Chapter 8: The Empty Slot

Silvan's POV

On Friday night, I sat on the floor of the dog room with my back against a nine-thousand-dollar bed.

I was reading Lacey Whitfield's invoice for the third time.

It had arrived at six, by email, with a subject line that said: Invoice 4.

Statement to Animal Services, fifty minutes at sixty-two fifty an hour. Fifty-two dollars and eight cents.

Under it, in a box, she had pasted what she told the officer.

It was three lines.

"Gerald stood over Truffle and wagged his tail. Gerald got off when Silvan said, without a leash. Truffle was not hurt."

I read the last line again.

Truffle was not hurt.

It did not say anything about Gerald being good, or innocent, or misunderstood.

It did not say anything about me.

She had done exactly what she had promised at the fence, and she had billed me for it.

I had offered that woman ten million dollars, and she had stuck it to her fridge under a pistachio.

I was thirty-four years old, and I had never met anyone who could not be paid.

Gerald put his chin on my knee.

I scratched behind his ears, and he closed his eyes and grinned the way he does, with half his teeth showing.

"She's going to ruin me, Gerald," I said.

He thumped his tail once on the floor.

I kept thinking of the way she had yelled my name across her yard.

She had been barefoot, with a hundred-dollar bill in her fist.

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