They drove out of the neighborhood and off toward the shore. Amy watched the trees and strip malls and houses by the side of the highway give way to patches of scraggly grass and beach. Somewhere in her shocked brain, she thought that it was funny how things worked out. They’d been coming from the shore when they’d found Rover, and now they were heading back. Could she even remember the spot where they’d found him, the length of fence to which he’d been tied?

They drove for almost an hour, until they reached a big industrial loading dock a few miles down the shore. There was no beach in sight here, just huge warehouses and old forklifts sitting around over dark green water that lapped loudly at the concrete pier. There was no guard at the gate, and Amy wondered how many times Miss Dola had come to this place, to do what she was beginning to realize they were here to do.

They parked near the edge of a long pier, and Mom helped Miss Dola pull the trunk out of the car. She had Amy find pieces of old metal—heavy iron lug nuts, rusted chains, whatever was around—and then toss them in the trunk with Rover. When the refuse metal landed next to the dog’s bound body, his front legs twitched in response, making the trunk shake. Mom and Amy started back with a gasp.

“Quickly,” sang Miss Dola.

It took all three of them to get the trunk to the water’s edge, Mom and Miss Dola pulling, Amy pushing from the back. When they got it to the water, there was no big group activity to it, no On three, they just pushed the trunk into the sea and watched it send up clouds of bubbles as it sank into the dark. Miss Dola pulled her little book out again and recited a new incantation, this one about being banished and forgotten and lying dormant until Apollo’s fire burned out or something, but Amy wasn’t really listening. She was too focused on the tumbling cube of the trunk as it fell deeper and deeper into the murky ocean, until it was a gray smudge, and then not visible at all.

Back to the dark, Cerberus, thought Amy. Back to your underworld.

She hated to admit it, but she was happy to see him go, happy to know he had been swallowed by the world. He deserved no better.