Shaw kissed him again, filling North’s nose with the spiky fragrance of whatever he put in his long, chestnut hair. Then, wobbling on the platform espadrilles, he tottered around the side of the cabin. “The sooner we make sure the dog is ok, the sooner we can go swimming.”

“We’re not going swimming in a mud pit,” North said, stomping along behind Shaw.

They checked the next window. And the next. Someone had drawn the curtains tight, and North had to admit that was strange. Someone leaving for an hour or two, for dinner or to go out on the water, wouldn’t have drawn all the curtains. Not with a dog in the house. The only reason to draw the curtains at a place like Innsbrook was if you were heading back to the city or if you needed privacy—the kind of privacy North had been about ten seconds away from needing himself, before Shaw got worried about the fucking dog.

And it wasn’t just the curtains that were getting under North’s skin. The barking didn’t sound like . . . normal barking. North stood by his opinion that all dogs were slobbery, stupid mutts. They were hair and drool and shit factories. He dreaded the possibility that Shaw might one day decide he wanted a dog—North could only imagine the price he’d have to pay to keep an animal out of the picture. No sugar. No carbs at all. Maybe start drinking some sort of fucking tea, whatever latest fad had caught Shaw’s attention.

But North had heard enough dogs barking in his life to know that a range of possible tones existed: warning, excitement, anger. Growing up, North had walked past David Breen’s house. Mr. Breen was an ancient bachelor who lived in a house with a rotating collection of rubbish on display in the front yard: old kitchen cabinets one spring, replaced by what looked like every part from a fully dismantled Ford Pinto in the summer and fall, and by winter that year fourteen stone birdbaths with broken basins and stands. And then the next year, a whole new collection of shit. North remembered passing the house more than once when Mr. Breen’s dog, Taffy, would go wild with barking, the noise frantic and furious and escalating until it cut off in a series of yelps and whimpers as Mr. Breen worked out his right arm with a rolled-up newspaper. North didn’t like dogs, but he’d always thought Mr. Breen could have used a taste of the headlines himself.