In what felt like a very short amount of time—considering just how long it took us—Cary was thundering down the stairs again, carrying Stevie’s heels by their straps. He jumped the last three steps and stuck the landing easily, like he’d been doing this for years—which maybe he had. He held out the shoes to Stevie. “Here you are.”

“Thanks for that,” she said, and I automatically moved a step closer so that she could lean on me as she put them on.

“Ready to go?” Cary asked as he walked toward the lobby door. He pulled his messenger bag over his head, so that it was a cross-body.

Stevie met my eye and I nodded. This had not been the quick and easy errand we’d been promised—we had lost a purse, but gained a Pomeranian. And now, it seemed, we were heading to Columbia. “Yeah,” I said after a minute. “Let’s do it.”

CHAPTER 8

It wasn’t until we’d reached the entrance to the Bryant Park station that I thought to ask the crucial question. “You can bring dogs on the subway, right?” I looked down at Brad, as though he could answer this, but he just scratched his ear.

Stevie had walked down the first step, then paused and turned around and walked up, to the consternation of the woman who’d been behind her.

“Make up your mind, hon,” she snapped as she dodged around Stevie and into the station. Stevie came up to join me, and we stepped out of the way of the flow of people entering and exiting the subway. Everyone seemed to know exactly where they were going, and I was sure they could tell that we most certainly didn’t. From what I could see, it didn’t look like anyone else had a dog with them. Brad, who was on his leash, sat down and looked around. He just seemed happy to be out and about, not really caring where we were going as long as there were things to sniff.

Stevie had looked up the directions for how to get to Mateo’s dorm at Columbia—we’d take the B or D to Columbus Circle, then transfer to the 1, and ride uptown to 116th Street—and since his dorm was on 113th, it didn’t seem like it would be that far a walk. And best of all, her phone had estimated it would take us forty minutes round trip. So even if this took us an hour round trip, we’d still be more than on time for an eight o’clock curtain.

“I don’t know,” Stevie said, also looking at the people coming and going. We were right by the main branch of the library, the one with the two lions outside.