“Oh, that’s a cute dog. Ed brings him here every morning.” Lil drops the check on the table. “I make sure there’s a little bacon to take out to him.

I’m quicker than Mitch in grabbing the check. Ed takes my dog on rides.

“Ed says Alice is real attached to him. It’s helped.” The guy on the right-hand stool folds up the paper and spins around to face us.

“Helped with what?” I hand Lil the check and a ten.

The room goes quiet. We are, after all, strangers. Then he shrugs, as if he realizes that what he has to say isn’t a secret. “They lost their daughter a few years back. Alice took it pretty hard.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Lost how?”

He clams up again, and I recognize a good old-fashioned New England reticence.

The other guy speaks up. “Drowned. Right there in the millpond.”

“That’s so sad.”

“They thought she’d run away.”

“How old was she?”

“Fifteen. Right, Lil?”

“Yeah, sophomore.”

Lil leans toward me and lowers her voice. “No one likes to say, but it was suicide.”

“Jesus. A child?”

She nods and drops the change on the table, where I add another couple bucks to it for a tip. The joy that’s been festering under my rib cage all morning is tempered now, diminished a little. I can’t help but think that it would have been preferable for the Parmalees’ daughter to have run away. They could have survived that. What a tragedy. No wonder Alice has found comfort in Mack. He excels in that.

Mitch slides out of the booth. “Okay, so right past the mill, left onto…” He rehearses the directions until everyone in the room is satisfied that we will find Old Path Road and my dog.

I buckle my seat belt before I can say what is on my mind. “It may be hard to get him back from them, if they’ve gotten that attached. What if they won’t give him back?”

Mitch takes my hand. “Justine, they can’t keep him. He belongs to you.”

The road tucks up again and for a little while follows the slow S-curves of a muddy brown river. We go over a noisy two-lane bridge, and there is the abandoned mill that must have given rise to the little mill houses. There is a millpond behind the brick factory, a spill of river water sliding over the lip. The maple and oak trees on the far side are reflected in the water; I’m sure that in a few weeks it will be a dazzling display of color, but right now it’s just a pretty image. And then I remember what the guy in the coffee shop said. It’s still a pretty image, but I look away.