The relief of hearing his voice was ineffable. But the closer he got, the more that relief turned into resentment. She would have confronted him about simply leaving her there to think she had been abandoned without saying a word, but she saw that Taylor was walking toward her with someone else in tow. The rupture between them, known only to Aria, was left unmended because it was suddenly less important than the approach of a total stranger – and his dog.

“This is Luke,” Taylor said, before he had even reached her. And once he did, “This is Aria,” he said, waiting for the pair to shake hands. Luke took the initiative in a way that suggested that he respected the necessary distance that Aria’s body language implied she required from him.

Aria looked down at his dog, who was held close to him with a striped, dirt-stained bungee cord. “This is Palin,” Luke said, with a chuckle. Aria later learned he had named his dog after Sarah Palin, the politician who had run for vice-president. It made him laugh to have displayed his disdain for her as a person and for her policies by “keeping her on a leash like the politician’s pet that she was.” He also considered it to be a brilliant way of advertising his liberal political persuasions to anyone who he happened to meet on the road. It was a great way to sort out potential foes from potential friends.

It was obvious that Luke adored her. Unlike so many of the dogs Taylor and Aria had seen who lived with their owners out on the street, Palin was in perfect condition. She looked a bit like a border collie, simply taller. Most of the long hair on her body and ears was black. But the tip of her tail, her legs, underbelly, shoulders, neck and face were white with black freckles of all different sizes. White eyelashes accented amber brown eyes, which looked far too human to be dog eyes. In fact, everything about her seemed more human than dog, especially her facial expressions. Her intelligence was palpable, making for an equal personality mix of sweet and sassy. Aria reached down to pet her and she closed her eyes with pleasure under the touch.

“We met at the temp office, he has somewhere we can stay.” Taylor’s voice cut through the moment of connection.

“Yep,” said Luke. “Are you hungry?”

Aria nodded, still hesitant to fully let him in. Luke took off his tall, metal-framed camping backpack and rifled through the compartments. He shoveled her out a few handfuls of bulk trail mix from a plastic bag. Aria almost laughed out loud, but, afraid to be rude, she smiled instead and said, “Thank you.”

“No problem, man, don’t worry about it,” Luke responded, pleased with his capacity to help where help was needed. Everything about Luke seemed stereotypical to Aria – and the trail mix was the epitome of cliché.