Chapter 8: Thirty Years of Dogs

We sat on the trailer's rotten steps, my uncle, the Beta and me, with the sun coming up gold through the lodgepoles.

Mort held the pistol across his knees.

"How did you find us?" I asked.

"Your note said night call," he said. "You have never once written night call without the patient's name."

"That's your whole clue?"

"It's the only one I needed. I called the Hollow's number, and a boy told me where the Beta went."

"Thirty years," I said.

"Thirty-one in March."

"You told me you were driving out to look at a sick heifer."

"I was," said Mort. "The heifer was a wolf pup with a bad paw."

Osmond made a noise.

"Why you?" I said.

"I'm the only vet in three counties who didn't scream the first time."

He rubbed his thumb along the grip.

"The old king's truck broke down on a back road when I was thirty. A log had clipped him."

"You stitched a king on a roadside."

"I stitched him on my tailgate, with a sewing kit. I thought he was a very large drunk."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

"After that I was theirs," Mort said. "They never asked me to keep quiet. I just knew the Law would take me if I talked."

"And me."

"You came to live with me at fourteen," he said, and his voice cracked. "I stood at your parents' funeral in my one suit."

"Mort."

"I thought, I will not lose this girl to a law."

I put my face in my hands.

I wasn't crying, but I was close.

"I'm so angry at you," I said into my palms.

"I know."

"I'm going to stay angry for a week."

"I'll buy the pizza."

I gave a wet, crumpled laugh, and he put an arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into him.

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