the foster your plan. I’m sure we can wait at least a week. You’ll keep me informed of your progress finding a new apartment?”
“I’m on it,” Mom replied.
Lucas knelt on the floor and put his arms around me. “I promise you I will do my best to find a new place. I’ll work two jobs if I have to. I will come get you as soon as I can, Bella. I am so, so sorry.”
He and Mom and Olivia were crying, which was bewildering. I felt the urge to comfort them but did not know how.
“She won’t understand. She’ll think I’m abandoning her,” Lucas said. His voice was anguished.
After a few more moments, Audrey snapped my leash onto my collar, and to my utter astonishment, led me out to a car. Olivia and Mom stood on the porch, hugging each other. “Bye, Bella!” they called.
Lucas put me in a crate inside the woman’s car, arranging my dog blanket so that I had something soft to lie on. He leaned in and put his fingers through the grate. We were doing Tiny Piece of Cheese! Not understanding, but so, so grateful to be a good dog, I gently took the treat. When I finished, he left his fingers there and I licked them, mystified. I could feel his grief. None of this made sense. “This might be good-bye, Bella. If it is, I am so sorry. I want you to know, in my heart, you will always be my dog. I just don’t have any other way to protect you.”
When he shut the door I could see his face through the glass. It was contorted, his cheeks wet, and I whimpered as the car drove away.
I felt like a bad dog again.
Eleven
Audrey was nice. She spoke to me and said Bella good dog. But she was taking me away from Lucas. I could feel him fading, becoming farther and farther away the longer the vehicle swayed and hummed. His scent was strongly infused into my blanket and I nosed it, breathing deeply, drinking him in. It was my Lucas blanket.
Another smell emerged for me as we traveled. Previously, the bouquet made up of the cars and people and smoke and all the other odors that comingled in the atmosphere near our place never seemed distinct to me, it was just the backdrop for the unique scent of our porch and door and bushes and Mom and Lucas and me. But now, as we drove, these background smells gradually coalesced into a separate, wholly disparate presence on the wind, a powerful collection of perfumes that defined itself for me as home. We passed other, similar clusters of smells, but it was easy to detect the strong palette of fragrances that was where I lived. I could even pick out my bearings when the nice lady let me out of the car so I could do Do Your Business—that direction, I thought, pointing my nose, in that direction lies home.
That way lies Lucas. But we did not go that way.
Instead, she took me to a house where I stayed for many days with a woman named Loretta and a man named Jose and a big dog and a little white dog and two cats and a bird. The little white dog was named Rascal and he had never been taught No Barks. The big dog was named Grump and he was old and slow and a light brown color. He never barked and was very sleepy all day. Both dogs were smaller than I was. The cats ignored me and the bird stared at me when I sniffed at her cage.
I was too miserable to eat the first day, and also the second. Then I realized Lucas sent me to this place to wait for him, so I began feeding when the other dogs did. What I needed to do was be the best dog I could so Lucas would come get me.
I was given a bed imbedded with the pungent redolence of many other canines and at least one cat. I pulled my Lucas blanket into the bed with me so that I could have his essence with me while I slept.
Jose mostly sat in his big, soft chair. He liked to eat food out of a bowl and would slip me a piece of salty treat when Loretta wasn’t nearby. I spent a lot of time doing Sit by Jose’s chair. I knew if he gave me treats I was being