The Darkest Evening of the Year

none more than the compassion they revealed in their choice of dogs. They adopted only goldens with special needs, which were the hardest to place in forever homes.
    As a puppy only a few weeks old, Mortimer had been found in a Dumpster, thrown away because he had spina bifida and was paralyzed from the waist down. Although treated like garbage, he had been fortunate—considering that he might have been drowned in a bucket before being tossed in the trash.
    After examinations by three different vets, Mortimer was judged too severely disabled to be saved. Euthanasia was recommended.
    In his expressive face, in his sweet and cheerful demeanor, Amy had seen not an inconvenience but instead a soul as bright as any.
    At the start, Mortimer could walk on his front legs but only drag his rear. Surgery to remove his hopelessly deformed left hind leg, followed by weeks of therapy, resulted in an accomplished tripod pup who could not only walk without dragging his butt but also run with a gait that was as peculiar as it was swift.
    Five years old now, Mortimer was a certified therapy dog. Millie took him to children’s hospitals to visit ill and disabled kids who, every one, were inspired by his courage and good cheer.
    Daisy was blind. She navigated by sound and smell and instinct, but also by staying close to Mortimer, who was her trusted guide and boon companion.
    Steps led up the ice-plant-covered slope, and three-legged Morty and blind Daisy ascended with the enthusiasm of any goldens at the realization that visitors had come calling.
    Usually, their rapidly rotating tails would wind them up and wiggle them directly to Amy and Brian. But when they came off the stairs onto the patio, and encountered Nickie, a remarkable thing happened.
    Morty froze, Daisy froze, tails suddenly still but not lowered, heads high, ears lifted. Like Fred and Ethel, these two did not rush to Nickie for the usual doggy meet-and-greet.
    First Mortimer came forward tentatively, then Daisy. Approaching Nickie, Morty bowed his head, and Daisy did the same a moment later.
    Mortimer settled onto his belly and awkwardly crawled forward the last few feet. Daisy, sensing what he had done, followed his example.
    When they had reached her, Nickie lowered her head to Mortimer and, as if grooming her pup, began lovingly to lick his face.
    Eyes closed, he submitted with a look of ecstasy, tail sweeping the brick patio. His failure to return the kisses was odd behavior.
    When after half a minute Nickie had finished with Morty, she turned her attention to Daisy and licked her face, too, as though she were a mother tending to a newborn. Daisy closed her sightless eyes and sighed contentedly.
    Fred and Ethel had refrained from greeting their old friends, the disabled Packard dogs, as if in Nickie’s presence new protocols applied. They stood nearby, watching intently.
    Having come up the steps immediately behind his goldens, Barry Packard witnessed this strange ceremony. A burly, barrel-chested man of reliable good humor, he usually entered with a laugh line followed by handshakes and hugs. Here he stood in silence, intrigued by the dogs’ behavior.
    Martini forgotten, Millie had risen from her chair to get a better view of these events.
    Amy realized that the actions and the attitudes of the dogs were not alone responsible for the extraordinary quality of the moment.
    A hush had fallen upon the night, as though a great bell jar had been lowered over the house and patio. The background sounds of which she had been only half aware—faint music from one neighbor’s house, soft laughter from another, the spirited singing of shore toads—were silenced. Even the low surf, although no lower or in less frequent sets than before, seemed to dissolve upon the sand with less exuberance, almost in a whisper.
    The prismatic lenses of the six gas-fed hurricane lamps had all along sprayed quivering rainbows across the white painted ceiling of the patio and had scattered shimmering coins of light across chairs and tables and faces, but surely the colors had not been as intense as they were now.
    Imagination might have accounted for Amy’s impression that the air carried a subtle new energy, similar to the freighted atmosphere under storm clouds before the first flash of lightning. But she was not imagining when she felt the fine hairs on her arms and on the nape of her neck quiver as though responding to the silent flute of static electricity.
    Mortimer rose to his three