me, I can.”
I tried to give it back, but she pushed it in my direction, her face twisting in a sad sort of frustration.
“Listen, you asshole—you need this puppy, and she needs you. You won’t let me be your friend, so please, take the dog. She doesn’t have anybody else to take care of her, and you don’t have anyone to take care of you. We don’t have Pop anymore, Jake. And I don’t have you and you don’t have me because you’re such a stupid jerk and you never have a shirt on when you know it makes me all …” She crossed her eyes and circled her ear with her pointer finger. “So take the goddamn dog! And I’ll take mine. And then we won’t be alone anymore.”
A slice of white-hot pain cut through me at the despair in her words. At the knowledge on their heels. At the look on her sad, angry face and those shiny tears still in her eyes. How she’d gone through so many forms of tears in such a short period of time astounded me. But that was Olivia. She felt everything. And she always tried to find a way to be happy despite her circumstance. Which, at the moment, was pretty shitty.
And all I’d done was make it worse, simply because I was scared of losing anything else that meant something to me. I’d lost enough.
She was right. We were alone. And we needed a friend, canine and human both.
I looked down at the puppy, and it looked up at me, its little pink tongue darting out and its needle nails shredding the outside of my hand. I glanced toward its tail.
“One problem.”
“What now?”
“This one’s a boy.”
With a relieved laugh, she rolled her eyes. “I swear, I know my way around genitalia.”
We shared a look. The color in her cheeks flared enough to see even in the near dark.
Her chin lifted. “I stand by that statement in any context.”
I held the puppy out for inspection. “Kevin’s a dumb name—only accountants are named Kevin. He looks more like a Rhett.”
“Ugh, you country people. Why can’t Kevin be an accountant? Just let him live his life already.”
“A farm dog needs a good old-fashioned name. Like Buck. Hank maybe. Nash? Ryder? What do we think of Ryder, buddy?”
“So he needs to be a cowboy?”
“Anything’s better than an accountant.”
She stepped next to me to assess the puppy with me. “What about Bowie? You can pretend it’s after the knife, and I can pretend like it’s of the Major Tom variety.”
A quiet laugh puffed out of me. “Bowie, huh? I don’t hate that.”
“That might be the best any of us can hope for, Jake.”
I tucked it back into my chest. “What are you gonna name yours?”
“She’s so furry and cute and blonde …” She paused. “Maybe Dolly. Think I can teach her to howl ‘Jolene’?”
“I dunno. I think she might look more like a Jolene than a Dolly.”
Olivia looked up at me, then at the puppy. “You know, I think you might be right.”
“I’ve been waiting to hear you say that for weeks.”
She snorted a laugh. “Asshole.”
The goats yelled at us in a chorus from the fence, their heads sticking out between fence rungs. I jerked my chin at them.
“What were you doing in the goat pen?”
Her face lit up like I’d screwed in a lightbulb. “Well, I was so excited about the puppies, I knew I’d never sleep, but your lights were off or I woulda come over and given him to you. So I thought I should take them to see the goat babies, and then all the babies could be friends. But then Brenda got all excited and kept trying to head-butt them to death and I got scared and then you walked in.”
“Brenda wasn’t trying to murder your puppies.”
“Our puppies,” she corrected.
“Fine, our puppies. But that’s how kids play. You’ve never seen them do it?”
“Well, we’ve only had them for like twelve hours, so no.”
“Come here. Watch them.”
We walked over to the pen, and I reached into the bucket hanging high on the post for a handful of feed. Four seconds later when they finished it, the adults went back to sleep, and the kids started playing. It was admittedly alarming to watch—they took turns making leaping dives for each other’s heads, cracking their buddies square between the eyes. One was so good, he landed at least two hits midair.
I glanced over at Olivia—her fingers were over her lips in abject horror.
“Don’t