The Lovely and the Lost

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  The edges of Cady’s lips twitched as she stifled a smile. “Is that your way of telling me I’m predictable?”

  I shrugged again, but I didn’t bother biting back my own grin.

  “I’m your mother,” Cady retorted. “I’m allowed to feed you. I’m also allowed,” she emphasized, “to tell you that I heard there was a party last night up on Hangman’s Ridge.”

  Cady had a sixth sense that let her read animals with impressive accuracy. Unfortunately for Jude and me, that knack seemed to extend to her children as well.

  Luckily, I had a better poker face than Jude did. “We went. We partied. We came home.” I preempted Cady’s next question. “We behaved ourselves, and Free left when Jude and I did. Happy?”

  Cady reached out to push a piece of flyaway hair back from my face. “Ecstatic.”

  I leaned into her touch for a moment before pulling back, and Cady let me eat the rest of my PowerBar in peace. Some people found my capacity for silence off-putting, like the act of not chitchatting was the equivalent of spitting in another person’s face. Cady never seemed to mind. She’d fought long and hard to give me back my voice, but she never acted entitled to my words.

  If I’d stood there in silence for ten minutes, she would have stood there with me.

  “Free was asking me if you’d decided to let the military have Pad,” I said as I swallowed the rest of the PowerBar and let Saskia lick my fingers for crumbs.

  “Free can woman up and ask me herself,” Cady responded, in a tone that made it crystal clear that our neighbor wasn’t off the hook for skipping finals yet.

  “What if I’m not asking for Free?” I bent down and greeted Pad, who’d been sitting patiently at Cady’s side. Saskia wasn’t pleased to be sharing my attention, but she tolerated Pad the way a person might tolerate a coworker with particularly bad breath.

  “If you’re the one asking,” Cady replied, “then my answer is that it depends.”

  “On what?” I straightened. Cady had about eight inches on me. Jude might have gotten some of his height from his mystery father, but at least part of it had come from her.

  “On you,” Cady replied. She held Pad’s lead loosely in her left hand. The golden retriever sat with her haunches on the ground, ready and alert. “You’ll be seventeen next month, Kira. Only one more year until you can get certified. Pad would be a good partner for that. For you.”

  A lump rose in my throat. With the price the military had offered for Pad, we were talking about a substantial sum of money. As much as it meant to me that Cady was willing to make the offer, it hurt, too.

  “I already have a partner,” I said.

  “Don’t take this personally. I have no doubt that Saskia will be able to blow through most of the exam,” Cady said carefully.

  Saskia’s not sociable enough. She’ll never be sociable enough. That was what Cady was saying. No matter how good my girl was at finding lost people, if she couldn’t play well with others—other handlers, other dogs—it wouldn’t matter.

  How could I not take that personally?

  “Saskia will be ready,” I replied, my voice lower in pitch than it had been a moment before.

  Cady knew better than to argue. “In that case, then yes, I intend to accept the military’s offer for Pad. I know the team she’ll be working with. They’ll take good care of our little prodigy.”

  Fully aware that we were talking about her, Pad began wagging her tail.

  “You want to take her out, one last time?” Cady asked me. “I can finish up with Saskia.”

  That wasn’t really a question—or a request. Saskia needed to be able to work with other handlers, and Cady knew that if I was left to my own devices, I wouldn’t take Pad out again.

  I’d never excelled at good-bye.

  * * *

  There were two basic methods for directly following a scent path. A tracking dog worked with its nose to the ground. A trailing dog worked with her nose in the air. In addition to air-scenting to cover large areas, Pad was trained for the latter. She could follow a scent wherever she found it, take shortcuts, track a person from one environment to the next.

  She blew through every challenge I laid out for her.

  “I’m not going to miss you,” I told our resident wunderkind. She responded to the warmth in my voice as I jostled her from one side to the other. When I signaled to allow it, she jumped up, putting her paws on my thighs. I buried my hands in her downy fur and scratched under her collar. “I’m not going to miss you at all, you awful dog.”

