Near Mackay, a song came on the radio. Celine Dion’s “Think Twice.” I jolted at the sound of the dog’s howling, having forgotten she was there. The dog looked at me. Paused. Lifted her head and howled again, a low, sad, lilting sound perfectly in keeping with the song on the radio.

I drove and watched. The dog sang and sang. And when Dion’s song was over, the animal beside me fell quiet, that pink tongue appearing again, jiggling with the vibrations of the car.

“Is it just that song?” I asked the beast, taking the phone from the center console. I typed into the search bar as I drove. Something by Ronan Keating had begun to play. I cut of it off to play Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love.”

I watched the dog. Nothing. And then, just when I’d turned back to the road, she lifted her chin and began to howl. She sang and I grinned.

“‘Celine’ it is, then,” I said. I fell into long overdue laughter.

She came in the afternoon, not bothering to announce her intentions in any way, just walking around the side of the house and leaning her bike against the fence like she usually did. I was standing with my shirt off, the humidity such that even the menial task of painting was making me sweat. I’d decided green was best for the goose house. I didn’t want it to stand out too starkly from the rainforest surrounds of my property. The birds were sitting all around me on the grass, beaks tucked into backs or feathery breasts, round, featureless stones. I’d finished the sides and stood dabbing paint onto the front façade of the playhouse when I heard the unmistakable tread of squeaky sneakers on the lawn behind me.

Two weeks. But already some of the bruises and grazes Amanda had come away from her ordeal with were easing, sinking back into her colorful flesh, swallowed by the flowers and portraits and leaning, curving buildings on her skin. If there was one thing Amanda did well, it was heal. She still had two black eyes, but those eyes were smiling, as always. I glanced at her, raised my brush in greeting. She stood and watched my work for a while, squinting in the sun, before Celine raised her head from where she lay curled in a ball among the birds, a camouflaged creature revealing its true form.

“Oh lord!” Amanda grabbed at her chest. “That was a good trick.”