Chapter 2 - The Dog Who Should Have Been Gone
The police stayed at Holloway Packaging for nearly three hours.
Grant hated every minute of it.
I could tell by the way he kept checking his watch.
Celia stayed close to him, whispering whenever the officers moved away.
Atlas never left me.
Not once.
When I sat inside the ambulance while a paramedic checked my blood pressure, Atlas sat against my knee.
When I gave my statement, he lay across my boots.
When I walked toward my car, he followed.
It should have felt impossible.
Instead, it felt like something inside me had finally returned to its proper place.
I opened the passenger door.
Atlas climbed in without hesitation.
Exactly as he used to.
I stood there staring at him.
“You remember my car?”
Then I almost laughed.
Of course he didn’t.
I hadn’t owned this car seven years ago.
But Atlas remembered me.
That was enough.
“Claire.”
Grant’s voice came from behind me.
I turned.
The loading dock had been sealed off with yellow tape.
He stopped several feet away.
For once, his usual confidence looked brittle.
“Where are you taking him?”
“Home.”
“You can’t just take some stray.”
“He’s Atlas.”
“You don’t know that.”
I stared at him.
“Yes, I do.”
“Dogs look alike.”
“His ear.”
Grant said nothing.
“The white patch beneath his chin.”
Silence.
“The scar on his right paw from when he stepped on broken glass when he was two.”
Grant’s eyes shifted.
I continued.
“And the three-note whine he makes when he wants attention.”
Grant shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
“Fine. Maybe it’s him.”
“Maybe?”
“It was seven years ago, Claire.”
“You were there.”
“So were you.”
“No. I was at the hospital.”
His expression hardened.
The night Atlas disappeared, Mom had collapsed at home.
I rode in the ambulance.
Grant said he would follow after securing the house and putting Atlas inside.
He arrived at the hospital almost two hours later.
When I asked where Atlas was, Grant told me the dog had slipped through the gate.
At the time, I had been too terrified about Mom to ask questions.
Later, those questions became unbearable.
“How did he get out?” I asked now.
“I told you.”
“You said he slipped his leash.”
“Yes.”
“Why was he on a leash inside our fenced yard?”
Grant’s eyes narrowed.
I had never asked that before.
Not once in seven years.
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
“I don’t remember every detail.”
“I do.”
“That’s because you refuse to move on.”
There it was.
His favorite weapon.
My grief.
Whenever I questioned something he had done after Mom died, he said I was emotional.
Whenever I disagreed about the business, he said I was stuck in the past.
Whenever I asked why financial records didn’t match, he told employees I was overwhelmed.
Now I saw the pattern clearly.
“You should go home,” he said.
“I am.”
“And Claire?”
I waited.
“Don’t start inventing conspiracies because of one equipment failure.”
I looked toward the police tape.
“I didn’t say anything about a conspiracy.”
Grant realized his mistake.
Too late.
I got into the car.
Atlas watched him through the window until Grant disappeared from sight.
When we reached my house, Atlas stopped at the front walkway.
He looked around slowly.
My home was a small brick bungalow ten minutes from the plant.
Mom had helped me buy it shortly before she became ill.
Atlas had visited several times as a young dog.
I opened the door.
He walked inside.
He sniffed the living room.
The couch.
The kitchen.
Then he stopped in front of a framed photograph.
Mom.
She was standing beside me and Grant at the plant’s twentieth anniversary celebration.
Atlas sat.
His ears lowered.
“Oh, buddy.”
I knelt beside him.
“You remember her too.”
For the first time that day, I cried.
Not dramatic tears.
Not loud sobbing.
Just seven years of grief slipping out quietly while an old dog rested his head against my shoulder.
Eventually I noticed something.
Atlas wore a collar.
Not the red leather collar he had disappeared with.
A faded black nylon collar.
No tag.
I removed it carefully.
There was handwriting on the inside.
A. HOLLOWAY
My last name.
Below it was a phone number.
Not mine.
I called.
An elderly man answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi. I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Claire Holloway. I found a dog wearing a collar with this number.”
Silence.
Then the man inhaled sharply.
“You found him?”
“Yes.”
“Is he all right?”
“He’s here with me.”
“Oh, thank God.”
His relief was genuine.
“My name is Thomas Bell,” he said. “I’ve been caring for that dog for almost seven years.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Seven years?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you get him?”
Another pause.
“I think,” Thomas said carefully, “we should speak in person.”
My heart began pounding.
“Why?”
“Because the man who gave me that dog told me something very different from what I later discovered.”
“What man?”
“I never knew his full name.”
“Describe him.”
Thomas did.
Thirty-something at the time.
Dark hair.
Expensive watch.
Gray SUV.
A small scar on the left side of his chin.
I closed my eyes.
Grant had gotten that scar playing baseball when he was fourteen.
Thomas continued speaking.
“He told me the dog belonged to a family that had moved overseas and abandoned him.”
My throat tightened.
“When?”
“Seven years ago. Around October.”
The exact month Atlas disappeared.
I looked toward Atlas.
He was lying near the front door.
Watching me.
Thomas said, “There’s more.”
“What?”
“The dog didn’t want to go with me.”
My eyes burned.
“He kept trying to jump out of my truck. He scratched the door so badly I had to replace the panel.”
I pressed a hand against my mouth.
“Why didn’t you return him?”
“I tried to find the family eventually. But the man had given me false information.”
“Why did Atlas leave you today?”
Thomas sighed.
“He escaped yesterday afternoon.”
“From where?”
“I live north of town.”
That was twelve miles away.
“He traveled twelve miles?”
“I suppose he did.”
“To the plant.”
Another silence.
Then Thomas said something that made my entire body go cold.
“Claire, Atlas has escaped only twice before.”
“When?”
“Both times, he went in the same direction.”
“Toward Holloway Packaging?”
“Yes.”
I stared at the dog.
He hadn’t found me by accident.
Atlas had been trying to come home for years.
And somebody had deliberately taken him away.
That night, after Thomas agreed to meet me the next morning, I opened an old storage box containing Mom’s belongings.
Buried beneath photographs and hospital documents was a notebook I had forgotten existed.
My mother’s handwriting filled the first several pages.
Supplier names.
Production numbers.
Payroll notes.
Then, near the end, I found one sentence underlined twice.
Grant is moving money again. Atlas saw him in the warehouse tonight.
I read the sentence three times.
Again?
Moving money again?
And why had Mom written that Atlas had seen him?
Dogs couldn’t testify.
Unless what Atlas had seen involved something my mother thought mattered.
I turned the page.
It had been torn out.
So had the next four pages.
Someone had removed them.
I knew exactly who had helped me clean out Mom’s house after she died.
Grant.
I closed the notebook.
Atlas lifted his head.
For seven years, I had thought I was searching for a dog.
Now I understood.
May you like
Atlas had been removed because he was connected to something Grant desperately wanted forgotten.
And the next morning, Thomas Bell was going to tell me how my brother had made Atlas disappear.