  Pad tilted her head to the side. Her ears went up.

  She hears something, I thought. Unlike most dogs, Pad was unlikely to be distracted by small animals. A squirrel could have danced across the path, and she wouldn’t have batted an eye.

  The only thing that Pad was trained to pay attention to was humans.

  A muscle in my jaw ticced. The boundaries of Cady’s property were clearly marked. So was the fact that trespassers were not welcome. Our territory. Not yours. I kept a check on the part of my brain that whispered those words, but I didn’t take Pad and head back to the house. Instead, the two of us went for a little walk. Being the human half of a SAR team required more than just training the dog and giving the appropriate commands. You had to be able to traverse all kinds of terrain. You had to know advanced first aid. You had to be able to navigate. You had to be able to strategize.

  You had to have at least rudimentary tracking skills yourself.

  It took me five or six minutes to find a sign that Pad hadn’t been hearing things. A broken twig, a quarter of a footprint, if that. The size and shape indicated the owner was male and walked lightly. Whoever our visitor was, he knew how to hide his tracks.

  “You ready for some fun?” I asked the golden.

  In answer, Pad got a good whiff of the intruder’s scent. The human body shed roughly forty thousand skin cells per minute. With a trail this fresh, those cells would be a beacon for the dog’s nose, leading us straight to the trespasser.

  Pad looked up at me, waiting for the command. “Find him.”

  Pad took off running. I gave her plenty of slack on the lead—thirty or forty feet—and jogged to keep up with her. She led me up and over rocks, twisting and turning deeper and deeper into the forest. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been on the trail when Pad stopped. She stood perfectly still for a moment, then took off running with joyful abandon.

  Find. Play. Find. Play.

  I could feel the energy thrumming through her as she took us down a hill and into a clearing. To my surprise, our quarry was sitting on a rock, waiting for us. The intruder was older than I’d expected, and his suntanned, weatherworn face registered exactly zero surprise when we came tearing through the clearing.

  When Pad plopped down in front of him and started barking, the old man held out a worn piece of rope. Instantly, she latched her teeth around it. I waited for the man to say something to me, but he was too busy playing tug-of-war with my partner to do it.

  He knows she’s a search and rescue dog, I thought. She found him. She barked to indicate her find. They’re playing.

  Another part of my brain focused on his posture, his size, any hint of movement in my direction.

  “Would I be right in assuming you belong to Cady Bennett?” The man’s gaze flicked up to meet mine. I focused on thinking in words, not feelings, not colors, not heat. I wondered if he was with the army, if he was here for Pad.

  As long as I was wondering, I had everything under control.

  “Cady Bennett,” I repeated, the feel of the name familiar in my mouth—another safeguard, another anchor. “She’s my mom.”

  I’d never called Cady by anything but her first name. Even after she’d adopted me, I’d still referred to her as my foster mother. Something inside me wouldn’t let me do anything else, but here, now, with this man looking at me like he knew something I didn’t, the words slipped out.

  I was Cady Bennett’s daughter, and every instinc
t I had was telling me two things. First, that she knew this man, and second, that she didn’t know he was here.

  Our territory. Not yours. The muscles on the back of my neck tightened. I wasn’t conscious of taking a step toward him until he held up a hand—the gesture for stay.

  “I’m not an animal,” I gritted out, my throat tightening around the words.

  “No,” the man said gruffly. “You’re my granddaughter. And from the looks of that glare on your face, you are very much your mother’s daughter.”

  “I feel this bodes well.”

  Jude and I were sitting at the top of the stairs, listening as best we could to the conversation that was going on in the kitchen. Cady had gone ashen the moment she’d seen her father. I hadn’t wanted to leave her alone with the man, but the look on my foster mother’s face had promised retribution if I didn’t.

  With most people, I wasn’t capable of backing down. But every pack had its alpha—and Cady was ours.

  “You think everything bodes well,” I told Jude. “We didn’t even know that Cady had a father. You really think she would have kept his existence a secret without a reason?”

