Page 55 of Tides That Bind

Because nothing could trump the agony that comes when you break your child’s heart by telling them of a final goodbye they never got to hear.

I’ve only been gonefor an hour, so I’m not sure what happened between me pulling out of our driveway and returning to it, but I don’t pull in. I can’t. I lean forward to make sure I’m getting things right. For a second, I think my eyes are playing tricks on me. I couldn’t possibly be seeing Harper running down the street, her blonde head bobbing up and down as she waves her arm.

“Would you stop!” she screams.

But I trust my ears. I drive forward, honking, which makes Harper move onto the sidewalk.

“Hey. Hey! Harper!”

Ignoring me, she continues to run until she trips in the dip of a sidewalk.

“Damn it.” I pull over and get out of my car, jogging to her. “What the hell are you doing?”

Harper rolls onto her back, half of her body on someone’s lawn and the other on the sidewalk. My eyes move from her red, scratched up feet to her black leggings torn at the knee, showing nothing more than a scrape. Her heavy breathing is the only sound she makes untilthe sobs come.

The power of her cry forces me back at first, and I know, well beyond a reasonable doubt, it has nothing to do with the fall.

This kind of crying happens on the worst day of your life.

And, fuck me, I thought we all passed that already. But then I panic.

“Where’s Lucas?”

Shaking her head, Harper doesn’t look up. “Tides,” she weeps into her skin.

“Harper!” I grab her wrists, shaking them to free her face, flushed and flooded with tears. Quick pants escape her mouth, but I seem to have her attention. “Tell me what’s going on. Where’s Lucas?”

“Lucas is at school,” Harper clarifies, and then her face crumbles, snot bubbling out of one side of her nose, tears raining down her cheeks. “He can’t come home from school and—”

With her eyes wild, she frees herself from my grip and stands, about to flee again, but not before I wrap an arm around her waist.

“Harper!” The way she flinches when I raise my voice makes my stomach twist. I loosen my hold and turn her slowly back to me, trying to harness my patience. “Harper, if Lucas is at school and Tides is at home—”

“Tides isn’t at home! They took him, Riley.”

Only a true idiot would steal a police dog that’s microchipped to the brim. One call and the entire police force would be on the move. I go to grab my phone from my car. “What do you mean? Let’s call the police—"

“Thepolicetook him.”

My neck will hurt later from the whiplash of flinging my head back so intensely. “What? What do you mean the policetookhim?”

Harper wipes her face with the back of her hand before she bends down, retrieving a crumbled, unopened envelope I hadn’t noticed. She hands it to me. “Silas came. He took him back.”

“They can’t do that.” At least, I don’t think they can.

“They did.”

I rip it open, letting the envelope fall to the ground. I’m so jacked up on adrenaline I have to close my eyes for a second, resetting my canvas before I read as carefully as I can. But that’s not easy with Harper’s crying stealing my attention.

“I…I missed this one when Caroline helped me with all the paperwork. And Silas has been calling but…I didn’t want to talk to him.” Harper hangs her head. “This is my fault. Lucas can’t come home and just find Tides gone. He can’t.”

“I thought you were gone forever like my Dad. I don’t like thinking about everyone leaving me forever.”

Under normal circumstances, it might seem like Harper is overreacting. But we aren’t talking about a normal dog. We’re talking about Tides.

We’re talking about Nate’s dog, who would take a bullet for him in a heartbeat. I know the only person—or thing—that could’ve got Nate out of that car would’ve been Tides. I imagine he would’ve chewed through the metal door that sandwiched Nate’s broken leg. He would’ve pulled him to the surface. Tides would’ve saved Nate’s life even if it meant losing his own—exactly what he almost did for Lucas and Harper. In some ways, thatdogdid what I should’ve been doing from the jump.

“You’ve gotta take care of my family.”

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