work without him beside me.
I sat on the back step with the pinecone in my hand, and Jolly pressed against my leg. The yard was dark except for the light spilling from the kitchen window behind me. Next door, Kayla’s house was quiet—a single lamp visible through a gap in the curtains, the rest of the windows dark.
Jolly leaned his weight into me, his head heavy on my knee. His breathing slowed. Whatever had held him at the fence was releasing its grip now that I was close, now that the contact was established—my hand on his head, my leg against his side.
I closed my fingers around the pinecone and felt the weight of something I wasn’t ready to carry.
Not yet.
I stood, and Jolly rose with me. His tail wagged once—a reflex, the perpetual optimism that seven years of hard work hadn’t managed to dull. I opened the back door, and he went through ahead of me, heading for his bed in the corner of the living room, circling twice before dropping down with a heavy exhale.
I locked the door. Checked the windows. Stood in the kitchen with the lights off.
Jolly was already asleep by the time I walked past him. His paws twitched once—chasing something in his dreams or running toward it. I watched him for a long moment from the hallway then went to bed.
I didn’t sleep for a long time.
Chapter 6
Kayla
The coffee shop on Elm Street had exactly two things going for it: decent Wi-Fi and a corner table with an outlet.
I came because the light through the front windows was good in the mornings, the ambient noise was just loud enough to muffle my own thoughts, and nobody cared if I spread my sketchbook across the table and worked for three hours on a single drawing of a dog. I was waiting for my second lemon ginger tea of the morning.
I needed it.
My laptop was open to the manuscript file, the relevant page description highlighted in blue. Beside it, my sketchbook lay flat, the current spread half finished—Barley sitting on the front porch of the boy’s house, watching him walk to school for the first time without looking back.
It was a pivotal illustration. The whole emotional arc of the book turned on this image—the dog who’d taught the boy to be brave, now watching him use that bravery on hisown. My art director had flagged it as a potential cover candidate, which meant it needed to be perfect, which meant I’d been staring at it for forty-five minutes and hadn’t touched my pencil.
