Janine went silent.
I frowned.
“What?”
The man laughed bitterly.
Not at me.
At himself.
At a memory.
“At the hospital,” he said. “Every time I visited, all he talked about was Bo.”
His eyes were fixed on the pavement now.
“Bo ate today.”
“Bo likes this blanket.”
“Bo slept beside me all night.”
Another hollow laugh.
“I was his son.”
The words hung in the air.
For the first time, I saw something beyond the anger.
Not kindness.
Not remorse.
Hurt.
Old hurt.
The kind people carry for years until it hardens into something poisonous.
Janine sighed heavily.
“You really never understood, did you?”
The man looked up.
“Understood what?”
“He talked about Bo because Bo stayed.”
Silence.
“Walter never wondered where Bo was,” she continued. “He never had to beg Bo to visit. He never sat beside the window waiting for Bo to answer the phone.”
The man’s face tightened.
Each word landed exactly where it was meant to.
Because grief has a way of exposing truths everyone worked hard to avoid.
“I had a life,” he snapped.
“You had excuses,” Janine replied.
Another silence.
This one worse.
The man opened his mouth.
Then closed it again.
Because somewhere deep down, he knew she wasn’t entirely wrong.
The highway roared behind us.
Bo remained pressed against me.
And for a moment nobody moved.
Then my phone rang.
A number I didn’t recognize.
I answered.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Collins?”
“Yes.”
“This is Attorney Richard Bell.”
The lawyer.
The one Janine had mentioned.
The timing felt unreal.
“I understand you’ve located Walter Grayson’s dog.”
