He Sent the Helicopter for Her Dog novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Back Pew

At the funeral Hannah seats Dalton in the last row. At the grave the pilot walks up and says: I flew the dog.

We buried Gran on Monday, at the Pine Hollow church where she had run the bake sale for forty years.

The church was full by ten.

The orchard families filled the front, and behind them sat people I had only ever seen across a counter, with their hats in their hands.

The fire crew from Station 4 stood along the side wall in dress blues.

Dalton came in at five to eleven, alone, in a black suit.

The usher at the door was the man with the pie.

"Mrs. Ames asked me to seat you," he said.

"I'll sit with Hannah."

"She asked me to seat you in the last row."

Dalton looked down the aisle at the back of my head.

I didn't turn around.

I heard him sit down on the last pew, and the wood creaked under him.

The pastor spoke about Gran's apples, and about the way she never let anyone leave her kitchen hungry.

Then it was my turn, and I walked up to the front with the folded paper in my hand and didn't use it.

"My grandmother never met a person without checking whether they were cold," I said. "On the night she died, I laid my coat under her on the gravel. I know exactly what she would have said about that. She'd have said I'd catch my death."

My voice didn't shake, so I kept going.

"That's who she was. She would put her coat on a stranger and then complain about the cold for a week. I'm going to try to be a little more like that."

I didn't say anything else.

I sat back down.

The old man in front of me turned and squeezed my hand.

The doors at the back opened during the last hymn.

I knew without looking, because the whole room shifted.

Piper Lanning came down the side aisle in a black dress, with her honey-blond hair pulled back and her face wet.

She had Waffles on a short blue leash.

He wore a gray service-dog vest that said IN TRAINING, and he walked beside her with his head low, slow on his arthritic hips.

I felt the church watching her.

Waffles saw me and pulled.

He went straight down the aisle to the front pew and laid his big gold head on my knee.

I looked down at him.

I had spent six years at the clinic with dogs that were scared, and I knew the way to hold a face like that.

I got down on my knees on the church carpet and put both hands on his cheeks.

"Hey, old man," I said.

His tail thumped once against the pew.

His eyes were clear and his gums were pink and his breath was just dog.

Piper stopped in the aisle with her hand over her mouth.

"Hannah." She was crying properly now. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was your grandmother's road. I swear to you, I never asked him to do anything. I only said I was scared."

"It's all right, Piper."

"It isn't."

"It isn't his fault." I kept my hand on the dog. "He's a good boy. Take him home."

She nodded and nodded.

She took the leash and went back up the aisle and sat in the last pew, one seat away from Dalton, and they did not look at each other.

Everyone in the church saw that, too.

At the graveside, the wind came across the orchard rows, and the pastor read the old words, and the fire crew lowered Gran in.

The captain of Station 4 shook my hand.

When Dalton came across the grass toward him, the captain turned his back and walked to his truck.

Dalton stopped in the middle of the grass with his hand still out.

I watched the whole crew follow their captain without a word.

Then I looked for somewhere else to put my eyes, and I found a man standing apart from the crowd, under the big cedar by the fence.

He was tall, in a gray work jacket, with a scar through his left eyebrow and close-cut hair going gray at the temples.

He hadn't come with anyone and he hadn't sat in the church.

He was holding his phone in both hands.

Mine buzzed in my coat pocket.

"I'm the one by the cedar."

I looked at him across forty feet of grass.

He took one step toward me, then stopped.

I walked over to him with the dirt still on my shoes.

Up close I could see he hadn't slept in days.

"You said you had a tape," I said.

"I do."

"Who are you?"

He took his hand out of his pocket and held it out between us, and then dropped it again, because I didn't take it.

"My name is Jonah Tierney," he said. "I flew the dog."

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