Lorraine cried all the way home.
“I always think it’ll hurt less,” she once told Henry.
“Does it?”
“No.”
She wiped her eyes.
“But it’s still worth doing.”
Bear was puppy number fifteen.
And almost immediately, Lorraine said he was different.
He was unusually calm.
Unusually observant.
He rarely barked without a reason.
He followed her everywhere.
When she knitted in the evening, he lay across her feet.
When she worked in the garden, he sat beside the roses like a tiny guard.
Henry used to watch them from the
