The Darkest Evening of the Year

the mixed breeds, the mutts. Yet thousands every year would have to be euthanized.
    Amy wanted to stop at every cage, scratch and cuddle each dog, but raising their hopes would have been cruel, and leaving them behind after making their acquaintance would have devastated her.
    Luther Osteen had two dogs for their consideration, the first a pure golden named Mandy. She was a sweet girl, nine years old, her face mostly white with age.
    Mandy’s owners had retired. They wanted to spend a few years traveling through Europe. Mandy no longer fit their lifestyle.
    “She’s got some arthritis,” Luther said, “and her teeth haven’t been so well cared for, but she has a few good years in her yet. Hard for us to place an older dog like her. She’s probably given back ten times the love she’s gotten over the years, so it’d be right if she had a chance to be with someone who’d give her a better deal.”
    “We’ll take her,” Dani said.
    The second orphan was a male, part golden, part something else not easily identified, perhaps Australian shepherd. He’d been running loose in an industrial park, wearing a collar with no license.
    “Looks like he was abandoned there,” Luther said, “must’ve been fending for himself a couple weeks, he’s so thin.”
    The nameless dog stood at the cage door, pressing its black nose through a gap in the wire grid.
    “How old, you think?” Dani asked.
    “Figure he’s maybe three or four years. No obvious disease.”
    “Fixed?” Amy asked.
    “No. But you take him, we’ll pay for that. He’s got some ticks, but not a lot.”
    Finding forever homes for hundreds of purebreds a year was hard enough. The mixed breeds were more difficult to place.
    The tail moved continuously. The ears were raised. The brown eyes pleaded.
    “The boy’s housebroken,” Luther said, “and he knows some basic commands like sit and down .”
    That the dog had some training made him easier to place, so with relief, Amy said, “We’ll take him.”
    “You go deal with the paperwork,” Luther said. “I’ll bring them both out to you.”
    Returning along the kennel run, between the rows of cages, Dani took Amy’s hand. She always did. Her eyes were full of unshed tears, which Amy saw before her own vision blurred.
    Coming in past all these dogs, most of whom would be euthanized, always proved to be a tough walk, but the return trip, leaving them to their fate, was brutal.
    Sometimes, Amy despaired for the human race, and never more so than on those days when she visited the county shelter.
    Some repay loyalty with faithlessness and give no thought to their own final hours, when they might have to ask another to grant them the mercy that they withheld from those who trusted them.

 
    Chapter
27
    H arrow makes a ham-and-cheese sandwich, adds two sweet pickles to the plate, and puts the plate on a tray with a container of deli potato salad. He adds two lunchbox bags of potato chips and a small bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies. She likes root beer, so he puts two cold cans on the tray.
    Just as he finishes, Moongirl enters the kitchen. She has dressed in black slacks and a black sweater. She still wears the diamond necklace that he gave her, but the diamond bracelet is a gift from some man before him.
    Regarding the laden tray, she says, “I would’ve done this.”
    “Saved you the trouble.”
    Her green gaze is as sharp as a broken bottle. “Always doing things for me.”
    He knows this wire well. He has walked it with her many times before.
    “I enjoy it,” he says.
    “Doing things for me.”
    “Yes.”
    “What about her?”
    “What about her?” he asks.
    “You give her what she likes.”
    He shrugged. “It’s what we have.”
    “Which you bought.”
    “Next time give me a list.”
    “Then you’ll buy what I want her to have.”
    “Of course.”
    She takes the lid off the container of potato salad and smells it. “You pity her, don’t you?”
    “No.”
    “Don’t you?”
    “Why should I?”
    She spits in the potato salad. “You shouldn’t.”
    He says nothing.
    Again she spits in the potato salad.
    She stares at him, reading his reaction.
    Unlike her, he is in control not just of his body and intellect but also of his emotions. He meets her stare unwaveringly.
    “Save your sympathy for me,” she says.
    “I feel nothing for her.”
    “Not even disgust?”
    “She’s just a thing,” he says.
    Moongirl can maintain a stare halfway to forever. Finally she holds