  Jude dismissed my objection with a wave of his hand. “He’s our grandfather, Kira. By definition, that entitles us to certain grandchildly privileges.”

  Jude had a habit of making up words. Being Jude, he was also optimistic that each and every one would be added to the dictionary, if only he used them regularly enough.

  “I have to say, sister mine,” Jude continued seriously, “I think this is shaping up to be the best summer of our lives.”

  “You say that every summer.”

  “And every summer,” Jude countered, “I am correct!”

  The sound of the hushed conversation in the kitchen gave way to silence. I tensed, preparing myself for an explosion. With Cady, it was always calmest right before the storm.

  “How dare you come here, unannounced and asking for favors?” Cady’s voice cut through the silence, rising in volume and pitch. Her tone was sharp enough to draw blood, but beneath the anger, I could hear something dark and cavernous. She wasn’t just furious. Inside, she was bleeding. “I came to you,” Cady said roughly. “Do you remember that? Do you remember me begging you to help us find Ash? I would have done anything to get him back, and you wouldn’t even pick up a phone.”

  “I loved that boy, same as you did, Cadence, but there are some doors better left closed.”

  What doors? I thought. What boy?

  For once, Jude didn’t immediately pipe up to put some ridiculously positive spin on the situation. Cady had told us very little about Jude’s father, other than the fact that she’d loved him. Jude had come up with a thousand theories about his “mysterious sire,” each more elaborate than the last, but we’d never heard so much as a name.

  I loved that boy, same as you did.

  Without meaning to, I leaned my body into Jude’s. He rested his forehead against mine.

  “That wasn’t your decision to make,” Cady said down below, and somehow, even though her voice had gotten quiet again, I could hear every word. “It was my life, and my choice, and Ash was worth it to me.”

  Another silence stretched out between father and daughter. My body tensed, the way Saskia’s had when I’d given her the command to stay. I knew, logically, that I couldn’t physically protect Cady from an emotional onslaught, but there were some parts of my brain where logic meant nothing.

  Cady was mine. Jude was mine. I’d tear this man apart before I let him hurt them.

  The touch of something cold and wet on the back of my elbow was the only warning I got before Silver wedged herself between Jude and me. Her ears flicked forward, on high alert.

  “Now, ladies,” Jude said, casting a stern glance at both the German shepherd and me. “Physically attacking our mother’s father would be a grandchildly and grandpuppy no-no.”

  Jude had gone from shell-shocked to convinced that a group hug was inevitable in under ten seconds. Sometimes, I questioned how hard he had to work to have that much hope—no matter how effortless he made it seem, no matter how calming just being near him was.

  Jude chose that moment to press the tip of his index finger lightly to the end of my nose. “Boop.”

  Down below, the front door slammed open, then shut. “Marco!”

  Cady never locked the house, and Free never knocked. Jude and I met eyes and then scrambled down the stairs in an effort to reach Free before she stumbled into World War III.

  “Polo!” Jude yelled. “Polo! Polo! Po—”

  We made it to the landing just in time to see Free’s blond ponytail disappearing into the kitchen. Silver surged ahead to follow, and I took that as a sign that Jude and I should as well.

  “Polo,” Jude finished weakly as we skidded into the kitchen. I grabbed Silver’s collar, but in reality, she was holding me back as much as the reverse.

  Free looked at Cady, looked at the old man, looked at Jude, and looked at me.

  Then she sauntered over to the stove and snagged a piece of bacon out of the skillet. “Can we agree,” she said, taking a bite, “that my C average isn’t looking like that big a deal in the grand scheme of things?”

  Free might not have known what she’d just stumbled into, but she was as good at sniffing out people’s hot buttons as she was at taking tests. She didn’t need to know the particulars of a situation to know that there was a situation.

  And she wasn’t above defusing the tension and making a point.

  “We can agree that you”—Cady narrowed her eyes at Free, then shifted the glare to Jude and me—“all of you, can take a lap around the perimeter and then try your hand at giving the bloodhounds a bath.”

