The Darkest Evening of the Year

with the first. Later he would read both again, searching for clues in addition to “the little beach.”
    In the kitchen, Brian poured the contents of the mug down the drain. He no longer needed coffee and no longer wanted cognac.
    Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.
    He opened the refrigerator, but then closed it. He could no more eat than sleep.
    Returning to the study and working on one of his current custom-home projects had no appeal. Architecture might be frozen music, as Goethe once said, but right now he was deaf to it.
    From a kitchen drawer, he extracted a large tablet of art paper and a set of drawing pencils. He had stashed these things in every room of the apartment.
    He sat at the dinette table and began to sketch a concept for the building that Amy hoped he would design for her: a place for dogs, a haven where no hand would ever be raised against them, where every affection wanted would be given.
    She owned a piece of land on which hilltop oaks spread against the sky, long shadows lengthening down sloped meadows in the early morning, retracting toward the crest as the day ripened toward noon. She had a vision for it that inspired him.
    Nevertheless, after a while, Brian found himself turning from sketch to portrait, from a haven for dogs to the animal itself. He had a gift for portraiture, but never before had he drawn a dog.
    As his pencils whispered across the paper, an uncanny feeling overcame him, and a strange thing happened.

 
    Chapter
4
    A fter dropping Brian at his place, Amy Redwing called Lottie Augustine, her neighbor, and explained that she was bringing in three rescues who were not dogs and who needed shelter.
    Lottie served in the volunteer army that did the work of Golden Heart, the organization Amy founded. A few times in the past, she’d risen after midnight to help in an emergency, always with good cheer.
    Having been a widow for a decade and a half, having retired from a nursing career, Lottie found as much meaning in tending to the dogs as she had found in being a good wife and a caring nurse.
    The drive from Brian’s place to Lottie’s house was stressed by silence: little Theresa asleep in the backseat, her brother slumped and brooding beside her, Janet in the passenger seat but looking lost and studying the deserted streets as if these were not just unknown neighborhoods but were the precincts of a foreign country.
    In the company of other people, Amy had little tolerance for quiet. Enduring mutual silences, she sometimes felt as though the other person might ask a terrible question, the answer to which, if she spoke it, would shatter her as surely as a hard-thrown stone will destroy a pane of glass.
    Consequently, she spoke of this and that, including Antoine, the dog driver who served blind Marco, out there in the far Philippines. Neither the two troubled children nor their mother would take the bait.
    When they came to a stop at a red traffic light, Janet offered Amy the two thousand dollars that she had given to Carl.
    “It’s yours,” Amy said.
    “I can’t accept it.”
    “I bought the dog.”
    “Carl’s in jail now.”
    “He’ll be out on bail soon.”
    “But he won’t want the dog.”
    “Because I’ve bought her.”
    “He’ll want me—after what I’ve done.”
    “He won’t find you. I promise.”
    “We can’t afford a dog now.”
    “No problem. I bought her.”
    “I’d give her to you anyway.”
    “The deal is done.”
    “It’s a lot of money,” Janet said.
    “Not so much. I never renegotiate.”
    The woman folded her left hand around the cash, her right hand around the left, lowered her hands to her lap as she bowed her head.
    The traffic signal turned green, and Amy drove across the deserted intersection as Janet said softly, “Thank you.”
    Thinking of the dog in the cargo area, Amy said, “Trust me, sweetie, I got the better half of the deal.”
    She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the dog peering forward from behind the backseat. Their eyes met in their reflections and then Amy looked at the road ahead.
    “How long have you had Nickie?” Amy asked.
    “A little more than four months.”
    “Where did you get her?”
    “Carl didn’t say. He just brought her home.”
    They were southbound on the Coast Highway, scrub and shore grass to their right. Beyond the grass lay the beach, the sea.
    “How old is she?”
    “Carl said maybe two years.”
    “So she came with the