As in, Good Guy, I realize, and am thinking that’s an awful name for a dog, when Joy says, “That’s an awful name for a dog.” I don’t look at her. I know the kind of face she’s making, have seen it often enough when she finds something distasteful. “It’s what everybody calls everybody. If he’s a survivor, he needs something special like … like Phoenix.”

“Phoenix,” Jack repeats. He is making a face, too. I can hear it, though I don’t look at him. My eyes are glued on the dog. Abused pets can turn in an instant.

But Jack doesn’t yield. “Phoenix is no good. He wouldn’t answer to that.”

Joy has seen as many muzzled dogs on the streets of New York as I have, but she clearly doesn’t feel threatened, either by this one or by Jack. “Then Griffin. Or Jagger.”

“He knows Guy.”

“Or Knox. You know, like the fort? I can’t believe he would have been killed,” she says as she cups the dog’s chin. “He’s so sweet.”

“Shows the power of ignorance,” Jack resumes, and I hear renewed purpose, even relief to be on safer ground again. “People make assumptions that are just plain wrong.”

I look up at that, because it’s clearly addressed to me, but before I can fully take in what he’s said, he has refocused on Joy.

“Maybe they just don’t know the truth,” she says.

“Or don’t want to know.”

“How could someone not want to know that cruelty is bad?”

“They don’t define it that way,” I put in, playing devil’s advocate. “They don’t call it cruelty. They call it discipline. Or punishment.”

“Which is a lie,” Jack says, and his voice is tight again. “Some people just can’t be honest. They can’t see that they’re being driven by anger. Or revenge.” He holds my gaze now, and I know we’re not talking about dogs. Last time he and I talked face-to-face, there had been anger on both sides. His mother was gone. We didn’t know if she was dead, involuntarily missing, or willfully absent. All we knew was that my father was driving the boat from which she disappeared. The police investigation was done; the district attorney deemed the incident an accident. My father was cleared, but Elizabeth MacKay remained gone.

Jack was angry at me for being an Aldiss. I was angry at him for blaming me for that.

So I understand anger. But the idea of revenge appalls me. “Revenge for what?”

His eyes are dark and do not blink. “Things that go wrong with their own lives.”

“Revenge on a dog?” asks Joy.