Jenny

Sidney Robichaud

The first thing that Angel really noticed about the prairies was the sky. The hugeness of it, the never-ending stretch of blue and grey intersected by large groups of storm clouds. The clouds were swollen and dark, like blackberries in August, hanging low, heavy, and bruised. 

When she passed the sign that told her she’d made it to Saskatchewan, she noticed that it didn’t welcome her. It just said, Saskatchewan, Naturally, suggesting that perhaps everyone finds themselves passing through there sooner or later. It was late March, and the ground was still in the midst of thaw. The scent of wet earth hung in the air, mingling with the chill of snow that still sat in small, gritty piles along the side of the road. It wouldn’t be long before everything was blooming. Angel recalled how Claire, who grew up on Vancouver Island, hated how long it took for things to bloom in Nova Scotia. 

“We have cherry blossoms in February,” she would remind Angel every year. “I don’t know how you can stand all this grey,” and she would gesture broadly at the slush or the fog or at the harbour. Angel would want to point out to Claire that she had been living in Halifax for over a decade, but she never did. She was always afraid, if she reminded Claire that she lived there, then she would come to her senses and leave. 

Angel drove straight through what would soon be fields of wheat, canola and corn, but at the moment they all looked the same. Barren, brown, compressed from the weight of the newly melted snow. Starting to find their shape again. Skeletons of old corn stalks, bent at a forty degree angle, gave the impression of the aftermath of a bomb. The voice from the GPS let her know that the driveway was a few kilometres away, but she could see the silos already. 

As Angel turned her mother’s Honda Civic down the farm’s mile long driveway, a flash of grey moved along the edge of her vision. A dog appeared in the middle of the dirt lane, barking. Angel braked. The dog was big, with a skinny body covered in wiry grey fur, and a long, skinny tail. Its snout was angular and its ears were small and perked up. It was an ugly looking animal, with an expectant, comical expression. It crouched down in front of the car with its elbows and belly brushing the dirt, hind end stretched up and tail wagging.  Angel gave the horn a soft beep and the dog leapt up and ran ahead of her, the mangy fur of its tail flowing behind it like a banner.

The driveway cut through a cornfield and ended at the back door of a two story wooden house surrounded by large, silver, rectangular outbuildings. There was a red tractor sitting on the lawn, its paint chipped. Angel pulled up beside it, and took the keys out of the ignition.

She cautiously opened the car door. Instantly, the dog pushed its way into the driver’s side, with its giant muddy paws in her lap, coarse fur leaving a greasy residue on her hands as she attempted to push it out of the car. A hot tongue found her face. Drool fell from the dog’s jowls onto Angel’s sweater and she heard a voice from outside the car yelling, “Jenny! Get off,” And then, Jenny was gone, pulled out of the car by a pair of stout hands, worn and rough with dirt under the nails. Angel climbed out of the car and found herself face to face with a man whose face was somehow both unlined and haggard, making it hard to tell his age. He could have been fifty, or seventy. He had a patchy beard the colour of sand, peppered with silver. His cheeks were red from the chill of early spring. He wore beige overalls tucked into rubber boots, and a red checked fleece, unzipped. His toque was green and woollen, with bits of straw stuck to it. 

“Sorry about that. She was my mother’s. She passed a couple months ago. My mother, I mean.” 

Angel looked down at Jenny, who was straining against the man’s hold on her. “Sorry to hear.” 

The man nodded and stuck out one hand, the other still firmly wrapped around Jenny’s collar. “Pat. I own the farm. You’re the girl from Nova Scotia?” 

She nodded. “Angel,” she said, shaking his hand.  

She grabbed her one suitcase out of the car and Pat motioned for her to follow him. He released his old on Jenny, who had quieted down. Angel reached over and scratched her head, and Jenny pushed her long nose into Angel’s crotch. Angel pushed her away. She and Pat began to walk toward the outbuildings. 

