“He’s been standing outside the cemetery gates since yesterday, and he’s starved.” Alice has made tuna fish sandwiches for Ed’s lunch. “You should have seen him drinking the water I gave him, like he was parched. If anybody has lost him, they aren’t looking for him very hard.” Ed Parmalee has been married long enough that he knows when to sit down and eat his sandwich and put the conversation aside. Alice has always been a tough fighter for things she wants—a new couch, when he knew the old one had years of life left in it; a deck on the back of the house, when he couldn’t see the point of sitting outside slapping mosquitoes and staring out over the neighbor’s backyard. Theirs was the first development carved out of cheap farmland when the plant was running at full capacity and new people were coming into the area, swelling the class size at the elementary school. Now half the houses on their street are up for sale and no one wants these little raised ranches with one and a half baths on half an acre of lawn, and the student population has diminished so much, teacher layoffs have been threatened.

He watches as Alice places the plastic bowl back down, the fresh water swirling a little but somehow not slopping over the edge. The dog waits patiently until she straightens up, then laps politely at the new water, clearly sated, but willing to be grateful. Alice trails a hand down the length of the dog’s body, picking out bits of leaf and twig. She is smiling, and she reminds Ed suddenly of her younger self, the one who smiled down on the baby as she nursed, holding to herself a singularly female satisfaction in having this ability. As if the child belonged more fully to her.

“Well, don’t get any ideas about keeping him. We don’t want a dog.”

“I never said anything about keeping him.” Alice turns her back to him, busying herself with cleaning up the counter. “If this one-horse town had a dog officer, I’d have called. What else can we do until someone claims him?”

“How long do you expect that’s going to take? We don’t need the bother of a dog. You don’t need the extra work. And what if we want to travel?” Ed fists half of the tuna sandwich, taking a large bite.

Alice laughs, a sharp, humorless laugh. “Ed Parmalee, when was the last time we traveled anywhere but to my sister’s for Christmas?”

“It would be that much harder if we had a dog.”

“I never said I wanted him.” Alice holds out the empty tuna can for the dog to lick. He does so daintily, his facile tongue sliding along the smooth interior of the can. “But please don’t make travel an argument against it.”

Once upon a time, travel was the grail at the end of child rearing and mortgage payments. Once Stacy was launched, they dreamed of Europe or a Caribbean island. Looking back now, the only travel they ever did of a recreational nature were the trips they took to Disney World and camping in the White Mountains. The occasional weekends they spent in Boston with Ed’s relatives, wanting to give Stacy some culture: the BSO, the MFA, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. Once Stacy had gotten busy with Girl Scouts and sports, ballet lessons and band concerts, they had a hard time finding a free weekend. Eventually, they traveled east only for the day, paid their duty call, and came home. Now with Ed’s parents gone and his siblings scattered as far away as Poughkeepsie, they haven’t been east in years. The idea of a European vacation or the winter visit to a warm island has been not so much abandoned as simply forgotten.