“Oh, Mase,” she said. “We sold Mom’s place after she died, didn’t we tell you?”

“I guess I must have just forgot,” he replied, more for her sake than his. Maggie hadn’t done much to keep him filled in on the family news while he’d been inside, and they both knew it.

“It was all falling apart anyway, needed so much work. Glen got us a good price, and—well, anyway. You didn’t want to be fixing a bunch of plumbing and redoing a roof first thing after you got home, right?”

There was only one right answer to that question, and that was to lie, so Mason just didn’t say anything. And Maggie waited long enough that his silence became an answer in itself, and then she sighed and reached for the radio, and Mason knew she was thinking the same thing that he was, that they’d driven just ten miles and they still had one hundred ninety more to go.

The first thing Mason did at Maggie’s house—after he’d set his bag down in that basement spare room, after he’d enjoyed a cold beer and a scalding hot shower, scrubbed as much of that fifteen-years-in-captivity stink as he could from his skin—was to find a picture in his bag of a big black-and-white dog, set it on top of the nightstand beside his new bed.

Then he borrowed Maggie’s phone and placed a call, to a Ms. Linda Petrie at the Rover’s Redemption agency.

He’d kept Ms. Petrie’s number since the last time he’d seen her, about six months before his release, had spent that whole stretch of time plotting this phone call. But Mason still felt the nerves as he listened to the ringing, drummed his fingers on his thigh and couldn’t help pacing, knew this was probably against some kind of regulation, knew he should hang up the phone.

But Linda Petrie picked up before Mason could make that decision, and then there was no sense in anything but moving forward.

“Rover’s Redemption.” She sounded the same as Mason remembered: tough, take no shit.

“Ms. Petrie.” The name came out rough, like he was out of practice. Like it took something extra to speak as a free man. “It’s Mason Burke calling you.”

Silence. Then, “I’m sorry, Mason…Burke? I don’t—”

“I figured you might not remember,” Mason continued. “You probably work with a lot of guys like me. I was up in the Chippewa pen this last go-around. Lucy was my dog.”

“Oh, Lucy,” Linda Petrie said. “Yes, I remember now, of course.”