My heart started pounding.
“Walter wrote that if Bo was ever abandoned after his death, ownership would transfer immediately to whoever rescued him and provided proof.”
I stared at the dog leaning against me.
The dog who had waited under the burning sun.
The dog who had guarded a dead man’s wallet like it was a sacred promise.
The dog who, somehow, had led me straight into the middle of someone else’s unfinished goodbye.
And beside the road, with trucks screaming past and heat shimmering across the asphalt, Bo finally did something he hadn’t done once since I arrived.
He stopped watching the highway.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted his head.
And looked at me.
PART 3
Bo looked at me for only a few seconds.
But after hours of staring at the road, it felt like a lifetime.
His eyes weren’t asking a question.
They were exhausted.
As if he had finally reached the end of an instruction he’d been following for too long.
The man recovered first.
“This is ridiculous.”
His voice came out louder than before.
Desperate.
“The dog belongs to my family.”
Janine didn’t hesitate.
“No,” she said. “Walter belonged to your family. Bo belonged to Walter.”
The distinction hit harder than anyone expected.
Because it was true.
You could see it in the photograph.
In the worn wallet.
In the way Bo had spent an entire day guarding the last things Walter had touched.
The man stepped closer.
“Give me the dog.”
Bo immediately lowered his head and moved behind my leg.
Not aggressively.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Enough to answer for himself.
The man saw it.
And something ugly crossed his face.
Something that looked less like grief and more like resentment.
“You always liked the damn dog more than me,” he muttered.
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.”
I looked at Bo.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said quietly.
Then he added something unexpected.
“You should know there was a second instruction attached to Walter’s letter.”
