A Good Listener

Lainey POV I sat on the back steps with my arms around my legs and watched the dog eat. He ate carefully, like he was being polite about it. When the plate was empty he backed away to the middle of the yard and lay down, with his chin on his paws and his eyes on me. This was so weird. It was the middle of the night. I was in my pajamas with gauze on my arm, feeding leftover chicken to a dog the size of a loveseat that had walked out of the woods. And it wasn't even the strangest thing that had happened to me that week. This whole place was weird. I thought about Travis then. I couldn't help it. He was forty minutes away in a uniform, walking some quiet hospital hallway with a radio on his shoulder. I pictured him getting the call that I'd been eaten in our own backyard. Then I pictured telling him about tonight in the morning, and I knew what he would say. Don't feed it, Lane. It'll never leave. He'd be asleep before I got to the part about my arm. I don't know what my face did. I only know that the dog got up. He crossed the grass slowly, with his head low, the way he had before. He stopped in front of me. Then he pushed his big, cold nose under my good hand and flipped it up, so that it landed on top of his head. I laughed. It surprised me. "Okay," I said. "Okay. I'm fine. You're very pushy for somebody who can't sneak." He sat down at my feet. Sitting, he was taller than I was. "This whole town is weird," I told him. He tilted his head, exactly like he was asking what I meant. "It is. Three casseroles showed up on my porch, and I never heard one footstep. The mayor ran to meet us. He actually ran. The diner took its help wanted sign out of the window while I was standing there reading it. There's a man who waters plastic flowers." I scratched behind his ear, and his eyes went half shut. "And everybody knows everything. I got a job, and a waitress wished me luck before I had told a single person." He huffed. It sounded a lot like agreement. "And now I'm talking to a dog. So I guess I fit right in, huh?" His tail swept across the grass, once. I should have gone inside. I didn't. It was the first conversation I'd had in a while where nobody was half listening. "My boyfriend started a new job tonight," I said. "It's his first night. He was so nervous he ironed his own shirt." I smiled a little. "He's had a hard year. He lost his job, and he lost himself for a while there. It hasn't been…" I stopped. "It's just been a hard year." The dog didn't move. "He bought this house without asking me. I was pretty mad about that. I didn't say so." I looked out at the dark yard, and the shed, and the woods. "But maybe he was right. Maybe this is the place where it gets good again. I really want it to be good for us." The dog's ears went back, flat against his head. Then he lay down, slowly, and put his chin on the top of my bare foot. It was heavy and warm. I let it stay. "You're a good listener," I said. "Don't tell anybody." We sat like that for a long time. When I finally got cold, I stood up and told him goodnight, and I locked the door behind me. I looked out the window over the sink before I went up. He hadn't gone back to the woods. He was lying across the bottom step, facing the trees, like he was keeping watch. I slept better than I had since we moved in. In the morning he was gone. The paper plate was sitting inside the mixing bowl, on the top step, right by the door. I stood there in my bare feet and looked at it for a while. I had never met a dog who cleared his own dishes. I had breakfast ready when Travis got home. I made eggs, bacon, and toast, and I set two plates on the table, with real forks. He came through the door at a quarter to seven, still in the uniform, talking before he had his boots off. It had been amazing. He told me all of it, leaning against the counter. They had given him his own set of keys. There was a guy named Dale who had been there twelve years and already liked him. Somebody had tried to walk out of the ER with a wheelchair, and Travis was the one who talked him into bringing it back. He was lit up. I hadn't seen him like that since the academy. "That's so good," I said, and I meant it. "Sit down. It's still hot." "I'm not hungry, babe. I ate out of the vending machine around four." He kissed the top of my head on his way past. "I'm going to grab a shower and crash." "Okay," I said. "I'm glad you had a good night." I heard the water come on upstairs. I sat down at the table by myself, with two plates of eggs and a strip of white gauze that ran from my wrist to my elbow. He never once asked about my arm or my night.