“Cherry, you’re wearing a dress.”
“I’m wearing wool tights.”
He shook his head and raised his hands again, this time like Cherry wasn’t his problem. She wasn’t.
She followed him out onto the porch. “Should I leave the door open in case she comes home? Or is that crazy?”
“That’s crazy,” he said. He cupped his palms around his mouth.“Stevie!”
“Stevie!”Cherry shouted.
They both waited. If you’d asked Cherry what Stevie sounded like, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. But now she was straining to hear the dog’s tags jangling and her heavy pant.
“We’ll find her,” Tom said. “She left a trail.”
They followed Stevie’s paw prints down the sidewalk. Down the block. Out into the street, where they disappeared under tire tracks.
“I think she went this way,” Tom called from the other side of the road.
Cherry followed him. There were several dog prints over here. The snow was falling so fast, it was filling everything in. “Do these seem small?” Cherry asked.
“Yeah...” Tom said. “Maybe.” He went looking in the other direction.
One of their neighbors was out shoveling his walk. Why couldn’t people just let the snow finish falling?
“Have you seen our dog?” Tom asked him.
“The big white one?”
“Yeah.”
“Not today. Boy, she’ll be hard to spot in all this.”
“Thanks.” Tom was walking back to Cherry. She could tell he was irritated. “She has a black head,” he muttered. He took his keys out of his pocket. “Let’s go back for a car. We’ll cover more ground.”
“Will we?” Cherry said. “The roads are a mess.”
“The sidewalks aren’t great shakes, either. And you’re freezing.”
“I’m fine.”
He motioned at her. “At least button your coat.”
Cherry buttoned one button. She was shuffling back toward their house, trying not to slip.“Stevie!”
Tom’s dad’s car was parked out on the street. An old Volkswagen Jetta.
“Let’s take the Forester,” Cherry said. It had all-wheel drive. She unlocked the doors, then, after a second, handed the keys to Tom.
He took them.
Cherry got in the passenger seat. She watched Tom get behind the wheel and push back the seat. She wanted to scream again. She turned toward the window and buckled her seat belt. “You should follow the path that you guys usually walk.”
“We mix it up,” he said.
“She always tries to pull me toward the park.”
“That’s a good place to start.”
