Page 96 of Tracking Safety

“She got out. Found somewhere she could start over.” Ruby looked at the chocolate Lab. “But she couldn’t take Freya where she was going. Broke her heart. She made us promise we’d keep her until she could send for her.” A pause. “A month later, we’re still keeping the promise.”

Jenna looked at the dog with new eyes.

A creature named for a fighter by a woman who’d had no one else to fight for her. A dog left behind, through no fault of her own, by someone who’d loved her and couldn’t stay. A dog that lived at the edge of a family who fed her and sheltered her.

Waiting, all this time, to be claimed.

Jenna knew that animal. She understood her better, maybe, than she understood herself. “I remember you said earlier she doesn’t take to people.”

Ruby nodded. “Not for our lack of trying. She’ll let the kids close sometimes. But mostly she keeps her distance. Decided it’s safer that way, I think.” She set her empty mug on the railing. “Can’t say I blame her.”

“I get that,” Jenna murmured. “Where does she sleep at night?”

“We had her in the kennel at first. But we don’t like to leave dogs there for an extended period. We tried to bring her inside, but she seems to prefer wandering outside on her own instead. At night, on mild days, she likes sleeping on the screened porch.”

“It is nice out here.”

“That it is.” Ruby squeezed Jenna’s shoulder. “I’ll give you some time.”

She went back inside, and the screen door swung shut behind her.

Jenna stayed at the railing, the warm mug cradled in both hands, and she watched the tree line go from blue to black.

There, alone in the dark with no one to perform for, the thing she’d been holding down all day finally rose.

The fear and the bone-deep exhaustion.

And her eyes burned before she could stop them.

She heard the soft click of nails on the boards.

A pause.

Then she felt the warm, unhurried weight of a body settling against her shin.

Jenna went still.

Then she let out a breath that shook on the way out, and reached down—slow, careful—and laid her hand on that soft, brown head.

Freya didn’t pull away.

Two wary survivors, keeping each other company at the edge of a house full of people they weren’t sure they were allowed to belong to.

The screen door eased open behind her again. She didn’t turn. She knew that step.

Luke.

He crossed the porch and stood beside her at the railing.

His gaze dropped to the dog pressed against her leg. “She won’t let me within ten feet of her. All this time, and she’s never once come to me.”

Jenna kept her hand on Freya’s head. “Maybe she’s just waiting to be sure.”

“Of what?”

“That whoever she lets close isn’t going to leave.”

The words were out before she’d weighed them, and she felt them land in the space between her and Luke—who had been left, who had every reason in the world not to come close again.