“That’s so fucked,” Aria said when Luke finished. It was all she could say. She was unable to break through the rough persona that she had manufactured over the years. But inside, she was speechless. She knew the contours of grief well enough to know that saying “I’m sorry” would have been a slap in his face. She felt guilty for having judged him so wrongly to begin with. She felt like holding him. Instead, she held the heaviness with him just sitting in the quiet, sharing his burden for a few minutes.

Luke didn’t ask Aria anything about her life that day. He was the kind of man who hated to ask anything of anyone for fear of their rejection, even details about themselves. Instead he filled the space with his political theories.

Once their clothes were reasonably dry, they put them back on. Having clean clothes again felt like heaven to Aria. Another simple pleasure that she had taken for granted before now. They sat down again to take in a few more minutes of the peace being offered by the nature around them. Luke got out his bag of trail mix and rolled down the sides of the plastic far enough for it to resemble a flimsy dish. He offered Palin part of a sandwich he hadn’t finished. The dog devoured it and then sprawled herself across their legs, exposing her belly to the sky as a solicitation for affection. The glee with which she did it made them both laugh. Together, they fussed over her as if she were a maharaja.

It struck Aria how strange life can be. One second, your life can fall apart to the degree that you don’t want to go on living. And the next, a pleasure as simple as a dog can bring the breath back to your life again. Aria could see that Palin had picked up where the woman of Luke’s life had left off when she died. Palin had brought him back to life again. She had given him a reason to live and she had loved him like his mother had not. She wondered if maybe the reason Palin felt so human was because she wasn’t really a dog, but an angel in a dog’s body come to save this man.

Taylor didn’t return to the car lot until Aria was already asleep. Despite his less-than-graceful movements, he tried to get into the car quietly, so that she wouldn’t wake up. Unbeknownst to him, his attempt failed. However, instead of saying something, Aria surveyed him through a hole in her sleeping bag until he had fallen asleep.