As I turned off my chop saw, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Wiping the sweat and the sawdust from my face, I gulped down some water and pulled it out to take a look. Even from the tiny thumbnail shot, hard to make out because of the sun glare, I could see what it was. The necklace—she’d found the goddamned necklace. I wiped my hand off on my jeans and unpinched my fingers over it to make it bigger, and that also showed me the soft, delicate, lovely skin of her hands. There, on the shiny silver plate, barely tarnished at all, were the letters that completed mine. I undid my necklace and put it on my phone screen, zooming in on the half in her hand to get them to be the same size.

Goddamn it, yes. That was it, exactly what I’d needed to see to cheer me up from missing her so much. I put my phone on my knee and refastened my necklace around my neck. I looked out into the yard and at the For Sale sign swinging in the breeze. I looked at the petunias she’d planted in the old wooden boxes I’d made for her grandma years ago. A million different colors, no rhyme or reason, just pure happiness in flowers.

I missed her so much that it made me feel sick.

Cupcake helped, though. I’d set up a makeshift pen for her in the shade of the magnolia, made of four metal garden stakes and some plastic fencing that came on a roll. She chased her fuzzy hedgehog around and then rolled in some drying magnolia petals. I reached down and gave her tummy a scratch. I stepped over the fencing and lay down in the grass with her. She climbed up on my chest and stood with her paws on my pecs, looking down at me.

“Hi,” I said and gave her a scratch under her collar.

But in my pocket, I felt my phone buzz again. At first, I thought it had to be Rosie, maybe even sending me a photo of her wearing the necklace. From the pattern of buzzes, though, I knew it was a phone call. I held it up with one hand, angling it against the glare. A local number, but not one I knew offhand. I hit speaker and answered the call.

“Mr. Doyle?” said a voice on the other end. I could almost place it, but not quite. Until she said, “This is Doris, at Truelove Veterinary.”

I looked at Cupcake. A yellow butterfly flew past, and she leapt off my chest to chase it. My heart started to go into free fall. Please tell me I forgot to pay my bill. Please tell me I left my credit card. Please fucking tell me that you’re only calling to check on her. Please, fucking please, don’t break my heart again…

“Doris. Don’t tell me…”

A series of barks in the background filled my ear, and then Doris said softly and sadly, “I think I’ve located Cupcake’s owners. I’m so sorry.”

* * *

When I walked into the vet, Doris looked up from the counter and frowned before placing her hand to her heart. “I thought for sure we were in the clear,” she said with a painful frown.

I would not fucking cry. I would be strong. I clutched Cupcake to me harder, and she cleaned the sweat off the edge of my collar. She smelled a whole lot like Fritos, and she was a little bit plumper than when I’d rescued her. But I knew this could happen; I knew it was an option. “What did they say?”

She sighed. “They’d left their dog with a house-sitter, so they don’t have many details. But they’re looking for a female Chihuahua mix, fawn.” Doris looked at Cupcake and nodded, as if confirming the description exactly. “They explained they’d let their chip registration lapse. Her name is Skittles.”

The fuck it was, I thought. “Skittles” was the name of a turtle or something. This dog wasn’t a Skittles. She was a Cupcake, no fucking doubt about it. My Cupcake. Rosie’s Cupcake. Our Cupcake.

But not for long. I blew out a long breath and closed my eyes. No crying, Max. No fucking crying. “All right,” I said, my voice all gravelly and hoarse.

“I’ll put you in the respite room,” Doris said quietly. “They said they’ll be here soon.

Doris led the way to a room at the end of the hallway that wasn’t an exam room, but a much friendlier, more welcoming room with a small sofa and calming photographs of gently babbling brooks and close-ups of flowers. I realized almost immediately this had to be where they put people to give them the really, really bad news. The room where the vet would say, Why don’t you sit down?

I did sit down, and Cupcake sat next to me on the plush, fancy, nicely upholstered bad-news couch. On the far side of the room was a framed poster that said, Heaven is full of animals.

God. Damn. I situated Cupcake in my lap, her paws to my upper thighs, her little tush near my knees. I felt like it was important to be brave for her so she wouldn’t be sad, too.

“It’s been awesome, cutie,” I said, with a lump in my throat the size of a fucking baseball. She cocked her head to one side. “So awesome.” She cocked her head again. “I’m sure they’ll take great care of you.”

Even if they don’t let you pick out your own cookies. Even if they won’t spoil you rotten every fucking minute. Even if they aren’t Rosie and me.

She flapped her paw out in the air and snagged my T-shirt with her toenail. I picked her up and bounced her at my shoulder, the same way Rosie had. Her hot stomach was warm against my chest and her paws even hotter. I pressed a kiss to the funny, warm, rough pad of her front foot and inhaled hard so I’d never forget. Some footsteps and voices approached from outside—a kid’s voice asking, “What if it isn’t her, Mommy?”