  Free took another bite of bacon. I studied the interloper. Jude offered him a loopy smile.

  “Now,” Cady snapped.

  Her father chuckled. “You reap what you sow, Cady-girl, and this lot looks like they’re about as good at following directions as you were.”

  Free tossed a glance at Jude and me. “I’ll take old guys with boundary issues for two thousand, Alex,” she said.

  “Long-lost grandfather,” Jude informed her, “no longer estranged and come to bring adventure into our otherwise ordinary lives!”

  Cady kneaded her temple. Clearly, the situation had spiraled out of her control. Free was enjoying this a little too much. Jude wasn’t leaving until he got an introduction, and I wasn’t capable of turning my back on the same threat twice. After a long moment, Cady gave in to the inevitable.

  “This is Jude,” she told her father, her voice tight and controlled. “You’ve already met Kira. And the miscreant stealing my bacon is our neighbor Free. They were just on their way out.”

  “In terms of grandfather names,” Jude asked the old man, “would you say you’re more of a Granddad or a Papaw?”

  The edges of the old man’s lips ticked slightly upward. “You can call me Bales. That’s my name, and if I know my daughter half as well as I think I do, that’ll have to do.” He stood with his hands by his side, nonthreatening, nonconfrontational, but ready to move. “Now, as much as I would like to continue this conversation, son, your mother and I have something to settle.”

  “No,” Cady said. “We don’t. What part of no don’t you understand?”

  Bales Bennett didn’t bat an eye, didn’t so much as raise his voice. I got the sense that he was the kind of man who never had to. “The part,” he said, “where your issues with me are making you turn your back on a missing child.”

  After that, Cady really did kick us out of the house. I barely noticed. The words missing and child would always take me to places in my memory that I didn’t want to go—the smell of wet dirt, gnawing hunger. I remembered blood beneath my fingernails. In flashes, I could feel myself, crouching, cowering, growling. I could see my tiny body lying in the ravine.

  I remembered the exact moment that Silver leapt down beside me.

  But whenever I tried to pic
ture what had come before—the weeks in the forest, how I’d survived, the events that had led me out there?

  Nothing.

  “Some people might say our grandfather is manipulative,” Jude commented, preparing to lather up one of the bloodhounds. “I prefer to think that he is offering our family an opportunity for emotional advancement.”

  Jude never left me stranded in the dark for long. With a wink in my direction, he turned his attention to his K9 partner. NATO, a three-year-old bloodhound, was the peacekeeper of our makeshift pack—and every bit the optimist that Jude was.

  “Come on, bucko,” Jude crooned, patting the inside of the tub. NATO looked up at Jude adoringly and jumped haplessly in.

  “Poor sap,” Free commented. “Doesn’t matter how

  many times we play this game, he never sees the betrayal coming.”

  “I am going to assume,” Jude replied austerely as he turned on the hose, “that you are talking about the dog.”

  It was another few seconds before NATO realized, belatedly, that he was being bathed. He bayed mournfully.

  “Whoever could have seen this coming?” Free asked the dog. “In related news, someone needs to help me with Her Ladyship.”

  NATO was Jude’s dog. Duchess was Free’s. Both were bloodhound mutts, but somehow, NATO had ended up with the temperament of a happy-go-lucky Lab, while Duchess was a bloodhound to her bones.

  Her Ladyship was not getting in that tub.

  “Cady would say,” Free commented cheerfully as she tried—and failed—to grab hold of Duchess, “that this serves me right.”

  Everything else came easy to Free—school, people, boys. But she’d chosen the one dog that she could never outstubborn. She’d spent hundreds—maybe thousands—of hours training Duchess. Her Ladyship was an excellent tracker.

  But baths were a different matter.

  “Care to take a stab at this, K?” Free was the only one who ever shortened my name—the only one I let shorten it.

  I crouched down to Duchess’s level. For several seconds, we appraised each other. Duchess didn’t want to be sweet-talked.