The last part was so insincere that even Jim looked sort of aghast.
Just then, they all heard the sound of a siren heading towards the building, followed by a second one.
“Decision time, boys,” Emily's father said quietly.
Butch and Jim looked at each other.
“Okay. We're gone,” Jim said sulkily.
Just as the McGuires started to run out to their truck, the police arrived, and it was noisy and confusing for a few minutes. In the end, Dr. Kasanofsky agreed not to press charges, if the brothers paid for the computer equipment they had brokenâand promised never to come anywhere near Bailey's Cove again. Even so, the police officers decided that it would be nice for the McGuires to come down to the station with them and have a littleâconversation.
The police officers ushered the brothers outside, and Emily and her parents and Dr. Kasanofsky watched as the two squad cars escorted the pickup truck out of the parking lot.
The McGuires were gone. For good.
And Zack was still
here
, with her.
“Wow,” Emily said, and swallowed hard. “I meanâwow.”
The rest of them seemed to agree with her.
Emily and her parents helped Dr. Kasanofsky straighten up the office, and made sure that
he
was all right, too.
“I'm fine,” he assured them. “They mostly just liked hearing themselves talk.” Then, he grinned. “But I'm not sorry you showed up here an hour early!”
Even though there was no rational explanation for it.
“I think Zack could smell them,” Emily said uncertainly. “And, well, so we came over right away.”
Her parents nodded, although she noticed them exchange uneasy glances for a second.
Once everything at Oceanside was all set, they got in the car to go home. Except for giving Bobby a quick call to tell him the great news, Emily hugged Zack the entire way back to the house, and he never stopped wagging his tail. She also cried a little, and her parents might have cried, too, because they were all so relieved by the way things had turned out.
“Is he really mine?” Emily asked. “I mean, really and truly
mine
?”
Her parents nodded, looking almost as happy and overwhelmed as she felt.
Wow. Zack was
her dog
, and now he always would be. It felt like a miracle.
Once they had pulled into the driveway, Zack leaped out of the car and ran over to the back door. He barked joyfully, and butted his head against it.
Emily's mother laughed. “It looks as though someone is
very
happy to be home.”
It sure did.
Emily opened the door for him, and Zack ran into the kitchen, and then, to the bottom of the stairs, still barking. She followed him, not sure what he wanted, except that he seemed to be trying to show her something.
He looked back at her, and then raced up the stairs.
All the way up the stairs!
Without limping!
Wow!
Emily ran up after him, just in time to see him tear into her room and bark playfully at Josephine, who was sleeping on the rug in the sunshine. Josephine hissed at him, and then jumped up onto the windowsill, out of the way, where she began to wash.
Zack immediately galloped out of the room and down the hall, examining the entire second floor in
about ten seconds flat. Then, he raced back into Emily's room, his tail wagging wildly. He sniffed at the canvas dog bed on the floorâwhich she realized he had never seen before. Then, he barked again.
“Are you hungry?” Emily asked. “Maybe I couldâ”
Before she could even finish the sentence, Zack leaped into the air and landed gracefully up on top of her bed. He wagged his tail some more, turned around in three circles, and flopped down onto the quilt, looking more happy and comfortable than she had ever seen him.
“Good boy,” Emily said.
Zack thumped his tail once against the mattress, yawned, and stretched out on his side, taking up most of the bed
Emily smiled, as she watched Zack fall asleep.
Home at last.
A SQUARE FISH BOOK
An Imprint of Macmillan
DOG WHISPERER. Copyright © 2009 by Nicholas Edwards.
All rights reserved. Harrisonburg, Virginia.
For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Design by Barbara Grzeslo
Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
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eISBN 9781466817340
First eBook Edition : March 2012
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Edwards, Nicholas.
Dog whisperer / by Nicholas Edwards.â1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Eleven-year-old Emily's nightmares of drowning lead her to an injured dog near her family's coastal Maine home, and as she nurses him back to health, she becomes aware that they have a strange psychic connection.
ISBN: 978-0-312-36768-8
[1. Human-animal communicationâFiction. 2. Animal
rescueâFiction. 3. DogsâFiction. 4. Racially mixed
peopleâFiction. 5. AdoptionâFiction. 6. Family lifeâ
MaineâFiction. 7. MaineâFiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.E2634Dog 2009 [Fic]âdc22 2008040763
First Edition: 2009