Max stopped by his dad’s house on his way home from work, Dog in tow.
Tobias Sheffington II, otherwise known as Toby to his friends, lived with Jamie just around the corner from Max, in the same house where Max had grown up. The same house that had belonged to his grandparents. It was a comfortable ranch that had seen better days, sitting in a prime location. So prime that his father fielded a few requests to sell every year. When Max was a kid, the entire street had been made up of similar comfortable ranch homes that had seen better days, but most of them had been added to or reconfigured, or razed altogether so that houses that hardly fit on the lot could be built in their place. Next to those houses, the Sheffington family home looked like it had blown into town on a tornado with a girl and her little black dog.
His father was in the garage at a workbench, the door raised. When Max and Jamie were kids, his father had dressed in a suit every morning and strode off to work carrying a heavy briefcase. But when Max’s mother had died six years ago from a sudden heart attack, his father had retired from his career as a financial adviser. Now he wore ball caps and chinos.
Dad had a line of fishing poles propped against the wall and was bent over an open tackle box on his workbench.
“Hey, Max.” He held up a yellow and green feather lure. “What do you think? Got it down at a little convenience store next to the river.”
“Looks spectacular.”
“Got some for the boys, too. We like to have a little contest when we fish. So, hey, when are you picking up Jamie tomorrow?” He put his lure down. “Me and the guys want to get an early start.”
“Yeah . . .” Max shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got a small problem.” Actually, it was a pretty big problem. “I have—” He was distracted by Dog’s sudden barking at a plastic bag ghost dancing across the garage floor on a breeze.
“Hazel!” his dad said sternly. “Stop that barking. It’s just a plastic bag.”
“That’s the small problem,” Max said. “That’s not Hazel.”
Dad laughed. “Funny. C’mere, Hazel,” he said.
Dog, still concerned with the plastic bag, which had come to a halt next to the lawn mower, cowered behind Max. Max went down on his haunches to vigorously rub the dog’s back. Dog immediately melted onto the floor and presented his belly for attention. “Oh,” his dad said. “Well, look at that. I could have sworn that was Hazel. Hey, wait a minute, there—where’s Hazel?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” Max filled his dad in on the mix-up. He was just getting around to the part of needing someone to look after Dog when the door to the house suddenly opened and Jamie walked out. “Dog show,” he said. Then he glanced down. “Who?” he asked, pointing at Dog. He knew immediately that it wasn’t Hazel.
Jamie was as tall as Max, maybe a half inch taller, two or three inches over six feet. Where Max had dark brown hair, Jamie’s was more of a golden brown. Their aunt had always said they both had their mother’s green eyes, but that was wishful thinking on her part—Max’s were really gray. Regrettably, his mother’s eyes were fading from Max’s memory. “This is a friend,” Max said to Jamie.
Jamie looked at the dog, then at Max. “Come on,” he said, gesturing to the door.
“Give me a minute to—”
“Come on, come on, come on, come on,” Jamie insisted, flapping one hand.
“Go,” his dad said. “I’ll be here with . . . what’d you say his name was?”
“Dog,” Max said.
“Dog show!” Jamie shouted, pointing at Dog.
“Okay, okay,” Max said. He followed Jamie inside.
They walked through the kitchen, through the family room where every wall held one of Jamie’s paintings, and past the view of a lush green backyard filled with birdhouses and fountains and wind sculptures—also created by Jamie—and down the hall to where Jamie’s room looked out over the backyard.
Jamie wanted to show him his preparation for the trip to Chicago. He’d laid out three pairs of jeans, neatly folded. Next to that were two pairs of identical Adidas white sneakers, cleaned and polished. A stack of folded black T-shirts, and four pairs of boxers, all gray. At the foot of his bed, he had his favorite dog