LITMIR.BIZ

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car and opened the passenger door with one hand, balancing the take-out box in the other. The dog slunk along with her, half crouched, limping a little.

       “Go ahead,” she said gently. “Get in.”

       The dog hesitated, then made the leap into the seat—mud, rainwater and all.

       Echo sighed, opened the take-out box and stood in the rain, hand-feeding the animal the last of her meat loaf special. So much for staying within her travel budget by stretching every meal into at least two more.

       Ravenous, the poor critter gulped down its supper and looked up at Echo with such pathetic gratitude that tears came into her eyes.

       “Don’t worry,” she said, to herself as much as the dog. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

       She closed the car door, let the rain wash her hands clean, holding them out palms up as if in supplication, and rubbed them semidry on her ancient tan Burberry coat before settling behind the wheel once more.

       The dog, dripping onto Echo’s formerly clean leather seat, eyed her with weary adoration.

       Echo started the car, and the combination of wet dog and her own soggy raincoat instantly fogged up the windows.

       “This is Arizona,” she complained to her new traveling companion. “It’s supposed to be dry.”

       The dog sighed, as if to concur that nothing was as it should be.

       “You really are wet,” Echo remarked matter-of-factly. She switched on the defroster, pulled the lever to open the trunk and braved the elements again to get out the quilt she’d carried around with her since childhood. After bundling the dog, she peeled off her raincoat and tossed it over the seat before getting back in the car and buckling up.

       Cocooned in faded colors, the dog sighed again, lay down as best it could given the disparity between its size and that of the seat, and was snoring by the time Echo pulled out onto Highway 10.

       Two and a half hours later, on the outskirts of Phoenix, she turned into the lot of a medium-priced chain hotel. The rain had stopped, and there was a muggy warmth in the night air.

       The dog sat up, yawning, the quilt falling away in damp folds.

       Echo assessed the creature again. “I was hoping to make it to Indian Rock tonight,” she told her bedraggled passenger, “but I’m tired and, frankly, you stink. So I’m going to spring for a room, and we’ll hit the road again in the morning. Wait here.”

       The dog looked alarmed at the prospect of her departure, and made a low, whining sound in its throat.

       Echo patted its filthy head. “Not to worry, Muttzo,” she said. “It’s you and me until we find your people.”

       Grabbing her hobo bag, she got out of the car slowly, leaving a window cracked, and headed for the main entrance, hoping she didn’t smell like the dog.

       “Good news,” she said when she returned after fifteen minutes, clutching a key card in hand. “We’re in.” The dog was so glad to see her that it leaned across and laved her face with its rough, meatloaf-scented tongue. “Of course, I did tell them you were a toy poodle.”

       Echo drove around to the back and parked under a light. The dog politely paused to do its business in the shrubbery while Echo wrestled one of her suitcases out of the Volks. Inside, they slogged along a carpeted hallway to room 117 and entered.

       “You get the first bath,” Echo told her canine friend, leading the way to the bathroom. As soon as she turned on the faucet in the tub, the dog leaped over the side and lapped thirstily at the flow.

       The showerhead was on a long metal tube, one of those detachable jobs, so Echo took it down from its hook and knelt beside the tub. Finished slurping, the dog sat down, watching her, its eyes luminous with trust.

       “What do you know?” Echo asked, after considerable spraying. Ten pounds of dirt rolled down to the bottom of the tub and swirled around the drain. “You’re a white Lab. And female, too.”

       The dog gazed at her soulfully, enduring. One more trial in a long sequence of them.

       Echo opened a tiny packet of soap and lathered the dog’s coat. Rinsed. Lathered again. The soap bar wore away to a nubbin, so she fetched a bottle of shampoo from her cosmetic bag.

       More lathering. More rinsing.

       “You need a name,” Echo said as she towel-dried the dog. “Since there’s something faintly mystical and Lady-of-the-Lakeish about you—it’s the eyes, I think—” She paused, pondered and decided. “I hereby dub you Avalon.”

       Avalon, apparently understanding that the bath was over, leaped out of the tub and stood uncertainly on the mat for a few moments, as though awaiting a cue. When Echo didn’t issue any orders, the animal shook herself gloriously, dousing her human companion, and padded out into the main part of the hotel room.

       Echo laughed, found the blow-dryer and plugged it into a wall socket. Avalon’s snow-white fur curled endearingly under the onslaught of heat. Once the dog was thoroughly dry, Echo filled the ice bucket with water, set it on the floor and dodged into the bathroom for a badly needed shower of her own.

       When she came out, bundled in a robe, with her curly, shoulder-length blond hair standing out around her head like an aureole, Avalon had curled up on the floor, at the foot of the bed. The dog opened one brown eye and lifted her head slightly, and there was a certain stalwart wariness in her manner now, as if she expected to be chased away.

       Echo’s throat tightened. She knew what it was like to feel that way, to hover on the fringes of things, hoping not to be noticed and, at the same time, yearning desperately to belong.

       Her old life, in Chicago, had been all about waiting on the sidelines.

       “Hey,” she said, crouching to stroke Avalon’s soft, gleaming coat. “I’m a woman of my word. We’ll stick together, as long as necessary. Share and share alike.” She put out her hand and, to her surprise, Avalon placed a paw in her palm. They shook on the deal.

       After blow-drying her hair and winding it into a French braid to keep it from frizzing out, Echo pulled on a cotton nightshirt, brushed her teeth and climbed into bed, leaning to switch off the bedside lamp.

       Avalon gave a soft, pitiful whine, as though she were crying.

       Echo’s eyes burned again. “Come on, then,” she said. “There’s room enough up here for both of us.”

       Avalon jumped onto the bed, nested at Echo’s feet and fell asleep.

       Echo, exhausted after days on the road, wasn’t far behind.

      CORA TELLINGTON GREETED HER granddaughters, Rianna and Maeve, with exuberant hugs, on the sidewalk in front of Cora’s Curl and Twirl. The day was new-penny bright, and the only cloud on the horizon was the scowl on her son-in-law’s face as he got out of the gigantic SUV he drove whenever he came back to Indian Rock.

       Rance McKettrick eyed the storefront next to Cora’s combination beauty salon and baton-twirling school, apparently noting that the For Sale sign was gone from the dusty display window.

       “Finally unloaded the place, did you?” he asked. “Who’s the sucker?”

       Cora took in her late daughter’s handsome husband with a patient sigh. He stood six feet tall, and even in that expensive suit he was wearing, he managed to look like a rugged cowboy, just off the range. His hair was dark—Cora’s fingers itched to give it a trim—and his blue eyes were dusky with his private sorrow. Since Julie’s death, nearly five years ago now, though it didn’t seem possible she’d been gone that long, Rance had been living a half life, going through the motions. Phoning it in.

       Cora missed Julie as much as he did, if not more, because there are few losses more poignantly painful than burying one’s only child, but she’d come to terms with the grief for the sake of her granddaughters. They were

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