The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

Champ had come back in the night and I’d been terse when I said no. Now I was interrogating her.

“When he moved out. When he went to Leeville. Didn’t he leave any boxes or anything in the basement?”

“If he did, I’m sure he has them now. I don’t have anything of his anymore. Why?”

“I was just curious. He used to have a bunch of my Barbies and I wondered what happened to them, that’s all.”

There was a slight pause. “Why would Ricky have your Barbies?”

“I don’t know. He took them. I saw them in his room once when we were kids. Don’t worry about it. It’s not important.”

But it was. I wanted to know where those Barbies were.

AFTER TALKING TO MOM, I headed outside, re-tracing my steps from the previous night. I walked beside the muddy Still River, calling Champ’s name over and over, all the while fighting to ignore the despair that was ballooning in my chest. I checked back at the house, in case he was there, then headed out again, this time in my car. I drove all the way to Leeville and then in the opposite direction to Boelen. I’d already walked the entire length of Old Canal Road, but I returned in the car and bumped slowly along the rutted route, thinking about the dog that Ricky and Darius hit when they were teenagers. Did they have any clue what they’d taken away from that dog’s owner?

Champ’s not dead, I told myself. This isn’t the same.

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon moping around my house, hoping that Champ would miraculously re-appear. I forced myself to eat a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, but I wasn’t hungry and each bite was difficult to swallow. Then, exhausted, both mentally and physically, I went to bed praying for my dog to come home.

I woke to a sound outside the window I’d once again left open. I knew that sound, and my heart pounded with excitement and relief. I got up slowly; my limbs were oddly sluggish, and as much as I wanted to race to the front door, it was as if I was wading through water. When I finally pulled open the door, I knew without looking that he was already gone. I had taken too long. Something moved in the darkness in front of me and I could just make out a shape on the bottom step of my porch. I squinted into the gloom, then stifled a scream. Standing there, staring up at me solemnly, was a little girl holding something in her outstretched arm. It was Amy Nessor, offering me her severed braid.

I woke for real in a cold sweat. I sat up, grateful for the light beside my bed, and listened to the noises from the street for a few minutes, until my heart resumed its normal beating.

“Champ?” I whispered into the still, night air. Foolishly, I refused to go near my open window, although I was desperate to shut it. “Champ, where are you, boy?”

SUNDAY WAS MUCH OF THE same. I drove for hours searching along the rural roads outside of Dunford. I went all the way to Leeville, back to the parking lot at Leon’s where I’d first found Champ. I sat in my car and cursed myself for not posting pictures around town the minute I noticed he was missing. When I got back to my house, all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and hide from the rage and hopelessness that were washing over me in waves.

I had thrown myself face-down on my bed when the phone rang. I assumed it was my mom again, calling to see if there was any news, and I moved reluctantly to answer it.

“Hi, is this Zoe? It’s the Dunford Humane Society calling. We just had a dog brought in that matches the description you gave us.”

I didn’t let myself believe it could really be Champ, but when I was shown to the kennels, sure enough, there he was, staring at me, wagging his tail like a maniac.

“A woman found him on her back deck. You’re lucky she brought him here,” the staff member who’d escorted me to the kennels said. “She lives halfway to Port Sitsworth and could just as easily have brought him there.”

As soon as the kennel door was opened, Champ bounded over to me. “Where have you been, you crazy mutt?” I asked him, kneeling down so he could lick my face. “I was so worried about you!”

The staff member — Katie, according to her nametag — stood to the side while Champ and I had our little reunion. “I think he’s just as happy to see you as you are to see him,” she commented while I clipped on his leash and led him back to the reception area.

No one knew where Champ had spent the two nights that passed before he showed up on that woman’s deck, or how or what he ate, but he didn’t seem too much the worse for wear. His fur was caked with dirt — that was all. No broken bones, no cuts, no scratches even.

I paid the recovery fee, thanking Katie profusely, as if she was single-handedly responsible for reuniting me with my dog, then took Champ home. My heart felt bloated, it was so swollen with relief. I called Mom right away.

“Have you fixed the hole under your fence?” she asked.

“Not yet. I thought maybe he’d try to sneak in the same way he left.” But now that he was back, I needed to fix it, and soon. I also needed to find a way to keep Champ from digging any new holes. I wasn’t sure I could survive losing him again.

I came up with a plan to create an underground barrier that I hoped would prevent Champ from ever escaping again. I reinforced the entire perimeter of my backyard with chicken wire that extended from the bottom of my fence two feet into