Page 84 of Wrong Mail

Going over there now is what I would have done two years ago, before I learned to sit still and let important things wait for a better time.

I put the phone down and go back to what I was doing. The thought of her doesn't leave. It sits just under everything else, a small wrong thing I keep refusing to touch.

The rain continues into the evening. I move around the house without purpose, picking things up and putting them down. Waiting for David. Waiting for a call. Waiting for anything.

Then it happens.

I hear Luna before I see her, one bark at the front door, followed by scratching. I'm across the room, my heart racing. I get the door open, and she's there on the wet porch in the last gray light, looking up at me. She's fine. Better than fine.

But she's wearing a collar I’ve never seen.

Hers is red nylon, frayed at the buckle, with a little brass bone for a tag. This one is dark leather with no tag on it at all. It's buckled to fit her neck exactly. I kneel in the rain and turn the collar in my fingers and look for a note, a card, a name. There's nothing.

Someone had her. Someone kept her clean, warm, and fed for two nights. They brushed her coat, buckled a good collar around her throat, and brought her back to my door at dusk, unhurt.

I take the collar off with my hands shaking. I want to throw it into the dark. But I don't. I carry it inside and set it on the kitchen island, because I can't make myself put it in the garbage. I can't say why.

Quickly, I take out my phone and check the cameras, hoping to catch whoever brought her back. But the system is still down. Nothing. Not a single frame.

Shit.

Then I sink to the floor with Luna in my arms and tell myself it's nothing. A neighbor found her. A stranger kept her warm. Someone bought her a collar because hers was gone and brought her home without wanting thanks.

Luna licks the salt from my face.

I don't believe any of it.

I bolt the door behind us.

I don't know who I'm trying to keep out.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Henry's text comes at eight in the morning. It’s kind, but there’s a hand in every word, steering me.

I read it at the window.

Outside, the rain has stopped, but the sky hasn't lifted. The first half of the storm blew through and left the whole morning gray and wet. Everyone on the road is saying the worst of it's over. No one believes it.

Mallory. I decided not to call. I've done enough by being in your life, so this is the last you'll hear from me.

I owe you the truth about the small things, since the whole road has had its say about the big ones. I told you I was in security. I'm not, and you know that now. It was a stupid lie for a grown man to tell, and I told it because the truth made me feel smaller in front of you. I also had no right to act as if I owned that house, and I knew every day I didn't. I have no defense that doesn't sound like an excuse, so I won't offer one.

I know David thinks I'm behind everything that's gone wrong on your road. The dog, the birds, all of it. I'm not. I don't have it in me to hurt a thing you love, and if you look back at every hour we spent you'll know that about me even if you can't prove it. But a frightened man needs a face to put his fear on, and I'd rather be that face and gone than have you fighting in your kitchen because of me. So I'm stepping away. I won't come to your door. You get to decide whatever you've decided about me without me standing there making my case.

Be careful, Mallory. I know I have no right to ask that of you now. But be careful.

H.

I read it four times. It feels like it cost him something to say it, and he said it anyway.

And that's the part I can't put down. Henry told me he hadn’t been fully honest with me, and then he took himself out of my life over it. I’ve been lonely in a full house for two years, and he saw that when nobody else did. Now he's gone.

I read the last line again.

Be careful.

It doesn't say of whom. It doesn't have to.