decided to use his real-estate license, under the name of Samuel Hyatt, to go
back to work once The Outsider had been destroyed. And if Einstein was still a
little draggy . . . well, he was certainly more energetic than he had been for a
while and was sure to be himself by tomorrow or the day after, at the latest.
That night, Travis slept without dreaming.
In the morning, he was up before Nora. By the time he showered and dressed, she
was up, too. On her way into the shower, she kissed him, nibbled On his lip, and
mumbled sleepy vows of love. Her eyes were puffy, and her hair was mussed, and
her breath was sour, but he would have rushed her
straight back into bed if she had not said, “Try me this afternoon, Romeo. Right
now, the only lust in my heart is for a couple of eggs, bacon, toast, and
coffee.”
He went downstairs and, starting in the living room, opened the interior
shutters to let in the morning light. The sky looked as low and gray as it had
been yesterday, and he would not be surprised if rain fell before twilight.
In the kitchen, he noticed that the pantry door was open, the light on. He
looked in to see if Einstein was there, but the only sign of the dog was the
message that he had spelled out sometime during the night.
FIDDLE BROKE. NO DOCTOR. PLEASE. DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO LAB. AFRAID. AFRAID.
Oh shit. Oh Jesus.
Travis stepped out of the pantry and shouted, “Einstein!”
No bark. No sound of padding feet.
The shutters still covered the kitchen windows, and most of the room was not
illuminated by the glow from the pantry. Travis snapped on the lights.
Einstein was not there.
He ran into the den. The dog was not there, either.
Heart pounding almost painfully, Travis climbed the stairs two at a time, looked
in the third bedroom that would one day be a nursery and then in the room that
Nora used as a studio, but Einstein was not in either place, and he was not in
the master bedroom, not even under the bed where Travis was desperate enough to
check, and for a moment he could not figure out where in the hell the dog had
gone, and he stood listening to Nora singing in the shower—she was oblivious of
what was happening—and he started into the bathroom to tell her that something
was wrong, horribly wrong, which was when he thought of the downstairs bath, so
he ran out of the bedroom and along the hall and descended the stairs so fast he
almost lost his balance, almost fell, and in the first-floor bath, between the
kitchen and the den, he found what he most feared to find.
The bathroom stank. The dog, ever considerate, had vomited in the toilet but had
not possessed the strength—or perhaps the clarity of mind—to flush. Einstein was
lying on the bathroom floor, on his side. Travis knelt next to him. Einstein was
still but not dead, not dead, because he was breathing; he inhaled and exhaled
with a rasping noise. He tried to lift his head when Travis spoke to him, but he
did not have the strength to move.
His eyes. Jesus, his eyes.
Ever so gently, Travis lifted the retriever’s head and saw that those
wonderfully expressive brown eyes were slightly milky. A watery yellow discharge
oozed from the eyes; it had crusted in the golden fur. A similar sticky
discharge bubbled in Einstein’s nostrils.
Putting a hand on the retriever’s neck, Travis felt a laboring and irregular
heartbeat.
“No,” Travis said. “Oh, no, no. It’s not going to be like this, boy. I’m not
going to let it happen like this.”
He lowered the retriever’s head to the floor, got up, turned toward the
door—and Einstein whimpered almost inaudibly, as if to say that he did not want
to be left alone.
“I’ll be right back, right back,” Travis promised. “Just hold on, boy. I’ll be
right back.”
He ran to the stairs and climbed faster than before. Now, his heart was beating