Ed and Alice closed the doors and kept the evidence of Stacy’s short, active life inside that cupboard. They never speak of what might have been, nor of what is past.

Alice keeps busy with her little cutting garden, her yoga classes, and her part-time job at the library. She fills her days up with housework and chores enough for any woman. Who has time for anything more?

* * *

The dog had looked so forlorn. Maybe forlorn wasn’t the right word. The way it looked at her car as she drove slowly out of the cemetery, ears pricked in her direction, and then lowered, as if, well, as if it was disappointed. Maybe after dinner she’ll go see if it’s still hanging around the cemetery. Besides, she should check on the russet and gold chrysanthemums she planted earlier today to see if they need a little more water.

10

Edward Parmalee sees the dog as he heads out in the morning to gas up the Cutlass. Can’t miss it. The dog is sitting just where Alice saw it, between the cemetery gates. It carefully studies Ed’s car as he slowly drives by. He probably belongs to some neighbor who lets his dog loose to roam the countryside. Don’t see much of that nowadays, not like when he was a kid and everyone knew everyone else’s dogs because they were allowed to wander—as were the kids. You didn’t worry about leash laws or child molesters in those days. Didn’t neuter male dogs, and bike helmets hadn’t been invented. Ed rolls his window down, slows enough to lock eyes with the dog. “Go home!” Didn’t worry about drugs and AIDS and terrorists. Well, maybe they worried about the Russians, but by and large, they didn’t worry about the things that he and Alice had to worry about with Stacy, the dangers of perverts lurking in malls or poisoned Halloween candy. Not wearing a seat belt, or easy access to drugs.

“Go home!” Ed stares at the dog that sits outside the cemetery gates. No. It’s always been tough to raise kids. His parents had to cope with potentially fatal childhood diseases that they were lucky enough to have vaccines for by the time Stacy arrived.

But sometimes the threat isn’t external at all. It doesn’t come from outside, but from the inside.

The dog doesn’t move.

Like Alice said, no visible collar, but that doesn’t mean anything; he might have slipped it, or maybe it’s buried beneath the fur of its ruff. If Moodyville had a dog officer, he’d probably get a call. Lacking one, what can be done?

It’s unlikely that the resident state trooper will come by and collect it. He barely responded that time the gas station alarm went off. Meandered over from the MassPike half an hour after Tooley figured out it was a bird that had gotten caught in the garage, its panicked fluttering in the bay triggering the motion alarms that the tire distributor had insisted Tooley install if he was to sell that brand of tire. Goddamned statie took so long that a tire thief could have taken the whole inventory and been all the way to Hartford by the time he showed up. It’s a different guy now; the former trooper, the one they knew, had moved on.