She laughed. “Yeah, okay. She has this ugly side, yet surely something about her must be redeeming? Your brother loves her.”
“You think so?” he said. He shook his head, fastening his seat belt. “You think whatever you want to think,” he said. “Right now I don’t have a clue how to interpret that news.”
“And that’s why I suggest you talk to them about it.”
“Do they know I’m coming in for the wedding? And only the wedding? That’s more than enough without having to attend the rehearsal too.”
“Well, your brother did want you for his best man, but I hear you turned down that role?”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to be around her any more than I had to be.”
“I think your brother does understand that. At least somewhat. I think he’s also hoping to make peace.”
“Maybe. I don’t know that a whole lot of peace can be made between him and me. Although maybe, … maybe I’m the fool here. Maybe they’ve been the real item, and I was just the baggage along the way.”
“Well, let’s not worry about it,” she said, settling in the driver’s seat, clicking her seat belt into place. “What’s this about a War Dog?”
He looked at her for a moment, and she saw him visibly try to pull back from his brother and all the emotions entailed in that. He took a long slow deep breath. “Beowulf. At least that’s his nickname. His legal name is a series of names. He’s a trained War Dog but was released to retire.”
She quickly drove through the parking lot, punching her ticket into the machine, paying the tab via her phone, and then pulled out onto the main highway, heading home. “And that’s got what to do with you?”
“It’s hard to say. It’s more a case of, I’ll do what I can do. If I pick up his trail, then I’ll carry on. He came to an adopted family, and they let him out to go to the bathroom the next morning, and he never came back.”
She stared at him and then returned her gaze to the road. “So he was only there for one night? Was it that bad?”
“Or was it not fenced? Did he get taken by somebody else or did the coyotes get him, whether human or animal? Or did he try to head back home, looking for the war where he spent all those years?” he said. “It’s really hard to know.”
“And do you have a picture of him?”
“I do,” he said. “It’s in my bag. He looks like a really stocky black shepherd. The only other color on him is a brown and black pattern found on his ears.”
“Interesting,” she murmured. “Well, I certainly haven’t seen any dog like it.”
“The only thing I have to go on is the place he went missing from.”
“And how long ago?’
“It’s been a couple months now.”
“Well, that’s a useless trip then, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” he said, “I don’t really know yet.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but at least it brought you here.”
“It did. I’m not so sure I’m happy about that right now though.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, if nothing else,” she said, “I am delighted to see you.”
He barked out a laugh at that. “And I missed you too,” he said affectionately.
She shook her head. “But not enough to come back and visit, huh?”
“Nope,” he said. “Since the divorce, I buried myself in work. Then was injured and haven’t come up for air since.” He added, “And then it became a habit.”
“Will you stop living just because of her?”
“Well, I was hoping not to repeat my mistake,” he said jokingly.
She smiled and nodded. As she headed home, she wondered how to broach the conversation. But then he said it himself.
“What about you?” he asked. “You planning to marry again?”
Chapter 2
Laysha nodded. “I hope so,” she said. “I married basically after feeling rejected by somebody I really cared about. Threw myself into that substitute relationship and honestly don’t feel like I did Paul any service. The divorce was a relief for both of us. I did try to make it work, but you can’t force feelings that don’t exist.”
“Good point,” he said. After an awkward pause, he looked at her several times, as if wanting to ask a question.
She didn’t offer anything, focusing on the traffic instead. “How will you figure out where the dog went from here?”
“Well, that’s another reason I need wheels,” he said. “I’ll go to the last place he was and see what I can figure out.”
“And why would somebody take the dog?”
“Jealousy? There’s quite a vetting process to adopt a War Dog after it’s been retired from service.”
“But then somebody else could have just applied and been given another one,” she said.
“True. And maybe it ran away because it didn’t like something about the scenario. Don’t forget these dogs are highly trained, but they’ve also been through tough times. They can come back with PTSD, just like the human soldiers do.
“In some ways they need to be retrained to enter their civilian life of retirement, just like for me and others like me who were injured. I have his file, and I’ve read some of it, and he’d gone through several handlers before his retirement, after which several said he was difficult to work with. Mostly over his attachment to his one handler who died on the job. He was trained to find bombs and other chemical weapons.”
“So was Beowulf aggressive? Maybe he did something really ugly, like attacking the adopting couple’s children or something, and the owner shot him and buried him, thinking good riddance?” She shivered. “But I hope not. All dogs deserve a second chance.”
“The couple had no kids,” he said, “and Beowulf’s file doesn’t show any aggressive tendency, other than when called into action. However, that’s certainly a possibility, although it’s not the one I want to hear.”
“Well, we’re almost there, at home,” she said, as she switched from city roads to country roads, and finally turned on her signal to pull into her driveway.
“You sure you’re okay with me staying with you?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why not?” she asked. “You’ve stayed with me lots.”
“I know, but I used to stay with my brother a lot of times too.”
“Well, you can stay with him if you want,” she said. “You know your ex-wife’s there.”
“True. That’s … that’s a good enough reason to keep me away.”
“But you do you,” she said. She hopped out, closed the truck door, and headed to her front porch. She knew he had come up behind her as she turned to open the door and let her dogs out. Three dogs raced outside, barking like crazy, as if they’d just been attacked, and headed toward him. He dropped his big duffel bag and bent down to say hi to them. Immediately they turned into the slobberiest pups ever. She shook her head as she watched them. “Every damn time you’re here,” she said, “you can make the biggest, strongest, baddest animal turn into Jell-O.”