“Okay.”
“If you don’t want Bella you’re going to have to find a different home than mine.”
“No, we love Bella. I just … never mind. It’s okay.”
*
We did a car ride for a long time, but the best part was when we crested a hill and the smell came to me: home, the place where Lucas and I lived. Drifting on the air was the unique mix of scents that meant home, and now I had my bearings. I knew where I needed to go.
Taylor was happy to see us, and we were put on leashes and taken for the first walk in a long, long time. Dutch was ecstatic, marking everything in sight. “They both got so fat,” Taylor said disgustedly.
“We’ll put them on a diet soon, but let’s give them a chance to readjust. They probably are confused and miss Sylvia,” Gavin said.
“It’s hard to argue with something so completely deranged as that statement.” Taylor chuckled. “So, cabin this weekend? I’d love to get some hiking in before the snow hits.”
The next time we took a car ride my nose told me where we were going before we got there: the cabin. Dutch lifted his leg all along the dead plants in the backyard, insulted that his scents had faded, while I held my nose aloft and searched for Big Kitten. I could smell many animals, but not her.
“Want to go for a hike?” Taylor asked the next morning. I recognized the words but did not understand their meaning without Lucas. “Come on, Dutch.”
The men snapped leashes onto our collars and led us outdoors. For a time the path was familiar, but soon we turned uphill and were headed into an area where I had never been before. Dutch marked as often as they would let him—they usually tugged on his leash when he tried to stop to lift his leg.
“Are we okay here, do you think?” Gavin asked.
“Sure. I mean, if we run into a forest ranger we’ll have to pay a fine if they are off leash.”
“Have you ever seen a forest ranger? Except in your fantasies, I mean.”
“Funny.” Taylor knelt down and unsnapped my leash, stuffing it into the sack on his back. Gavin did the same with Dutch.
For a time, the sensation of going for a walk without a leash was so strange I stayed close to the two men, who were laughing and talking. Eventually, though, Dutch loped ahead, struck by a scent I didn’t detect. I trotted to keep up with him.
“Don’t go far!” Gavin called.
Free and running together, energy coursed through us and Dutch and I took off, galloping down the trail. I smelled a rabbit and wondered if Dutch had ever seen one. I remembered Big Kitten bringing rabbit meat. I remembered being on a long hilly trail like this one. I remembered Go Home.
I remembered Lucas.
Spurred on by each other’s energy, we raced ahead on the path, but we both halted abruptly when we heard Taylor.
“Dutch! Bella!” he yelled.
Dutch and I nosed each other, panting from our sprint. He looked back toward where we could smell the two men, and then at me. I understood that he sensed something in me, a change in my intention, but he could not comprehend what.
I wagged my tail. I liked Dutch. He had been a member of my pack. He loved Gavin and Taylor and they loved him. But their home was not mine, and now it was time for me to move on.
When Taylor called again, Dutch took a long, lingering look at me and turned back the way we’d come. After a few steps, he stopped and gazed at me expectantly. I didn’t move. We both heard our names, this time in Gavin’s voice, and Dutch seemed to get it then. He stared, perhaps not believing I would forgo a wonderful life with the two men, or perhaps just realizing we might never see each other again.
But he couldn’t ignore Gavin. Regret and confusion in his eyes, he left me and went back to be with his family.
I continued on in the other direction.
Twenty-two
For a long time, I was aware of Dutch, his scent pursuing me as I followed the trail. I knew he would be happy with Gavin and Taylor—especially with Gavin, who was Dutch’s Lucas. If not for Dutch, I might not have been able to leave the two men, but I felt good, knowing they had a dog.
I had not been for such an extended walk since before we stayed with Sylvia, but this was all familiar—trekking down a path beaten into the ground by people and animals, covering the terrain as it rose and fell and went from rocky to wooded to grassy to dusty.
Much sooner than I would have expected, I was tired and thirsty, my leg muscles demanding rest. I found a protected place to lie down, yawning, feeling exhausted. Sleep didn’t come easily—I had forgotten all the animal smells that arrived on the night air, and a fox’s scream jolted me alert a few times. I wanted to think about Lucas, but my memory took me to Dutch and Gavin and Taylor, and Big Kitten and Chloe, and I missed all of them. I felt alone—very, very alone.
The weather was dry and crisp. The trail was doing me the favor of pointing directly at the scent of home, but I knew I needed water, and reluctantly veered away from the path and headed toward where my nose told me I would find a stream.
I also smelled something else: burned wood. Not smoke like from Sylvia’s mouth or when Taylor and Gavin had a fire inside the hole in the wall in their cabin, but the clear tang of wood remnants when the flames have long died out. Tracking the water, I soon came to a vast, yellow-grassed area where most of the trees poking skyward were coated all along their trunks with this odor. Most of them were stark black and sported no leaves, and many were lying flat on the ground. I sniffed curiously at one of them, not understanding what could possibly have occurred to cause so many charred logs.
When the clear feral stench of a coyote came faintly to me from the forest of burned wood, I turned away.
*
After two days of steady progress, I was miserably hungry. I had followed my nose to water and had come across a pretty large lake, but I had to cross a busy road to get to it and I felt like a bad dog as the vehicles roared past. There were no trees, just rocks and some scrub, so I was exposed as I drank.
I wanted my Tiny Piece of Cheese. It wasn’t the treat I craved, it was the love and attention from my person.
I felt lost.