You Are Here(53)

Emma looked down at the dog, whose eyelids were flickering, and who was making small twitchy movements with his hind legs. She ran a hand lightly over the blunt end of his missing leg, and he thumped his tail on the leather seat.

When they pulled in to the veterinary clinic, Peter ran ahead of them to get help bringing the dog inside; their efforts at carrying him earlier had been a precarious exercise in flailing and fumbling, the two of them doing everything they could not to drop him, setting him down as gently as possible every few yards. Now one of the technicians appeared with a dog-sized stretcher, and together they heaved him up and onto it.

Inside, the waiting room was nearly full. There was a droopy-eyed Lab curled up beside his owner, a man glumly clutching a large cage that housed a parakeet, and a tiny beagle puppy who threw his head back and howled at them with gusto.

“You two can wait here,” said the technician, a guy who couldn’t have been much older than they were. “The vet’ll take a look at him and then be right out.”

Emma and Peter took seats beside the man with the bird, which made a couple of piercing squawks that seemed aimed in their general direction.

“I wish we could be back there with him,” Emma said, eyeing the door.

Peter leaned forward, and she could see he was reading the signs in the lobby, notices about vaccines and immunizations, puppy classes and special brands of dog food.

“How much do you think …,” he began, then stopped and looked at the tiled floor, his cheeks flushed. “I mean, I wasn’t really thinking … I didn’t really stop to consider …”

“How much this’ll cost?”

He nodded.

“It can’t be that bad,” Emma said. “I’m sure he’ll just need a few stitches. How much could it be?”

“You’d be surprised.”

She lifted her shoulders. “What else were we gonna do, leave him in the woods like that?”

“No, of course not, it’s just …”

“We’ll get to Nate’s house later today, so it’s not like we’ll need much more cash,” she said. “And I’ve still got a bunch of my savings left anyway.”

“Right.”

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Have any money left?”

Peter’s hand went to his pocket as if to examine his wallet, but he seemed to change his mind. “A little,” he said. “But not enough for any unforeseen expenditures.”

Emma realized she hadn’t ever really stopped to consider Peter’s finances. She knew he worked part-time at the barbershop, but she also knew he probably didn’t get birthday money or an allowance like she did, and thinking back on all the meals they’d had the last few days, all the stops at gas stations and restaurants, she felt suddenly terrible for not having thought about it.

“I guess this whole trip was kind of an unforeseen expenditure, huh?” she said, and he nodded, looking somewhat embarrassed. “Look, I have enough to cover this, so don’t worry about it, okay?”

“I’m as much responsible for him as you are,” he said. “I don’t want you to have to—”

“Peter, it’s fine. Really,” she told him. “And if it turns out to be really expensive, I’ve got my parents’ credit card. Which is technically only for emergencies. But I think this counts.”

“I think so too,” he said, his eyes wandering around the waiting room before landing on Emma. “Thank you.”

The swinging door that separated the waiting room from the clinic opened with enough of a clatter to startle both the parakeet and the beagle into another song. The technician crooked a finger at Peter and Emma.

“You’re up.”

The vet—a middle-aged woman in scrubs—was leaning against a counter on the other side of the door, chewing on the end of a pen as she studied a clipboard.

“That’s a beautiful dog you guys have,” she said, looking up as they approached. “I’ve got him sedated at the moment, and he’ll need a few stitches in that paw of his, but I wanted to first get some information from you about how it happened.”

Emma nodded, eager to help.

“I guess the first order of business would be a name.”

“Peter Finnegan,” said Peter.

“Emma Healy.”

The vet looked at them over the top of the clipboard. “I meant the dog.”

“Oh,” Emma said, looking helplessly at Peter. “Um, we don’t …”

“Yeah,” said Peter. “We never …”

“He’s actually not technically ours—”

“Though he sort of acts like he is—”

“But we picked him up at a rest stop in New Jersey—”

“More like he picked us up—”

“But it wasn’t like we stole him or anything—”

“No, he was just a stray.”

The vet looked from one to the other with a little frown. “Right,” she said, jotting down a note on the chart. “No name then. What I was really hoping to find out was how he got the cut. Before I get in there, it would be good to know whether it was from glass or metal, maybe a rusty fence or can, a broken bottle …”