Having spent my last ten bucks on the Boston cab, I sling my duffel over my shoulders and begin to walk. I have to climb Johnnycake Hill, New Bedford’s best-known street, with its cobbles and whaling museum, and work my way under route 195 to the other side of town, where the double- and triple-deckers, built back when the city had industry, line residential streets. It is a perfect September day, warm and dry, with a high thin veil of cloud in the southwest, portending lousy weather in the next twenty-four hours. It’s a nice day for a walk. If I had my dog with me, he’d be hoping that we would come to a park, where I could slip off his leash and toss the tennis ball for him. I actually have a tennis ball in my duffel. I brought one with me, as if they might not have them in New Bedford. I have the ball but not the dog. The hope that I had when the guard, Troy, told me about the CBs and how the drivers would put the word out is already fading into the more familiar sense of despair. I’m not a child, too easily inclined to hope for magic. I’m an adult whose life has pretty much been magic-free. The idea of a convoy of truck drivers caring enough to help find Artie is pretty far-fetched. Why should a group of anonymous drivers moving from one side of the country to the other care about my stolen dog? I wipe the “cavalry to the rescue” image out of my head.

I am at the corner of Lawton and Green. The house that I grew up in is half a block away. I can see the triple-decker that still belongs to my father looming over the ranch-style single family house that we crammed into for the eight years I lived there. It must suit Adele and my father so much better now. It’s really a house meant for two. Before I make that final turn, I pull out my phone and call Saundra.

It is ominously quiet behind Saundra’s voice. No barking. “I’ve got it posted online and I’ve contacted all the Sheltie rescues I can find from Cincinnati to Boston. Any word at all? Where are you?”

“No word. And I’m almost to the house.”

“You need to focus on your dad. We’ll keep going here. Do you need anything?”

“Just to find Mack.”

“We’re praying for you.” And just like that, the background is filled with Saundra’s pack barking joyously at being let in.

No one, to my knowledge, has ever prayed for me before. Tears prick at my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I can’t let them start, because they might never end.

Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I march myself to the middle of the block and face my childhood home. It is the same vinyl white that it has always been, grimy now with decades of street dust. A pair of plastic shutters flank the picture window that looks out on the street and the neighbors’ houses, no view worth such a large window, and one that had to have custom-made drapes to keep those neighbors from looking in. The foundation plantings have grown from shrubs into bushes and need a good trimming. Unkempt—that’s the word that comes to mind, and I am a little surprised. Adele is a house-proud woman. This place doesn’t look like anyone has taken care of more than getting the grass cut in years. I wonder how long my father has been sick.