My heart broke when I saw the pile of dog bones on the porch still intact. I walked through the garden calling his name, but there was no answering bark. I walked up to the road, stood at the middle of the pavement helplessly calling out for him, but got nothing in return. For a moment I thought I heard something, but the barking came from Harry’s place. His kennel dogs.

I went back to the house and sat on the low step, next to the dog bones. There was something about the quiet around me; something about the absence of an excited black-and-white dog, that tore me up. Maybe there were things more important to dogs than love and food. If he’d gone off to find those things, I wished him well, but something wouldn’t let me admit I’d let him down in any way. All that happiness and enthusiasm at the sight of me couldn’t have been a lie.

“Damn it,” I swore under my breath as I got up.

___

“I’ll come right out,” Dolly said when I called. She had offered to help me search, but still I’d been ready for a refusal. She could have had a busted mailbox to investigate. Or a speed trap to plan. I was ready to remind her I was going with her to buy a casket in the morning and this wasn’t too much to ask, but I didn’t need any of the weapons I’d come up with. Dolly was there, tearing down the drive, in twenty minutes. In that twenty minutes I got a flyer together, complete with a picture I’d taken of him recently, and ran off twenty. While we were out looking, I’d stick them up on telephone polls and hand them out to anyone we met.

___

“Well, now.” Harry scratched at his chin and stood in thought outside his little crooked house. “I’d give ’im a day or so. Spring, ya know.”

“He’s been gone two days. And he was fixed right after I got him.”

“Just ’cause he can’t do the deed don’t mean he’s forgot what it’s all about.”

He thought some more and moved his jaw back and forth. “Never saw him over here. Ya know, some dogs would be curious—I mean, all the barking. But not Sorrow. Didn’t come this way once. Good thing. I’d hate to think of him crossing Willow Lake Road by hisself.”

Me either. I didn’t like thinking of him out on a road, or caught by a coyote or a bear. I didn’t like thinking of some hunter grabbing him to use next hunting season. None of those things. I wanted Sorrow out in the woods with his nose to the ground, maybe slightly lost.

“We’d better get in the car and drive around,” Dolly said, not looking at Harry. He wouldn’t look at her either. They ignored each other and spoke only to me. Maybe a fresh ticket for his hybrid car was on both their minds, but I didn’t care right then. They were my friends, and I needed help.

“Think it’s better to comb the woods than be driving around,” Harry said, grunting the words.

“Nope,” Dolly said, still without looking at him. “Car’s best. We’ll drive wherever we can and call his name. We’ll hand out flyers to anybody we see.”

“Better to look in the woods first,” Harry said again, digging his heels into the dirt. “That’s what the dog knows.”

“Why don’t we start off in the car?” I said, hoping Harry wouldn’t get mad. “I’ve been out in the woods, as far as I could walk. If I could get these flyers out …”

Harry made a face at me but shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you say. You don’t need me along in that car. Tell you what I’ll do. Me and my dogs will get out in the woods and see if we come up with him. Coulda gotten hurt somehow. Dogs’ll find ’im.”

Since it was the smartest idea I’d heard, and it was best to keep these two separated, that’s what we did. Harry was off before we walked all the way back to Willow Lake Road. Dolly and I jumped in the Jeep and started driving down Willow Lake Road, then up every two-track we came to. Everywhere we went, we called, “Sorrow! Sorrow!” and stopped to nail flyers to telephone poles. At any minute I expected to see that shaggy black-and-white body come leaping happily out of the woods.

We stopped cars and asked if the drivers had seen him and left them with flyers. Everybody we talked to assured us they’d be on the lookout and would certainly call if they found him. One man, in an old blue pickup, said his bitch just had a litter and I was welcome to however many I wanted, if I needed a dog.

For two hours we roamed the woods roads. No dog.

“Why don’t we go into town and put up a flyer at the IGA, the gas station, maybe at EATS, even over to The Skunk. Wouldn’t hurt to get people looking across the area,” Dolly said.

Since I couldn’t come up with a better idea, we headed to town in our separate vehicles.

Dolly took care of the gas station and the bar. I took the IGA and, to cover everything, Gertie’s Shoppe de Beaute and the barber shop. Everyone was concerned. They said they would keep an eye out for the dog and assured me he would come back. They told me not to worry. “Hard to lose a dog from a good home,” Bob, the barber, said.

We met at the restaurant. Dolly had a poster in her hands and the hammer she’d taken from the back of her patrol car. In the dim vestibule, there hung a new flyer with a gold star. I almost groaned. I was tired of that little game. From then on I was going to ignore Eugenia’s family. All those outlaws might interest her, but I was bored with the whole drawn-out joke.

I pointed to a place next to the cigarette machine for Dolly to hang the poster. Lots of folks came in for cigarettes. They’d see Sorrow and maybe someone, from somewhere, would recognize him and would call me.

Dolly took a small nail from her shirt pocket and hammered the flyer up on the wall.

I was ready to go on in and grab dinner. Since it was Friday night, it could be anything. Some big sweet surprise. I’d been having dreams of pot roast with tiny carrots and gravy. There are times, though, when you get particularly hungry and almost anything sounds good. Except meatloaf.

