My Husband Sent the Helicopter to Save a Dog, So I Signed novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Chicken and Escarole

"What about him?" I asked Alec.

"He didn't act," Alec said. "I've flown for him four years. He doesn't hear anything that hasn't been put on a page first."

"That's worse."

"I know. I thought you should hear it from somebody who isn't paid to say it."

I didn't answer Odette's text.

I put the lilies in a bucket of water at the bakery and went home to the urn on my kitchen shelf.

I told Nonna the whole thing out loud, because that was how we always did it.

At four the next morning I was alone in Ferrante Bread, pulling a tray of loaves out of the oven with two oven mitts over my gauze.

The back door opened.

Odette stood in the alley light with a covered pot in her arms and a golden retriever panting at her knee.

Her eyes were swollen.

"I told myself I'd wait until you called," she said. "I couldn't."

I should have shut the door.

I let her in.

She set the pot on my steel table and took the mitts out of my hands herself, one finger at a time.

"Sit," she said. "Please. I'll finish the loaves."

She slid the tray onto the rack and turned the oven off.

She did it right, without asking where anything was.

Biscuit lay down on the tile and put her chin on my shoe.

She was thin and gray around the muzzle, and she smelled of lavender shampoo.

She didn't smell of smoke at all.

"I'm so sorry about Nonna," Odette said.

Her voice broke on the name.

"I heard it from Alec's resignation letter, if you can believe that. Mitchell never told me. I thought your text was about the dog."

"I texted Mitchell."

"I know. And I told you I'd make sure he saw it." She pressed her fist to her mouth. "I didn't. I'm so sorry. He had the Seattle trip and the board, and I let it go to the bottom of the pile."

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