“I believe you just did,” Cate said. “Isn’t that what you meant?”

I had to think back before I knew what she was asking. “About one thing and everything?”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe if I do one thing, for you, someone else will do one thing, for him.”

“I will,” she said. “If I can. When I’m able.”

But, in the end, it wasn’t Cate who helped him.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Later that night, from my nest among the puppies, I heard my mother call my name, and I was up and out of the woodshed like a cricket. But it was nothing to do with my father or Cate. At least I didn’t think so at the time.

“It’s Captan,” she said. “He came and woke me up, but he won’t go outside. I don’t know what he wants. When I went back to bed, he came with me and won’t leave. He keeps . . . singing in my ear.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Singing?”

“Whining, like a big mosquito. Right in my ear.” She pulled me inside and shut the door. Captan stood there in the darkness, his eyes like full moons.

“Is it Cate?” I asked my mother. “Did you check on her?”

“Of course I did, Ellie. A dog like that comes to me in the night, of course I went in to have a look, but she’s sleeping soundly. Some fever still, but no worse than before.” She bent down to look into Captan’s face. “He followed me in to see her but then out again when I left. I don’t know what he wants.”

Which is when I felt what he felt, knew what he knew, and realized that he, in that moment, was a lot like me. Filled with both lullaby and shout. A dog split in two. A dog doubled.

He didn’t budge when I went to him and rubbed his ears. “What’s that song?” I said. “What is it, boy?” But he kept looking at my mother. Not at me. “This has something to do with you, Mother.” I stepped aside.

When she held out her hand, he put his nose in her palm. Licked it. And sang some more of the song he’d apparently been saving for her.

Since I’d met him, he’d made no sound except a pair of howls, a little whining and, from time to time, a growl or two.

And this was no growl. Far from it.

When he turned toward the bedroom where Cate and my father lay sleeping, I waited for my mother to follow. And then I did, too.

—

The lantern burned so low in the room that it lifted the darkness only a little, like the very first moment of dawn.

I turned up the wick and held the lantern high.