Page 53 of Shattered Chords

“I don’t know yet.” It was the honest truth. I’d never had anything to take care of. Fuck, I could barely take care of myself. Mainly, I just wanted to see where the thousand bucks I secretly donated on Sunday went.

“Well,” the girl said, infusing even more cheer into her voice. “The best way to find out is to meet them.”

Ten minutes later, I was walking past the throng of cages cramming the back of the building.

The woman who accompanied me was older, perhaps in her fifties, with a mop of graying hair gathered into a ponytail. She wore dark brown work pants and a matching shirt. A massive keychain that jingled every time she moved hung on her belt.

Behind the bars were dogs of all sizes, colors, and breeds. They stared at me with their restless and hungry eyes as if I wasn’t welcome here because I wasn’t one of them.

“Have you ever had a pet before?” the woman, whose name tag readSherri, asked.

I wasn’t sure what exactly prompted her to ask that particular question. Perhaps she could tell I wasn’t the type to be responsible for another living creature. Or perhaps she asked that of everyone who came here.

I paused in front of one of the cages and studied a small Pomeranian pacing the length of its hopefully temporary home. Its fur was too short and too thin. “No. I’ve never had a pet before,” I said, locking my hands behind my back. “Never had the time.”

“I see.” The woman nodded. “Well, it may make sense to start with a low-maintenance breed then,” she suggested with a smile.

“Time isn’t an issue anymore.” I smiled back.

I had all the time in the world now. And I had a five-bedroom monstrosity that had started to feel awfully empty these past few days.

We moved on and she motioned at the cage with a French bulldog, who bared his teeth and growled. Whoever said dogs were our friends hadn’t seen this fella.

I continued my stroll until we reached the last cage that at first appeared to be empty. I was about to turn around and head back to the reception area to write another check and go home when a small ball of white popped out from under the blanket in the far-left corner.

I waited.

Sherri stood by my side, still and patient.

The pup lowered his head toward the floor and matched my stare. He was tiny and all white except for a few brown spots that dotted his body. His eyes were too big and too sad for his face.

“Hey, buddy.” I stepped toward the bars.

The pup tilted his head, studying me.

“This little guy is ten weeks old,” Sherri said. “Just a warning, Beagles are typically very energetic.”

“Oh, I have a very big back yard.” I didn’t know why I shared that tidbit. I wasn’t sure how fit I was to handle anything, but the pup continued to stare at me as if he were trying to hypnotize me into freeing him from this cage. Finally, he dragged the rest of his body from underneath the folds of the blanket and started an awkward crawl in the direction of the bars.

“What’s wrong with him?” I glanced at Sherri over my shoulder.

“One of his rear legs is underdeveloped.”

“What happened?”

“He was born like that. He was the runt of the litter, and sometimes, those puppies have problems. The owner brought him to us a few weeks ago, right after he was weaned.”

I looked back at the pup, who’d limped all the way to the front of the cage and was now poking his nose at me through the opening between the bars.

I sunk into a crouch and offered him my hand. He sniffed it carefully, then barked. It was a tinny sound, a child’s cry that reminded me of my own early years, the years before my mother started hating me.

Something made my gut tighten. It was a hard feeling, nothing I’d experienced before. It flowed through me, hot and solid and positively destructive.

“Does he have a name?” I asked Sherri and reached for the pup’s head to rub between his ears. Surprisingly, he let me.

“No. When they come to us without a name, we prefer to let the new family name them. We’re just calling him Puppy until he finds a permanent home.”

“Can you take him out of the cage?”

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