Chapter One
Second Chance
The morning chorus at Second Chance Animal Rescue was not music, exactly, but it was a language. There were eleven dogs speaking simultaneously in the registers of hunger and greeting and the impatience of creatures who had learned that sound produced results.
Barks and shuffles, the metallic rattle of kennel doors, the low conversational woof of the senior dogs who had been doing this long enough to understand that volume was less persuasive than consistency. It was the sound of the place being alive, and Maren Foley had been listening to it every morning for ten years and had never once found anything other than the right way to start a day.
She pushed through the farmhouse’s screen door at six-fifteen the door’s familiar complaint, a creak like a question mark at the end of every exit and Scout came through behind her with the barely contained energy of an Australian Shepherd who had been indoors since five AM and considered this approximately four hours longer than the situation warranted.
He was three years old and had the colour of a painting that couldn’t decide between black and white and amber and had decided to be all three simultaneously.
He had been at the rescue for two weeks. In those two weeks he had assessed every animal on the property, opened the east yard’s gate twice by lifting the latch with his nose, and established himself as the unofficial quality control officer of the entire operation with the calm authority of a dog who had simply decided this was his job and had begun performing it without waiting to be asked.
His tail moved in the full helicopter rotation of a dog who considered the morning a gift.
“Don’t start anything,” Maren told him.
He looked at her with amber eyes that said he had not started anything, had never started anything, and found the suggestion slightly wounding.
She went to do the feeding rounds.
✦ ✦ ✦
Second Chance Animal Rescue had been a farmhouse before it was a rescue, and it had both identities simultaneously; the white clapboard exterior and the blue metal roof and the window boxes of petunias were the farmhouse, but the kennel wing that ran off the north side and the intake area at the front and the chain-link exercise yards were the rescue, and the combination had a look that Maren had come to think of as entirely correct, the way a person could be two things at once without either thing being less true.
She had built it from a grandmother’s bequest and three years of grant applications and the specific stubbornness of someone who had decided a thing was going to exist and was not interested in the reasons it might not.
The county had told her no about the kennel wing permits twice. The zoning board had told her no about the outdoor runs once. The state animal welfare committee had told her no about her operating license on a technicality that had taken seven months to resolve.
None of these things had, ultimately, mattered. The rescue existed. It had placed four hundred and thirty-seven animals in homes in ten years. It currently housed eleven dogs and seven cats, had a three-week waiting list for surrender appointments, and operated on a budget that required Maren to know, at any given moment, exactly how much was in every account — rescue fund, operating fund, emergency vet fund — in the way that someone navigating a narrow passage knew exactly how much clearance they had on either side.
She had written so many grant applications that the county commissioners’ names were as familiar to her as the dogs’ names. She could have addressed a grant application in her sleep. She sometimes felt she was.
But the animals were here. That was the only accounting that had ever mattered.
✦ ✦ ✦
The morning feeding was Maren’s favourite ritual not because it was glamorous (it was not) but because it was the clearest possible version of what the rescue was. You came in. You fed the frightened and the healing and the patient. You noted who had eaten well and who had not, who had slept and who had paced, who was ready for the next step in their recovery and who needed another day. It was the purest form of paying attention she had found in thirty-six years of looking for it.
Earl was in kennel three; a senior tabby whose surrender form said the owner I’ll be entering long-term care in the shorthand of a situation that was sad in all directions. He was eleven years old, orange and white, and he had spent his first two days at the rescue sitting with his back to the room in the posture of a creature who had decided that dignity required refusing to acknowledge his circumstances.
By day three he had begun accepting food from Maren’s hand. By day five he had moved to sitting at the front of his kennel. He was making progress. Progress, in rescue work, looked like this; incremental, unspectacular, real.
“Morning, Earl,” Maren said, sliding his bowl through the kennel door.
Mrow. He looked at the bowl and looked at her. He looked at the bowl again with the expression of a cat who was willing to eat it but wanted her to know the look of his condescension.
She moved on.
Biscotti was in kennel seven; a terrier mix of approximately medium size and incalculable anxiety, who had been surrendered six weeks ago by a family who had loved him but had not known what to do with a dog who was afraid of most things.
He was brown and white and had the wide, watchful eyes of a creature permanently braced for something. He had not yet had a day that Maren would call good. He was having days that were less bad than the ones before, which was the kind of progress that required patience and faith in equal, enormous measure.
Scout pushed past Maren’s leg and stood at kennel seven’s gate.
He did this every morning. He did not ask to go in. He did not bark or whine or perform any of the behaviours of a dog wanting access. He simply stood at the gate and let Biscotti look at him through the chain link.
Biscotti looked from the back of the kennel, from behind his bed, from the distance of a dog who was not ready to be closer but was willing to be aware.
Maren watched this every morning and thought: Scout is a better therapist than most therapists I’ve known.
She did not say this aloud, because Scout’s ego was already operating at near-maximum capacity.
✦ ✦ ✦
Dr. Priya Nair arrived at eight-fifteen, which was when she always arrived on Tuesdays, in the green pickup truck with the veterinary practice logo on the side that Maren could have identified from the sound of its engine alone. The truck’s distinctive rattle on the gravel lot; a mechanical clearing of the throat, like a person announcing themselves before entering a room.
Priya was forty-one, small and efficient, with the dry humour of someone who had been a veterinarian for fifteen years and had arrived at a settled philosophy about animals and the people who owned them. Her settled philosophy was: the animals were usually fine; the people needed more work.
She got out of the truck with her equipment bag over her shoulder and looked at Scout, who was sitting on the porch step watching her arrival.
“He’s doing the quality control thing again,” she said.
“He does it for everyone,” Maren said.
“Yes, but he does it for me specifically,” Priya said. “I’ve passed. He told me last week.” She went through the intake door and set her bag on the table. The familiar sound of equipment being unpacked; stethoscope, thermometer, the clinical rattle of a professional who knew exactly where everything was and had arranged her bag accordingly.
They worked through the Tuesday health checks together; Priya examining and Maren handling, the ten-year partnership of two people who had developed the specific shorthand of professionals who trusted each other’s judgment and were no longer required to explain their reasoning to each other before acting on it.
During Earl’s check he submitted with the resignation of royalty attending a function he considered beneath him; Priya said, without looking up from the stethoscope: “I had a board meeting last night. County animal welfare.”
“How was it?” Maren said.
“Productive, Harlan Voss chaired it.” She moved the stethoscope. “That man has more community hours than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s been on the board two years and he’s already reorganised the entire grant application process.” She looked up. “Your fence application is in the new queue, by the way. He flagged it specifically as a priority case.”
Maren felt the warmth of someone whose work was being seen. “That’s good news,” she said. “The east fence has needed replacing since before Scout arrived.”
As if he had heard his name or perhaps simply because he was Scout and missed nothing; the Australian Shepherd appeared in the doorway of the intake room, looked at the east side of the building, and then looked at Maren.
He made one quiet bark.
“Yes,” she said. “I know about the fence.”
He looked at her for one more second and then went back to the porch.
Priya watched this. “Does he do that often?”
“More than I understand,” Maren said. “Less than he’d like.”