Pat took Angel to a small camper trailer parked behind a building used for shearing sheep. It was not quite white, but something like it, with beige trim and a metal storm door. It had a gas powered stove, a small fridge, a kettle, a couch, and a double bed with a threadbare quilt. 

“You’ll need to move into the house if you stay for the winter. Too cold out here. But at least for the summer you can have this.”

“Thanks.” 

“There’s coffee and tea in the cupboards for the morning. You’ve got a chicken coop for eggs and you can take some bread and butter from the pantry. Dinner’s at the house, it’ll be ready at six.”

“Okay.” 

He left, the storm door closing behind him with a hiss. He turned back and called through the screen, “Don’t forget to put the chickens in the coop before you go to bed. Predators.” He started, walking off toward the house. He stopped and called back once more, “And don’t let Jenny in the house.”

Angel put her suitcase on the bed and opened it, but rather than unpacking just sat down beside it. The late afternoon sun was filtering through the shades, dustmotes swirling in the beams. There was a damp chill in the trailer, so she pulled out a fleece sweater and put it on. She wanted to curl up under the blankets on the sagging double bed, and stay there until summer.

Angel didn’t notice the dog until she heard her whining. She looked up to see Jenny staring through the storm-door, her ears perked up and staring at her. A glob of drool dangled from her jowls. She looked at her watch. 5:55. Carefully, she cracked open the storm door, and scooted out, shutting it quickly. She started walking to the house, and Jenny trotted alongside her, tongue hanging out the side of her face. As they walked toward the house, Jenny stopped and pressed her nose into the dirt. She began to nibble on whatever she’d found there, using her front teeth delicately, tongue dragging whatever it was into her mouth. Angel stopped and looked down, wondering if she should stop her. Jenny lifted her head, panting. Her tail was wagging, feathers dangling from her face. Chicken shit.

In the house, by the back door there were two pairs of rubber boots, a coat rack with Pat’s red and black fleece, a washing machine and a small bathroom. The porch opened up into a dining room. On the wall was a framed photo of a younger Pat, standing proudly beside his red tractor, with a small boy sitting at the wheel, grinning. Past that was a kitchen with an old fashioned fridge, and an electric stove with a kettle and a pot of pasta on it. By the window was a small table with two men sitting at it, Pat and someone else, in quiet conversation. The other man was facing her, and he looked up and smiled. He looked to be in his forties, face blanketed by a dark beard. He had a Saskatchewan Roughriders ball cap on, blue jeans matched almost exactly with a blue denim button up shirt. He raised his arm in greeting, and Pat turned around.

“You made it. Help yourself.” He gestured toward the pot of pasta. She picked up the pasta fork and wriggled it into the heap of congealed noodles in the pot, rocking it back and forth to separate a small portion for herself. A small pot of red sauce gurgled beside it, the white backsplash speckled with bubbled over tomato. By the look of the backsplash, spaghetti with tomato sauce was a popular meal at the farm. Claire made the best spaghetti bolognese.

 She sat down at the table with Pat and the second man, who Pat introduced as Gabe. Gabe reached out and shook her hand. He had a smile that was wide and genuine. She liked him instantly. 

“Angel. That’s some name.”

“It’s really Angèle. My father just couldn’t really pronounce the French.”

“Ah, ouais? T’parles Français?” 

His accent reminded her of her grandfather, shelling peas on the front porch of his farmhouse on the Acadian shore. 

“Not much, I’m afraid.”

“I see.” He did not look disappointed, only kept smiling. 

“And you, are you French?” 

He shook his head. 

“Not me, ma p’chi. I’m Métis.” 

Angel nodded. Pat said, “Gabe here is the farm manager. Nothing around here would run if it weren’t for him.” 

Gabe laughed, and stood up. “I’d better get home. Noor will wonder what happened to me. Nice to meet you, Angèle.” He left, the screen door squeaking closed behind him. 

