I take the buttered toast out of my pocket I’d brought for Baby. I squat in front of the big dog. “Here you go, boy.” I hand him the toast. I feel Daddy move closer to me. Ajax takes the toast as gently as if it were a baby bird. He licks my fingers in thanks.

Daddy places his hand on my shoulder. “We need to go, Piper.”

Ree nods. “Look in there and see what you can find out about Jewel, if she has family or anything.” She runs her hand over the top of her dog’s head and bites her lower lip. “Who knows what they’re going to do with her once she’s over pneumonia.”

And then she’s gone, leaving us with a bag full of someone’s life and a big load of worry in my heart.

What if Ree doesn’t find Baby? And what if she does? What will happen to Baby? Even with everybody—Ree, Linda, the dancing man, the others—looking after him, how could such a little dog survive the winter?

Walking back to Hope House, I play the movie in my head again, the movie where Baby belongs to me and is my dog forever.

Later, after Daddy goes to work and Dylan is playing downstairs with a friend, Mama and I spread the stuff in Jewel’s bag out over the bed.

This is what we find: two sweaters, two blouses, a purple skirt, a plastic grocery bag with underwear, bras, and socks, a hairbrush, a ziplock baggie with toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, and deodorant, a toy bunny missing one eye, a small leather Bible, and another leather book.

“The sum of a person’s life,” Mama says with a sigh. She thumbs through the leather book.

I poke around a little more. At the very bottom, tucked in a corner, is a small drawstring pouch. I pry it open, hold it upside down, and give it a shake. A silver key falls out onto the bedspread.

I hold the key up to the light. “What do you think this is to?” I ask. I can barely see something etched into the key: CWS3#25.

Something drops from the book Mama’s holding. A photograph. A photograph of a smiling woman in a flowered dress, long silver hair held back in clips. The woman is sitting at a piano surrounded by kids dressed in their Sunday best.

Mama turns the photo over. Written on the back in old-fashioned handwriting are the words “Fall Recital.”

“Huh,” Mama says. “Must be a piano recital.” She touches her finger lightly to the woman’s face. “She’s lovely and obviously very proud.”

I look at the face again, the flowered dress, the long silver hair. Could it be?

And then I grab the photograph from Mama. “Look, Mama,” I say, pointing at something small and brown sitting under the piano. “It’s Baby!”