Page 63 of The Good Boy

“I got pregnant,” I tell him.

“Like with a baby?” Rory asks.

“Yeah, not like that time I had a whole loaf of toast,” I say.

“Where is the baby?” Rory says.

“That’s the hard part. Aiden freaked out and ran away back to his mum’s. He broke my heart, but also, he kind of didn’t. Like the second he left I knew he wasn’t the right one. I felt like such an idiot. But I knew that I’d get over him one day. What really mattered was my baby. If I was going to look after another human being then I had to start by looking after myself. So I left college—knowing I’d go back one day, and came home to here, and Mum and Dad.” I think of Miles, and how he missed his own mum. “I was lucky to have that safety net. Lucky they were the sort of people to always welcome me home. Even I knew I was way too young, but I wanted that baby, Rory. I wanted her so much.”

“What happened?” Rory asks, looking around. “Where is she?”

“I can’t...” I shake my head, feeling the threat of unacknowledged grief bubble and tighten in my chest. “I don’t talk about this for a reason. It hurts too much.”

“You don’t have to talk about it, Genie,” Rory says gently. “But has keeping quiet helped you feel better?”

I look into his mismatched eyes, and all I see there is worry and kindness. When Rory has been at my side words have always seemed possible. I told his gorgeous furry head almost all of my secrets when he was a dog. That doesn’t have to change. I take a deep breath and tell him about the loss I keep sheltered in my heart.

“My baby didn’t make it to term,” I tell him. “They said thatsometimes these things happen and there is no reason. They said, ‘Try not to blame yourself.’”

I hold my hands over my chest, cradling her memory there.

“I’d prepared myself for everything, I thought. How to be a teenage single mum. How to get back to college, with a baby. But not for that. Not to come home from the hospital without her. It knocked me sideways, and nothing seemed to matter anymore. And as for Aiden? He never acknowledged that she ever existed. He never asked me what happened. Mum and Dad did their best. Kelly, she never left my side, and Miles came back from uni for as long as he could. But I couldn’t get past the fact that the world would never know how much I loved my little girl, how much she mattered to me. Every decision I made was the wrong one. They said don’t blame yourself, but how could I not?

“I wanted time to stop, but it didn’t. Dave asked Kelly to marry him. Miles got his degree. Mum and Dad started talking about me getting back out there. After a while I started to work for Nanna Maria just to fill in the time. I always meant to go back to college, but it never felt like the right time. And eventually I realized I was... here. Other people lose babies, and they grieve, and they move on. They don’t ever forget the love they lost, but they do live again. But not me. I don’t know why but I just can’t stop thinking... thinking it was my fault. That I did something to hurt her.” There’s a long moment of silence, Miles’s lights casting colored shadows through the windows that gently sparkle on the white-painted walls. “Things aren’t how I imagined they would be, when I was Nana’s sunshine girl, but all in all I’m fine.”

“Genie.” Rory leans toward me, taking my hand in his. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you are not fine.”

Once I start crying, I can’t seem to stop.

Chapter Twenty-Four

To say Rory is a hit at the care home would be an understatement. When he had four paws he would light up the place with his sweetness and affection. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to equal that as a human, but I was wrong. All morning I have trailed around after him, watching as he sat down with Maura, George, and Violet, listened to their stories, and then made them laugh. Marveled at how easy it was for him to hug them and hold hands without one second of reservation. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, because that’s exactly what he did for me last night. He held my hand while I cried, and then a long time after that, he said, “You know, Genie, I think the hardest part of your quest is already over. I think the vision you had is a sign of that. You are opening like a flower. Or that treat-dispensing toy you bought me once that I had to bash eighty-seven times on the concrete to get the treats out of. Try and embrace it, Genie. I think it will be good for us!”

It’s good to hang out with an optimist. It’s like their hope kind of rubs off on you. Maybe the weird blue vision, as Rory calls it, was just a one-off. But maybe I am more like Nanna and my mum than I thought, and if I am, then that’s something wonderful.

You’d think by now that I’d have got used to how a dog is somuch better at being a human than humans ever are, but I am continuously amazed by how very bad we are at using everything we have, from bendy thumbs to capacious hearts and huge brains. We throw so much away on stuff that doesn’t matter. But not Rory. Rory knows what matters.

Miles had called for us first thing, with a very angry Matilda in a crate.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look like...”

“I’ve been crying.” I nod. “Yeah, I’ve been crying.”

“What can I do?” Miles asked.

“Oh, just what you always do,” I told him with a smile.

“Why are you bringing the murder cat?” Rory had asked him, nervously edging away.

“Because I thought that as we weren’t taking in a dog, per se, then we could take in a cat.”

“You realize a lot of the residents are quite frail, don’t you?” I asked him. “I’m not sure they could survive a mauling.”

Miles gave me a look; I repressed a smile.

“Poor Matilda is very misunderstood when it comes to you two,” he chided me. “She’s an old lady too, don’t forget, and she can be very sweet and affectionate as you know, Genie.”

“We don’t talk about that,” I said, nodding at Rory.

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