“About a month now,” she said, giving him a quick glance before returning to the computer. “Just making some extra money before starting school in the fall.”
“Oh?” Warren was practically eye-to-eye with the dog, he was leaning so far over the counter to continue this conversation. The dog took advantage of this opportunity and licked his ear and Warren, to his credit, only flinched slightly. “Where are you going?”
“Stroudsburg State,” she said, still looking at the computer. “They’ve got a great veterinary program.”
“Great,” Warren said, trying to disengage himself from the dog, who had now moved on to enthusiastically licking his face. “That’s great.”
I turned and stared at my brother, trying to contain my astonishment. Warren had always been a college snob, but it had just gotten worse since he’d gotten into an Ivy. I’d heard him refer to Stanford as his “safety.” The fact that he was talking positively about a school I was fairly sure he’d never heard of five minutes ago was so out of character that it was shocking. But then again, I’d never seen Warren this way around a girl before, ever.
“Okay,” Wendy said as she leaned closer to the screen, “it looks like we have a match!”
“Excellent,” I said, wondering what the next step was—if she would contact the owners, or if we would have to. Either way, as friendly as this dog seemed, I was ready to send him back where he belonged.
“And,” she said, scrolling down her screen, “it looks like the microchipping was actually done here, so he’s local. Which is a good thing. His address is…” She paused, then said, “84 Dockside Road in Lake Phoenix.” She looked at us and smiled, and I just stared back at her, sure that I’d heard wrong. “It’s not too far from here,” she added after a moment. “I could print out directions.”
“I know where it is,” I said, staring down at the dog. I now understood why he was so eager to make it up our driveway. “That’s our house.”
Two hours later, Warren, Murphy, and I returned home. The dog had gotten a thorough cleaning, and now smelled faintly of chemicals. The groomer must not have cared that Murphy was a boy, because there was a pink polka-dot ribbon tied into his wiry hair, just between his ears. We had a bag full of supplies, including a dog dish, water bowl, bed, leash, and food. I hadn’t been under the impression that we were keeping him, but once Wendy had started picking out “the basics we’d need,” Warren had trailed her around the store, nodding at everything she selected, not stopping to consult me about the situation. It wasn’t until we were in the car driving home, just the three of us, Murphy panting happily out the window, his breath now much improved, that I turned to Warren and said, “I can’t believe this.”
“I know,” Warren said, shaking his head. He must have been attempting to look serious—his default expression—but it kept slipping into something a little more dreamy. “It must have been the renters last summer, right?” he asked. “Wendy said that that’s when the microchip information was entered.”
“And that’s their name,” I said. “Pretty conclusive evidence.” I paused at a stoplight, noting the fact that my brother had pronounced Wendy’s name in the tone of voice he usually reserved for facts about tollbooths and lightbulbs. “So what happened?” I asked, speeding up again, even though I knew my brother, who had all the answers, wouldn’t know this one. “They left him at the end of the summer?” I asked. I could feel my anger rising as I said it, getting furious at these heartless, spice-stealing renters, treating the dog that way. “They just abandoned him at the house?”
Warren shrugged. “Or perhaps he ran away,” he said, his tone becoming, finally, one that I recognized—measured, careful, weighing all the facts. “We don’t know the situation. We’ll tell Mom, and she can contact them. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding.”
“Maybe,” I said, but not really believing it. I turned down Dockside, and as soon as we got close, Murphy pulled his head in from the window, scrambling up to try and sit on the console between us, straining forward, looking at the house, tail wagging wildly. And as I pulled into the driveway and he got more and more excited, I knew this was the proof, even more so than the computer’s confirmation. Murphy knew where he was, and was desperate to get back. When I killed the engine and opened the back door, he bounded out of the car and ran straight for the house, clearly delighted to have found his way home at last.
Truth and Daring
chapter eighteen