He could just see her wrangling Laurie into eating breakfast about three feet from their kitchen phone, nothing further from her busy mind than the idea that her memory-deficient husband and provider was on his way home right now, and having conniptions trying to get through to her.

“Hi . . . aren’t you—?”

“Barry Hughes.” Anton produced an effortless smile for the Howell woman, tapping the forged power company name tag on his chest. “I stopped by here last week on my day off—”

“To inquire about adopting a grey, sure,” Cynthia said. “You asked if the shop was open, and went to get some information from Julia. I remember you’d mentioned that you were a lineman.”

Anton nodded. He stood facing her from the doorstep, his heavy work gloves stuffed into a back pocket of his coveralls. It had started to shower, the rain sizzling on the ground around him, sliding down over the smooth yellow surface of his hard hat.

“Wish I could say I’ve had a chance to make an appointment to look at the dogs, but life’s been all work lately,” he said, and paused. “The reason I’m here is to tell you we’re doing some maintenance on the cables—”

“Bfow!” Laurie interrupted with a big, gummy grin, reaching a tiny hand out toward him.

Anton chuckled, took it lightly in his own.

“That’s exactly right, doll,” he said, and then looked back up at the baby’s mother. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know your current might be down for a little while. Five, ten minutes at most. There’ve been some brownouts in the area . . . nothing major, just some spotty fluctuations . . . and we’re trying to trace the source of the problem.”

“Oh.” Cynthia gave him a questioning look. “I noticed the van heading up toward our kennels.”

He nodded. “Your lines look okay, but the couplings are pretty old. That’d be on the poles and outside your house and kennels. We’re replacing them as a precaution as we go along . . . before things really go bfow.”

Cynthia gave him a crooked smile.

“I think you might be too late,” she said. “Don’t know whether it’s related to any trouble with the electricity, but my telephone seems to be out of commission.”

Anton looked appropriately unprepared.

“Oh.” He frowned a little. “Are you sure?”

Cynthia nodded.

“I’ve been trying to make a call,” she said. “No dial tone.”

Anton stood there by the door another moment, looking thoughtful. The raindrops continued to dribble off his hard hat.

“Suppose we could have loosened a contact by accident,” he said. “Hopefully it’ll be something our crew can straighten out right away . . . you’ve already checked your inside connections, right?”

Cynthia nodded again.

“Just before you buzzed me,” she said.

Anton put on another smile.