“Noor is his wife. She’s from Pakistan. They have twin girls.” 

“That’s nice.”

They lapsed into silence. Angel twirled her pasta around her fork. Pat stared at his empty plate. Angel cleared her throat.

“What time do I start tomorrow?” 

 “Seven.” He took a drink of water, and then said, “I’ll walk you through everything. It’ll be pretty straightforward. Feed the animals. Help clean the barns. We should have a batch of lambs any day now, but Gabe will be there to help with that. You’ll catch on quick.” 

Angel finished her meal. She washed her plate and left through the screen door. Jenny leapt up from the porch, tail whipping through the air, feathers still stuck to her muzzle. Angel avoided her and started back to her trailer. The dog followed. 

“Jenny, go home.” Jenny continued to run alongside her. When they reached the trailer, Angel opened the door a crack, sliding her body through it so Jenny couldn’t get in. She closed the door in her face. The dog sat down on the step, staring intently through the screen. Feeling guilty, Angel went into the small bathroom and turned on the shower. Jenny would be gone when she got out, she figured. 

The shower took a minute to get hot, and then it got really hot. The air in the trailer was cold, now that the sun was down, so Angel quickly stripped and got under the hot water. She didn’t wash, just stood there under the stream, thinking about how she ended up there. 

In early September, Claire told her that she got a job back on the West coast. 

“You’ll love it there. It’s so green, and it’s warm most of the year. You’ll be able to get a good job.” She was in a good mood, and kept pulling her close, keeping her hands on Angel’s waist while she poured them both celebratory glasses of sparkling wine.

Angel spent the following months tying up all of her loose ends. She quit her job. She found a tenant to take over their apartment. Her family threw a goodbye party. Her grandfather had come all the way from Digby. He was ninety five, and she hated to leave him.

“Don’t forget where you come from, ma petite,” He said. She promised she wouldn’t. 

Finally, March rolled around, and she came home to find Claire sitting on the bed, now the solitary thing in their apartment. She was just sitting there, hands resting on her legs, staring at the bare wall. It took a while to get the words out, but she’d decided that she wanted to go alone. 

“I just need some space to figure things out. You know? To figure myself out,” And then she left, with the world irrevocably changed. 

Angel moved back in with her parents. Her childhood home offered no comfort, it only reminded her of how alone she was. One of her mother’s friends told her about programs where you could volunteer on farms, that they’d feed you and give you a place to live in exchange for labour. Her nephew was in Europe volunteering on a vegetable farm before going to University. 

Angel found the advertisement that Pat had put up, Sheep farm in Northern Saskatchewan, 25 hours per week, and she couldn’t imagine anywhere farther from Nova Scotia and her life with Claire. She felt like she was outside of herself, watching as she made the arrangements to leave. After a quick email correspondence with Pat, she packed up her mother’s car and left, and drove for a week until she turned down the long driveway. She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. The cold air pricked her skin, and she quickly dried off and put on her long johns, sweatpants, and her fleece. She crawled under the covers and waited for her body to warm the bed, and then finally fell asleep. 

She woke in the dark to a commotion outside the trailer. There was a scuffle, and a loud screech. Then, the sound of a barking dog. It took her a minute, and then she remembered the chickens.

“Fuck.” She jumped out of bed, and flicked on the porch light. A pair of glowing eyes stared at her, out of a pointed, masked face. Small hands were holding the hen by the neck; she was now just twitching in the raccoon’s grip. There were feathers everywhere. The raccoon stared at her in open defiance, and continued to feast. Angel watched as the raccoon, whose eyes never left hers, bit through the hen’s neck and its tiny hand tossed the head to the side. The hen’s body writhed and shuddered.  Angel grabbed a frying pan from the counter and ran outside, screaming. The raccoon dropped the chicken and ran off into the night. 