I could not handle this shit. I was a manly man, but this was the fucking limit. The room got blurry, the posters got hazy, and a tear tumbled down my cheek. Cupcake caught it with her tongue right as they opened the door. Doris couldn’t even look at me, and I noticed her nose was slightly red like she was about to burst into tears, too. “These are the Thompsons,” she said and let a family of three into the room. A little girl marched in first, every step making a tiny fart from her itty-bitty pink Crocs.

I couldn’t even look her, so I kept my eyes on Cupcake. I was going to be such a fucking goner after this. I’d go buy five gallons of mint chocolate chip, as much beer as I could find, and spend the next week wallowing in Fletcher’s basement watching Braveheart and sobbing 24/7. Fuck, fuck.

The little girl fart-stepped her way closer. She had thick glasses that made her eyes as big as a cartoon character’s. She wrinkled up her nose like she still couldn’t see quite right. She put one slightly dirty plump finger to her glasses frames and pushed them up her nose. This was it. I was a goner. This chubby kid was going to take my dog, and I was done with this horrible fucking world.

But then, very slowly, the little girl’s round and slightly sunburned face contorted itself into an agonized, cheek-pinching, eyebrow-rippling, nostril-dimpling sadness, and she shrieked at the top of her lungs, “That’s not Skittles, Mommy! That’s not Skittles!”

* * *

Skittles wasn’t lost either. She was a few towns away, at the pound in Scarborough, which meant that Cupcake was officially mine. Fuck. Yes. The family left the vet, with the bug-eyed girl fart-skipping and beaming. I didn’t even try to contain my smile as I filled out the adoption papers, and neither did Doris, who carried Cupcake around to meet everybody, from the vet techs to the resident cats. Weirdly, Cupcake had no problem with the cats at all.

“Say, Doris,” I said, scratching my cheek with the end of the pen. “About introducing dogs and cats. Got any tips?”

She considered Cupcake like she was measuring her for a dress or something. She gave her a nuzzle on the cheek. Cupcake closed her eyes and flattened her ears as she gave her a noisy smooch. “What’s the cat like?”

Dude, I didn’t want to be rude about it. Didn’t seem right, speaking ill of the…whatever she was. But I did want to know what to do if Rosie came back to me. When. Not if. Christ, not if. “Old. Scottish Fold, grumpy. Likes SPAM.”

Doris turned to me. “Julia?”

God bless life in a small town. “That’s her.”

Again, Doris considered Cupcake, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. “Have they

met?”

I filled in my phone number and started checking off the boxes. As the guardian of this animal, I promise to give her regular meals and fresh water every day. Check and check. “Yeah, it was a disaster. Julia ran up a tree, and I had to rescue her.”

“They met in the house?” Doris asked. “On Julia’s turf?”

I paused with the pen perched over the top of the next box, Do you promise to keep your animal current with vaccinations, heartworm preventative, Lyme vaccines, and routine bloodwork? “In the living room.”

Doris raised her shoulders, making the pandas on her scrubs dance up and down. “Probably best to try to get them to meet on neutral territory. Outside, maybe. That’s what I’d try.”

I signed my name and initialed a few lines and then reached across the counter. Cupcake squirmed in the air, kicking her legs and kissing the air as Doris handed her over. She put one paw on my shoulder and lowered her head as Doris gave her a pat.

“See you two for her next checkup,” Doris said, grinning, as she took the clipboard from the counter. Together, Cupcake and I headed out onto Main Street. I snapped a selfie of the two of us in front of a big plump wooden bear with a carved yellow bird on his head.

Guess who’s here to stay?

You good?

Knock ’em dead, gorgeous.

Love you more.

My whole body ached with the words, but still, I stayed strong. I wouldn’t back down now. And anyway, in the meantime, however long it might be, I had a tiny Chihuahua to spoil senseless, starting now. “How should we celebrate, little lady?” I asked Cupcake as I carried her along. On my right, we passed a new storefront. Pepe’s Pet Emporium. The place looked expensive and fancy. Not at all the sort of place I’d have ever thought about checking out, until now. In the window was a crazy cute rhinestone collar, pink and gold sparkles everywhere. Doesn’t your pet deserve a personalized collar made from Swarovski crystal? Inquire within! said the handwritten sign.

“I think we should inquire,” I told Cupcake as she gave me a nice wet lick up my nostril to say, Inquire! Inquire!

As I opened the door to Pepe’s, the reflection of a different storefront was projected back at me in the perfectly clear glass. Red, white, and blue letters. The idea was so fucking obvious, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to think of it. The perfect place to live. And something that we definitely needed to inquire about, too.