I opened the door to enter the restaurant but Dolly didn’t follow. When I turned back to see what was keeping her, she was standing in front of Eugenia’s new relative, looking up, frowning and reading fast.

“See this?” She poked a finger toward the paper. “See what Eugenia’s gone and done?”

I stepped back beside her and read the paper. “Dolly Wakowski’s Birth Certificate” it read.

Uh-oh, I thought, smelling a big pile of trouble ahead.

Dolly yanked the paper down off the wall. “What in hell does she think she’s doing? I’m supposed to fall for …” She read slowly, her finger tracing the lines.

“October 3, 1974,” she read aloud to me. “She’s got that part right. I probably told her.”

She chewed at her bottom lip and frowned as she moved on, carefully going over every filled-in place on the certificate. “Says my mother’s name was Audrey Thomas. The Thomas name sounds familiar.” She read on. “She was seventeen.” She looked up at me.

“You think this could be real?” Her face was awash with different emotions.

I shrugged. “Why would she put it up there if it weren’t? Eugenia’s not a cruel woman.”

“My dad’s name was Harold Flynn. For goodness’ sakes. I’ve always liked that name: Harold. He was thirty-one. Uh-oh. Maybe I’m getting an idea of why she abandoned me. Harold was a lot older than she was.

“Look here. Down here. These are my baby footprints. See?”

“Where were you born?”

“Detroit. Just the way I always thought. Woman’s Hospital, it says here. One thing it doesn’t say was if they was married or not. They gave me his name. Hers is different. Still …”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Dolly. Kids come into the world all different ways. Turns out the same.”

“Yeah, well, unless they aren’t really wanted. Then it’s always different for those kids.”

All I could do was nod.

Dolly read the paper over and over, looking up to share each new detail with me. There weren’t many, mostly printed words of the stock birth certificate, but this was the first time she’d seen her own. I couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten into school without a birth certificate, how she’d registered to vote—so many things I imagined a birth certificate was necessary to obtain. Maybe it worked differently with an abandoned kid. Maybe abandoned kids were given a pass in our society.

“Can we go in?” I finally asked.

She nodded. “I want to know that this is bona fide and not something Eugenia came up with on her own.”

Inside the restaurant, Eugenia waited behind her counter. I think the whole restaurant was waiting. A suspicious hush fell as we walked in.

“Where’d you get this?” Dolly demanded, waving the certificate over her head as she advanced on Eugenia.

Eugenia looked at the paper Dolly held, then at the hammer in her other hand. “You just be careful here now, Dolly. I did some careful work with my genealogy websites. Don’t you go attacking me.”

“Is this really my birth certificate?” Dolly demanded.

“Date’s right, isn’t it?” Eugenia demanded back.

Dolly looked it over again to make sure. She nodded.

“Place right?”

Dolly nodded.

“Then the rest is right, too.”

“That’s who my mother and father were?”

“Got to be. It’s all there. Not hard to find.”

“Got anything else?”

Eugenia shook her head. “Not yet. I’m looking.”

“Do you know if they’re alive?”

Eugenia shook her head. “That’s all, so far.”

Dolly glanced around at the eyes pinned on the three of us. “Couldn’t you just give me the stuff? Why do you have to hang it up like that. Seems, if you want to do me a favor you could …”

Eugenia shrugged and pushed her big blond hair back over her shoulder. “I might want to go into the business of looking up folks. You’re good advertising, Dolly. Yours is all for free.”

Dolly scowled. “Next time give me a call. I’ll get in here fast and get it down off that wall.”

“That’s not nice. I’m doing you a service. The least you can do is go along …”

Dolly waved a dismissive hand, folded the paper, and forced it into one of her pants pockets. She walked away with me behind her.

“And you put that back up there when you leave, you hear?” Eugenia called after us, not giving an inch.

Everybody in the restaurant listened to this burgeoning battle of the Titans. Flora Coy leaned over to whisper to Anna Scovil. Sullivan Murphy half rose as if he might have to pull these two apart. Gertie folded her arms across her chest, and watched with her faded blue eyes narrowed and her mouth tight and wrinkly. I could tell people were choosing up sides and there would be weeks of debate ahead.

Dolly stopped in front of our usual booth and turned to face her rapt audience. Raising her voice, she called, “Funeral for Chet is on Monday. Eleven o’clock at Sullivan’s. You can ask Sullivan, there, if you want details. You’re all invited. Lunch’ll be back here after the burial. Pass the word along.”

Eugenia, at the front, pasted on a smile, and spouted. “Going to have a full buffet with salads and roast beef, and fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, and little tarts for dessert. Don’t miss it.”

She turned back to Dolly and yelled across the space between them, “I would think, Miss Dolly Flynn Wakowski, you’d show a little gratitude for all my work. At least you know you got somebody. Or at least you had somebody. That’s something.”

“I already got somebody,” Dolly called back without lifting her head from the menu. “I’m burying him on Monday.”

Low conversation started up. Leetsvillians gave each other sheepish smiles and shrugs. A few rolled their eyes at me when I glanced around the room. Some smiled and nodded. The rest just went on eating … meatloaf.