The hen was barely that anymore. Her head was gone, feathers and left breast gouged out. One of her legs was barely hanging on, the other still twitching. Jenny appeared at Angel’s side and sniffed at the dead bird. Angel looked at her.

“Some farm dog you are.” Jenny started pawing at the dead bird, crouching down on it and wagging her tail. Angel gathered the rest of the chickens up in the dark, shooing them into the coop and shutting the latch.  She turned back and saw Jenny rolling on the dead bird, on her back, wiggling back and forth. Angel quickly walked past her and went into the trailer, got into bed, and waited for the sun to rise. 

Angel woke to her alarm beeping. She got out from under the covers, pulled on wool socks and padded over to the stove. She lit the element and put the kettle on, measured out a portion of instant coffee and waited. Jenny sat at the door, staring at her, and Angel wished there was a curtain or something to block her from view. From the amount of times she turned and dug at her back, Angel suspected that she was full of fleas. While her kettle boiled she went out and got eggs. The yard was still covered in feathers, and the dead chicken was still there, only there was less of her. The way Jenny licked her chops, Angel could guess what happened. She couldn’t tell if the other chickens were affected by the events of the night before; they all left the coop without hesitation when she opened the latch. She ate breakfast quickly, drank the last bit of gritty, sugary coffee and put her dishes in the sink for later. She dressed in old jeans, a t-shirt and hoodie, slipped her feet into a pair of rubber boots, and went out to meet Pat. 

The morning air was still and calm, but when she arrived at the house, Pat was nowhere to be found. She went outside and walked out toward the barn, when she heard some shouting coming from the field behind it. She walked up to see Pat and Gabe crouched over a ewe, who was on her side. She was taking great, gasping breaths and released a low, guttural bleat. Gabe was down on his hands and knees, one arm wedged up inside the sheep. 

“S’no good, the lamb’s all turned around.”

He pushed his arm deeper into the sheep, who at this point seemed too exhausted to care about the fact that there was an entire arm in her vagina. 

“Easy there, easy.”

“Anything?”

“It’s turning. Good girl, it’s turning.” He pulled his arm out and then pushed it back in again. Pat turned to Angel. 

“Come over here by her head. Gabe might need me to help pull, and I need you to keep her still.” 

Angel knelt down by the ewe. The eye that she could see was wide and seemed to stare through her. It was a yellow-brown colour, with an elongated pupil that lay horizontal, rather than vertical. Angel remembered reading somewhere that all grazing animals had pupils like that, so they could see if something was approaching from behind. She didn’t really know what to do so she found herself stroking the ewe’s face and neck, whispering reassurances that sounded silly to her own ears, but at the same time couldn’t stop. 

“Got it, it’s turned. Pat, come and grab a leg.” 

The two of them grunted and pulled for what seemed like a long time, until finally Pat said, “Here it comes” and the whole lamb seemed to slide out at once. Its tiny body, glistening and wet, lay in the grass, still. Gabe rubbed its sides and cleaned around its nose. Finally he lay the small creature back on the grass and wiped his hands.

“Stillbirth.”

Pat rubbed the back of his neck. “At least we saved the ewe.” The ewe was up now. She looked confused, like she forgot what she was doing. And then, she walked off toward the herd grazing nearby. Pat picked up the baby, holding it by its back legs, its head dangling between its front hooves, which almost touched the ground. He motioned for Angel to follow him. 

They walked toward one of the outbuildings. Jenny, who’d been absent, suddenly materialized beside them. They came to a black bin that stood up to Angel’s elbow. It looked like a garbage bin. Jenny sat down on her haunches, perfectly still. Pat opened it and tossed the lamb inside, quickly closing the lid, while Jenny tried to stick her head in. “Jenny, fuck off.” He shoved her away with his foot. She ran in circles around them, barking. “Stupid dog.” He turned back to Angel. 

“The feds make us do this. Can’t leave them in the compost, I guess. Could cause disease. If you find any dead lambs over the next few months, this is where they go.”

