The whole interaction had gone much more smoothly than I’d been expecting it to. Wendy had agreed almost immediately, and she knew exactly who Warren was—she hadn’t even needed a photo reminder, which was a good thing, since the only picture of him that I had on my phone was a terrible one I’d taken while he was in the midst of telling me how potato chips were invented. I’d taken the picture to try and get him to stop talking and the result was Warren looking both annoyed and out of focus.
As I walked Murphy over to my bike after picking up the corn and some licorice for my father, I was feeling a tiny bit better. Even if I hadn’t been able to make things right with Henry, I had gotten my brother a date and, hopefully, saved the dog from any more excessive grooming.
It wasn’t until I faced the reality of getting home, with the dog, that I realized I’d hit a snag. Presumably, Warren had dropped him off in the car. It turned out that Murphy did not like the concept of my bike basket, and kept trying to get out of it, his nails scraping for purchase. When one of his paws got stuck between the metal slats, he started whimpering in a way that hurt my heart, so I dropped the kickstand and lifted the dog out immediately. “It’s okay,” I said, pulling him close to me for a minute. I could feel that he was trembling. “We don’t have to go in the basket. It’s okay.” I ran my hand over his wiry head for a moment, and felt him settle down a bit.
But even though I’d made this blithe promise, I wasn’t sure exactly how we were going to get home. I tried riding the bike, holding the dog’s leash to the side, but it kept getting tangled in the wheel and Murphy proved himself to not be the world’s fastest learner in avoiding this. And the same thing happened when I tried to walk the bike and the dog at the same time. So finally, I decided we were just going to have to go on foot. I locked my bike up by the diner, tucked the posters under my arm, and started walking Murphy home, probably undoing all the grooming work that had just been done. I was pulling out my phone to call home and let my mother know that the corn—not to mention me and the dog—were going to be a little late, when a car slowed to a stop next to me.
It was a slightly battered SUV, with Henry in the driver’s seat. He lowered the passenger side window and leaned across the seat. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I replied. Maybe he just wanted to continue our conversation from earlier, but this seemed like an odd place to do it.
“Do you need a ride?” he asked. The minivan behind him slammed on its brakes, and then honked loudly. Henry waved him around, and I realized that this was not a moment to really consider the question, or wonder why he was asking after he’d so effectively shot me down less than an hour before.
“Sure,” I replied, picking up the dog and opening the passenger door. I got into the car and slammed the door, looking over at him as he shifted the car into gear. “Thanks. The dog hasn’t mastered the concept of riding in the bike basket.”
“No problem,” he said, pulling back onto the road. “We’re going to the same place, after all. It seemed rude not to offer.”
I nodded and I stroked the top of the dog’s head and looked out at the trees on the side of the road. So it wasn’t anything except politeness. I really shouldn’t have been surprised. I focused on making sure Murphy’s bow—pink polka dot, again—was straight and concentrated on not speaking. I’d made such a fool of myself earlier that I didn’t see the sense in making it worse. But the silence between us felt oppressive, like it was a physical force closing in on me from all sides.
Henry might have been feeling this as well, because he turned on the radio, then turned it off when a twangy, country-sounding voice started singing about lost love. We drove without speaking for a few moments, and then he glanced over at me. “I didn’t know you had a dog,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, scratching the spot between the dog’s ears that always made his back leg thump. “It’s kind of new.” Henry just nodded, and silence fell between us again. I was about to leave it at that, but then, figuring that this was a safe and non-humiliating topic, took a breath and continued. “He belonged to the renters who had our house last summer.”
Henry glanced over at the dog, comprehension dawning on his face. “Yes,” he said, “that’s where I know him from. It’s been bothering me ever since I first saw him.” He paused at a stop sign, looking from the dog to me. “So why do you have him?”
“They left him behind,” I said. “We haven’t been able to track them down, so we’ve kind of just taken him in.”
“They left him,” Henry repeated, his voice strangely flat.