Page 18 of Death on Gallows Path

Oh.

I froze with a dog food bowl in each hand, halfway bent over.

That didn’t last long under the weight of the dogs’ stares — Gracie’s indignant and Murphy’s pleading.

I delivered the bowls, gave the word to release them to eat, then slowly straightened.

Needing to know the past to move forward . . .

I needed to know about Teague’s past, his secrets — at least the ones about why he’d changed his life so drastically.

He’d had clues about my past to put together, using his investigative abilities to learn about my secret before I shared it. I didn’t have such clues about his past.

. . . Did I?

I didn’t have an immediate answer to that.

But at least now, I had the question, to put at the back of my mind and let it simmer.

What was at the front of my mind was the story I was calling Alex in Search.

I went upstairs and kept writing.

DAY THREE

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER TEN

I wrote.

I let the dogs out.

I wrote.

I fed the dogs.

I wrote.

My phone alarm shocked me out of a world of strange sand dunes and stranger realities.

I was at my desk, being stared at by two dogs who knew precisely what that alarm at that time meant.

Clara would pick us up soon to go to the dog park.

Going to the dog park is a social contract I try not to break. A contract with her, with Murphy, with Clara, with LuLu.

It also kept Gracie and Murphy exercised, which kept me sane.

I was downstairs with their leashes ready when Clara arrived.

The conversation that followed must be somewhere in my memory banks, but I can’t retrieve it.

Next thing I knew, I was back at the computer, Gracie and Murph were charging up the stairs to my office, happily panting and throwing themselves into tired heaps on the floor, while Clara called out good-bye from downstairs. From those clues, I put together that she took all three dogs to the park by herself, leaving me at home to write.

I wrote.

I let the dogs out.