“Will there be a lot of dead lambs?”

Pat shrugged. “Usually a few. As long as it’s under ten percent, we’re okay.”

  “Isn’t that sad?”

Pat shrugged. “I suppose. But they all get shipped off in September either way.”

“Right.” She looked at the bin. “How often does it get emptied?”

He grunted. “Whenever they get around to it. Smells real bad after a while.”

After that, he quickly showed her around the farm. Where to get the feed, where to put the haylage, which was a moist, sweet smelling hay that allowed the sheep to survive on such little grass during the early spring. While they were walking, Pat’s phone rang in his pocket. 

“Hello. Hi. Yep, can’t talk too long though. Showing the new girl around. Yep. When? Okay. Suppose it’ll have to be. Say hi to your mom. Bye.” 

He hung up, and slid his phone back into the pocket of his overalls. 

“My son. He lives in Toronto with his mom.”

“Oh.”

“He usually spends summers with me. He wants to come later this year.”

“How old is he?”

“Nineteen. In design school.” He said it like he was resigned to it.

“I studied design.” 

“Did ya? And now you’re working on a farm.” He didn’t sound scornful. In fact, this seemed to perk him up a bit. Together they walked up to the house, and sat down with Gabe for lunch. 

March slowly rolled on, and turned into April, which chugged steadily toward May. There was no shortage of work to do, or tasks that needed to be done, and every day the herd of sheep grew. There was one stretch where so many lambs were born, they were all awake for over forty hours. Mostly, the lambs would be born healthy, standing on wobbly legs moments after emerging into the world. But every so often one would be born unmoving, or would twitch for a moment or two before lying still. 

Sometimes they would find lambs that had been fine the day before, dead for no reason, with their mothers standing beside their tiny bodies like they’d misplaced something, but were unsure of what they’d lost. It was impossible to mistake a dead lamb for a sleeping one. Angel would gather the dead lambs and take them to the bin, where she would have to wrestle Jenny off before she was able to get into the soupy decay. It had become part of their routine.

Each morning, Angel would wake up and Jenny would be at the door, waiting for her. She started drinking her coffee on the step, with Jenny stretched out in front of her, belly exposed for rubbing. On one of her days off, she went into the local vet clinic and bought a flea treatment, which stopped Jenny from digging at her hind end. The canola fields were in bloom, their bright yellow flowers contrasting starkly with the blue sky that seemed to go on forever. Thoughts of Claire became less sharp, like her body had made room for other things.

 One night, in late April, as Angel was climbing into bed, she heard a soft scratching noise coming from outside. Jenny growled, but didn’t move from her spot by the door. Angel looked out to see a big raccoon trying to open the door to the chicken coop. She watched as its tiny fingers worked at the latch, wiggling it up and down. She didn’t know that raccoons knew how to work a latch. She opened the door and picked up a stone. She hesitated, looked at the animal that was completely immersed in trying to open the door, and then down at the rock in her hand. She took a breath, and threw the stone, hearing the thud and the screech as it connected with the raccoon’s soft body. The animal scampered away, its legs surprisingly long and agile. Two smaller versions ran behind her, their tiny ringed tails sticking straight out behind them. A heavy feeling of guilt settled in her chest. 

The next day, she bought a padlock. She figured that the raccoon couldn’t pick a lock, no matter how nimble her fingers. As she was hooking it through the latch of the coop, Gabe walked by. 

“Trouble with the chickens?”

“Raccoons,” she said. 

Gabe nodded. “Sounds about right.” 

She told him about the chicken she lost on the first night. He laughed. “Only one? That’s lucky. Usually they’ll rip through a whole flock before you have a chance to stop ‘em.” 

She nodded toward the padlock. “This should keep them out.”

He nodded. “Should. Never know with raccoons, though. Now that they know that there’s food here, you’d be surprised how resourceful they can be.” 

