You can’t drive around to get away from your thoughts. They just sink in deeper, unperturbed by the need to pay attention to the road or the scenery passing by. The radio does nothing to mask the insistent thoughts, only exacerbates them with evocative music like Fauré’s Requiem, and talk radio fades into background noise. But having Buddy sitting beside her in the minivan seems to help. He points the way with his nose. They pass the cemetery gates and he whimpers, but she doesn’t slow down. She’ll go later, deadhead the mums. It hasn’t rained, so she’ll give them a drink. Whisper “Happy birthday” under her breath. As usual, Ed won’t go with her. He thinks she is obsessed. He’s deluding himself if he thinks not seeing the grave makes one iota of difference; he can’t pretend it didn’t happen just because he doesn’t help her plant flowers.

It’s not that she even offers prayers. She just needs to have one task still connecting her to Stacy. She’s not one of those parents who talk to a gravestone, pretending their child is attending their every thought, or blame minor coincidences on an angel that was once their daughter. Alice is grounded in reality. Her child is dead.

The dog trainer Sally recommended is in Amherst. It’s a pretty day, and the ride up route 181 is pleasant and will take long enough that if she includes lunch at Panera, plus an hour or so poking around the JC Penney at the Hampshire Mall, this little jaunt will take up the hard part of this day. Alice has called ahead and the trainer has agreed to meet for an assessment. Kids have assessments; so, apparently, do dogs. Buddy will certainly assess at the top of the chart.

Alice finds the place after a couple of missed turns. Expecting a kennel, she is surprised to find a modest Cape-style house on a side street not far from the University of Massachusetts. No dogs bark as she and Buddy stand on the stoop, but there are the telltale flags arrayed around the tiny lot, signifying underground electric fencing to keep an animal in. She rings the doorbell twice. Finally, a woman comes to the door, a bundle of fluff cradled in the crook of her elbow.

“Come in. Don’t mind the mess.”

The mess seems to consist of several unoccupied dog beds and two dog crates with artistically draped scarves over the tops, as if to convert the cages into furniture. The house definitely has a thin suggestion of animal, but otherwise it is quite clean.

“Arabella. And you’re Alice?” Arabella plops the ball of fluff into one of the crates. Its secret identity revealed as a tiny dog, it curls its lip at Buddy, growls once, and then curls up for a nap, exhausted by the effort.

“Yes, Alice Parmalee, and this is Buddy.”