A few days later, Jen was standing in her garden, staring at the blond wood frame of her new awning, tracing the angle with her eyes and feeling for small discrepancies in the seam of the beam’s bond against the wall. The satisfaction of the beam pressed flush against the wall was simple and profound. The brackets were screwed deeply into the wood’s grain without a single head out of place. The corrugated plastic lay lightly atop the wood. She moved to a new spot and surveyed the structure again and still the pleasure remained, a good sign. She thought of David. He had been gone a few days, in Seattle on a press junket to the new museum wing, and she felt an extra pulse of affection toward him, too.

Jen was still admiring the new awning when her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a dog whimpering. She tried to ignore it at first but the sound kept coming. It was a muted, strenuous kind of whimpering, like a sad question being posed over and over again, and when the sound didn’t stop, she went to investigate.

Jen knew exactly where to look first. She lived on a corner lot, and she had a clear view of her neighbor’s driveway and front porch. It seemed there was always something unsavory going on over there. She looked over the fence and spotted a tail poking out from underneath the Chevy Nova that had been parked in the front yard for the last year. A rope lead from the rear tire to the iron hand railing by the door.

Jen called her neighbor but no one answered the phone, so she walked around the block and crept into his yard for a better look. Under the car she found a young, charcoal-colored dog lying on a carpet of shattered glass. The dog was shivering, stranded without food or water, and its tongue lolled around its mouth, coated in white dryness. It rubbed its head against Jen’s hand, panting. The dog’s body was muscular and clean. It was probably a pit bull, she guessed. God knew what was in store for it. Jen went home and brought the dog a bowl of water and watched it drink, then took the bowl home.

The next day she visited the dog again, with another bowl of water and some cat food. It devoured both and then pressed its nose into Jen’s hand for more. Its eyebrows assumed a sad, open expression, and its mouth smiled.

Jen looked around. The street was empty in both directions.

Then she untied the rope and led the dog to her car.

She called David on her cell phone and told him what she’d done.