He wished her luck, and walked back toward the barn. 

That evening, they were all sitting around the small kitchen table after a long day of work. The phone rang in the hall, and Pat got up to answer it. Gabe and Angel sat quietly while the sound of Pat’s voice carried into the kitchen, tense and low. 

“I only see him once a year and now he doesn’t even want that.” There was a pause.

“I can’t come to Toronto. What am I supposed to do about the farm?” Angel watched as Gabe picked up the plates and started to load them into the dishwasher. She got up and helped him. From the other room, they heard, “You know what, fine. Tell him that’s it though. There’s no changing his mind.” Pat was silent for a few minutes, and then, “I understand. Okay. Goodbye, Marg.” He sounded tired. 

He came back to the table and for a moment none of them spoke. Then, Gabe broke the silence. 

“Josh not coming?”

Pat shook his head. “He’s taking classes over the summer.”

Gabe touched Pat’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.” 

“Life goes on. I’m gonna go check on that ewe.” He got up from the table, pulled on his rubber boots and went out. 

There was one ewe left to drop her lamb. Gabe said that she was young and it was her first pregnancy. The fact that she was still carrying was worrisome, so they’d put her in isolation where they could keep an eye on her. They heard Pat cry out, and they both leapt to their feet and raced out to the barn. 

The ewe was lying on her side, huffing in distress. Pat had his arm up to the elbow inside of her. Gabe knelt down beside them.

“Jesus, Pat. You get your arm good and slippery first?”

“Yeah yeah. It’s twins, and they’re breech.”

“Okay, nice and slow now. Get one turned and we’ll pull it out, and then the other.”

Pat grunted, while Gabe sat down with the ewe. 

“Easy, ma p’chi, easy does it.”

Pat’s face was red. After a while, he had two tiny hooves sticking out from the ewe’s hind end. He called Angel over. 

“Help me pull.” 

Together they pulled and finally the lamb began to slide out. Immediately, Angel could tell something was wrong. This wasn’t just a stillbirth. When the body hit the straw, it was already falling apart. Its shoulders were separating and its neck and head wobbled. It was small, and must have died in the womb quite a while ago.

“That’s why you didn’t know there were two,” Gabe said. “Quick now, get the other one out. It might still be alive.”

Pat reached in again. “Okay, I’ve got it turned. Angel.” She took up her position beside him, and the second lamb slid out. But as it did, the ewe cried out. The lamb was dead, lying in a puddle of blood that kept growing larger.

Pat sat back on his heels. “Fuck. Her uterus tore.” 

“What does that mean?” 

Gabe rubbed the ewe’s forehead gently while she shuddered. “It means she’s going to bleed to death.” 

The ewe drew one more laboured breath, and was still. The three of them sat there without saying anything, Angel and Pat covered in the ewe’s blood, surrounded by not one, but three dead sheep. Tears slowly made their way down Angel’s cheeks, into the collar of her shirt. 

She remembered when the cat she and Claire owned got hit by a car, and how they’d stood there over her tiny, broken body. Claire had brushed it off, and said this was what happened when you had pets. But when they took her to the emergency vet, and told their only option was to put her out of her misery, Claire’s hands had been shaking. 

Pat broke the silence, “Will you help me take them to the bin?” 

Pat scooped up the ewe, and she and Gabe each took a lamb. They were small, and could have easily been carried by one person, but the first one required two hands to hold it together. They put the bodies in the bin, which was now too full to close the lid. Afterward, they all sat in the kitchen in silence. The sky darkened and Gabe’s phone rang. He murmured into it, saying he’d be home in a bit. They sat like that for a while, until Pat spoke. 

“Thank you both for your good work today.”

And with that, he rose from his chair and went upstairs, his footsteps heavy above their heads. Gabe wished her goodnight, and he left. Angel went out to the trailer. She saw no signs of Jenny, which was peculiar. She left the porch light on, just in case, and went to bed. 

