I ran.
I came through the brush at the south end of the clearing with my hands up to keep the branches off my face.
I saw them together.
Easton was kneeling in the dirt at the foot of a fallen log with both hands on Moose's head. Moose was wiggling against him at full speed, ears flat, tail going so hard his whole back end was moving with it, full-body wag, tongue out, licking Easton's chin, his jaw, the side of his neck. Easton was laughing into the side of his face, low, the Queens at the edges of it.
I knew him before I'd moved.
The boots. The jacket. The blond hair pushed back from his forehead. Days of stubble. He hadn't looked up yet.
I ran.
I ran the distance I hadn't let myself close in three weeks, the distance I hadn't let myself close since I stood at the curb on Maple Avenue and watched a truck pull out of a driveway and turn at the end of the block. My boots hit the dirt. My breath caught. I closed the gap in half a dozen strides, went down on my knees in the dirt beside the two of them, and put my arms around Moose's neck with my face in the wet fur at his shoulder.
"Moose."
He was licking me now, licking the side of my face and Easton's jaw at the same time, head whipping back and forth between the two of us—the dog who had decided he wasn't going to choose.
I was crying.
I hadn't cried since the morning Easton left. I held it through three weeks of clinic, through Caldwell carrying his cat through my door at seven-twenty, through the crewneck on the chair inthe back office. I held it through this morning at the gate and through the woods and through Audrey's hand on my jaw.
I was crying into a wet dog with Easton Ford's hands six inches from mine on the same dog's head, and I didn't care.
"Moose. You menace. You absolute menace."
He licked my chin.
I let myself stay there with my face in his fur. He was here. He was alive. He was leaning against the shin of the man I'd told to leave, and the man was here, too.
I lifted my face.
Easton hadn't moved.
His hands were still on Moose. His eyes were on me. His face had the look of a man who'd driven a long way and didn't know yet whether he'd been driving toward something or away from it.
"Astrid."
"Easton."
We were both on our knees in the dirt with the dog between us.
Moose settled across both of us with his chin on Easton's thigh and his haunch against my knee, and stayed.
Easton drew a breath.
"I need to tell you somethin'."
"Okay."
"I'm gonna say all of it. You let me get to the end of it."
"Okay."
"I didn't call the realtor in eighteen months. I didn't pack a box. The packing tape and the Sharpie I bought the week of the funeral sat on the floor of my hallway for a year and a half, and I didn't touch either one. Shane called me in September and offered me the slot, and I told him to put my name in, and I didn't make one move toward leaving Hartsdale after that. Not one. For two months."
He let it sit a beat.
