Sit! Stay! Speak!

For all of my dear friends working in animal rescue,

tirelessly devoting their lives to those without a voice.

You are making a difference.

You are making this world a better place.

A
DELAIDE
A
NDREWS STARED OUT THE LIVING ROOM WINDOW
and into the yard across the street where an elderly man, who she could only assume was her new neighbor, was frolicking through the sprinkler in his underwear. He was at least eighty years old and was very spry for his age. Every time the water shot up into the air, so did the man's legs. It was as if he were involved in some kind of synchronized sprinkler event in the Olympics.

Nobody came to ask the man to go back inside. Nobody asked him to stop. Nobody offered him a towel or chased after him with a fistful of medications, which he'd clearly forgotten to take. When the sprinkler stopped several minutes later, so did the man. He didn't even bother to shake himself off as he bounded up the steps and disappeared back inside the house.

This wasn't what Adelaide had in mind when she moved from Chicago to the Arkansas Delta. She'd left the midwestern city to
escape
insanity, not to move in next door to it.

She turned back to the sea of boxes that covered her living room. She'd spent all day sorting and hadn't even made a dent. She halfheartedly opened the box nearest her. Inside she found a hodgepodge of items, an indication that this had probably been one of the last boxes she'd packed up.

Looking up from the box, Adelaide scanned the room. Her aunt Tilda had died and left the house to her almost six months ago, and it was obvious that it had been empty for entirely too long. Well, not empty, exactly. Aunt Tilda died in the middle of the night—a stroke, the coroner said. Clearly, from the look of the place, her aunt hadn't planned on dying. When she said in her will that she wanted everything to go to Addie, she'd meant it. Not even the toilet paper had been disturbed since the day of the funeral. She'd had several calls from the only real estate agent in town to see what had been left to her, but Addie couldn't bring herself to do it. Yes, the hardwood floors needed to be refinished. The walls needed to be repainted. The ceiling fans needed to be replaced, and all of this was just in the living room. She heard her aunt's voice in her head.
Someday this house will be yours, Addie. I hope you'll take care of it like I have.

Addie hadn't really believed her. What twelve-year-old pays attention to those kinds of things, anyway? Fifteen years later, the words hovered above her like the dust collecting in the corners of the walls. She'd let her aunt down over these last few months. She'd let everyone down, it seemed.

She sighed and pushed her blond hair off her neck, piling it high on top of her head. Her thoughts went back to Chicago. To Jonah. To what life had been like before she'd inherited a house that needed more work than she had money.
Jonah would have liked this house,
she thought. Addie knew that if he were here,
they would have stayed in town after the funeral. Jonah would have picked through each piece of furniture, each knickknack. He would have asked for stories about each one, stories Addie had long forgotten.

She rested her head against the coffee table. It had a glass top, something her aunt had brought all the way down here from Chicago. It wasn't worth much, as far as Addie could tell, but her aunt loved it and stuck cards from relatives underneath the glass. Each time Aunt Tilda had a visitor, she'd tell them about whichever relative happened to be resting underneath that visitor's coffee mug. Today there was no coffee, and there were no visitors. There was no Jonah. Addie let her hair fall back down onto her sticky neck and said out loud to no one, “I've got to get out of here for a while.”

The Mississippi River in Eunice, Arkansas, looked nothing like it had when she'd crossed the bridge in Memphis. It was smaller, tranquil almost. Addie stood with her toes touching the water. She hadn't been down to the levee since the last time she'd visited Eunice. Even this close to the water, it was hot outside. She found herself wishing she'd just stayed inside with all the unopened boxes and dusty furniture—at least there was air-conditioning.

Gazing around, Addie realized that this was no longer the nice, clean picnic area that her aunt had taken her to during her childhood visits. The tables were overgrown with weeds, and there was an obvious odor of trash in the air. This place hadn't been taken care of in a long time.

Addie bent down to wash out her flip-flops when she heard a noise coming from behind her. She turned around to face a small wooded area. The noise grew louder. It sounded like a whimpering, but all she saw were bushes. She shoved her feet into her
shoes and walked in the direction of the noise. She pushed her way into the first set of bushes, where a thin layer of trash covered the ground. Off to one side there was a large, black trash bag.

The trash bag was moving.

Addie crept closer to the bag. She bent down and touched the plastic. It had been tied in a tight knot. Digging her fingers into the plastic, Addie ripped the bag wide open. The object in the bag stirred, whimpering slightly. It lifted its head and tried to move, but failed. It was covered in blood and blood-soaked newspaper and dozens of crumpled packages of Marlboro Reds.

Addie was looking at a dog.

Shaken, she quickly ran back to her car and popped open the trunk, grabbing the blanket she kept for emergencies. Kneeling back in front of the trash bag, she gingerly moved the dog from the sweltering ground to the blanket. It made little effort to escape even though it was terrified.

With the dog laid carefully in the front seat, Addie threw her car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot, trying desperately to remember where she'd seen the sign for the town's veterinary clinic. She knew it was on the main road, so she drove until she saw the redbrick Dixon Veterinary building on the horizon, praying that the dog would still be breathing by the time she got there.