In the morning, Jenny was in her usual spot waiting by the door. Her ears were flat against her head and she whined. Angel walked outside and unlocked the door to the chicken coop. She collected her eggs and the chickens ran out with a chorus of clucking. She looked down at the coop and noticed a hole at the base, dug into the soft earth. The dirt around the hole was fresh, and as she kneeled down, she saw that the hole was deep. Another night of digging, and the raccoon would be through. Angel pushed the dirt back into the hole, and packed it down with her rubber boot. 

 She made breakfast and drank her coffee. Jenny watched the whole time, with a look of uncharacteristic concern on her face. Angel walked up to the house, and as she opened the door, Jenny pushed past her into the kitchen. Pat came around the corner, looked at Jenny, then looked at Angel and said, “Who let the dog in?” And everything seemed to move quickly after that. Angel moved to grab Jenny’s collar to pull her out when Jenny, tail drooping between her legs and ears down, began to make an awful retching sound. 

Angel paused, and Jenny began to vomit, her jaw nearly dislocating as her stomach pushed out a huge, steaming pile. There was a lot of vomit, more than Angel would have expected, all dog food and grass and some other stuff that she didn’t want to look at closely. And there, in the middle of the pile, horizontal pupil gazing out unseeing, was the dead ewe’s eyeball. 

For a moment, no one moved. Jenny, now feeling much better, began to wag her tail and attempted to rub her face against Pat’s leg. 

Silent and stone faced, Pat hauled Jenny out by the collar, through the screen door. Angel followed. They met Gabe as he was coming up the stairs. He looked surprised. Pat continued pulling Jenny down to the driveway, and then let her go. He hauled back and kicked her. The kick sent her down onto her side, and then, when she got up again, he did it again. She ran a little ways down the drive, and stopped and looked back. Pat picked up a rock and threw it, and then another, and another until one caught her and she sprinted down the driveway. She took a right into the cornfield, and was gone. 

Angel stared at the spot where she disappeared. Gabe came up beside Pat and cautiously put his hand on his shoulder. The touch seemed to deflate Pat. Gabe shook his head.

“Was that necessary?”

Pat looked after Jenny, eyes fixed on the driveway. 

“She’ll come back.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” He said it grimly, like he hoped he was wrong. “She’ll get hungry. She’ll come back.” 

+

Jenny didn’t come back that day, or the next. A week passed, the lambs were growing fast and could often be seen playing and jumping in the field. There was a heaviness that perforated everything, one that hadn’t been there before. Angel and Pat were in the field when Angel said, “Pat, I think I need to leave.” 

Pat looked surprised, and she couldn’t really blame him. She was a little surprised herself. But, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew they were true. She missed home, and the idea of being there without Claire didn’t scare her anymore. 

She spent the next day packing and cleaning the trailer. She still found herself glancing at the screen door, expecting to see Jenny waiting eagerly on the other side of it, string of drool glistening in the afternoon sun. But the space by the door remained vacant. 

Gabe came to say goodbye. He wrapped her in a big hug.

“Come back and visit us.”

“I will.” 

“Don’t worry about Pat. I’ll look out for him.”

She looked at the screen door, but Pat was nowhere to be seen. Gabe sensed that she was upset, and said gently, “He hates goodbyes.”

She nodded and got into the car. In the side mirror, she could see that Pat had come out of the house, and was standing on the step. He lifted his arm and waved. 

The driveway seemed to be longer than she remembered. The Honda bumped along slowly, and as she got close to the end, she could make out the shape of a large dog with wiry fur and perked up ears. Angel pulled the car up alongside her. Jenny stood there, not barking, just looking at her, head cocked to the side like she was trying to remember something. Angel looked in the rearview mirror at the house. She couldn’t tell if there was anyone there to see her. She figured it didn’t matter anyway. She reached over and opened the passenger side door. 

“Are you coming or not?” she said.