CHAPTER 19 What the Dog Knew

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Admiral was gone by morning.

It was Anselm who noticed. The younger twin came down the great stair at seven in his socks, white-faced, and announced to the sleeping drawing room that the dog's bed was empty, the garden door was ajar, and there was a long trail of paw prints leading out across the snow and into the trees.

Julian was on his feet before the sentence was finished.

“He wouldn't,” he said. “He's sixteen. He doesn't leave the hearth.” He was already pulling on his coat, boots half laced, one glove in his hand. “The pond. He goes to the pond when he's unhappy. My father used to walk him there.”

“Julian, there's three feet of fresh snow,” said Rafe. “And the wind…”

“I know what the wind is.”

“I'll come.”

“Stay with Odalys.” He did not look back. The garden door banged behind him, and a gust of white blew in across the flagstones.

Elodie did not decide to follow. Her body decided for her. She was in her coat and boots in the time it took Mrs. Pruitt to say, “Miss, you can't,” and then she was out in a world made of cold, a blinding, ringing, silver cold that knifed through her sweater. Ahead, two sets of tracks ran down toward the birches: the ragged, stumbling prints of a very old dog, and beside them the long careful strides of a man who knew exactly how far he could trust the ground.

She followed them to the pond. The ice lay black and glassy beneath a drift of white, and halfway across, small and gray against the snow, a shape lay curled and unmoving.

“Julian!” she cried.

He was already out on the ice, on his knees, one arm around the dog's great shaggy neck. He looked up at her cry, and his face, in the hard, pale morning light, was a face she had never seen. He was not careful. He was not cold. He was twenty-five years old and on the phone in a conference room in Geneva, and the world had stopped.

“He won't get up,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I can't get him to get up.”

“Don't move,” she called. “Stay where you are. Spread your weight.”

She got down on her stomach and crawled. She had no idea if the ice would hold. She only knew she would rather be on the ice with him than on the shore without. When she reached them, her hands were numb, the dog's breathing was a slow, rattling thing, and Julian's face was wet.

“He's cold,” she said. “He's just cold. Help me. We have to get him up.”

Together, with no plan, they got their arms under the great gray body and lifted. Admiral did not struggle. He gave a small, weary sigh and let his head fall against Julian's shoulder, and Julian made a raw, broken sound, like something tearing.

“Come on, old man,” he whispered. “Come on. Please. Not you too.”

They carried him to the boathouse, a small gray shed at the pond's edge, half buried in drift, with a stove and a pile of dry logs and a moth-eaten horse blanket. Julian lit the stove with fingers that shook so badly he dropped three matches. Elodie rubbed the dog's ribs and the cold, stiff paws, murmuring nonsense. Slowly the great chest began to rise and fall with more strength. A tail, very faintly, thumped once against the floorboards.

Julian sat down hard on the boards and put his face in his hands.

She did not say anything. She sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, with the dog's head between them, and the stove ticked and crackled and the light through the tiny window turned from gray to gold.

“My father gave him to me,” said Julian at last, into his palms. “The week before the ship sailed. A puppy. He said, ‘Every man should have something to come home to.’ And I thought it was an odd thing to say. I think he knew.”

“He didn't know.”

“Maybe not.” He lifted his head. His eyes were red. “I wasn't home when it happened. I wasn't home for the funeral, not really. I was in a conference room, and then an office, and then a plane. This old dog is the only one who stayed. Every time I came back to Hollin, he was waiting at the door. As if nine years was nothing.” His voice cracked. “I didn't deserve him, either.”

“Julian.”

“You were right to be angry,” he said. “About the memo. I knew I was lying and I hated myself, and the hating made me hide. That's the pattern. I'm so afraid of being the man who lies that I become him.”

She was quiet a long moment.

“I have a confession,” she said.

His brow furrowed.

“The night of the gala. After I got home.” She picked at a thread on her glove. “I read your Wikipedia page. Then the financial papers. Then your parents' obituary, which I should not have read. I found a photograph of you at twenty-three at a regatta, laughing. I looked at it for twenty minutes.” She swallowed. “I had a file on you, too. I just kept it in my head.”

He stared at her.

“I told myself it was due diligence,” she said. “It wasn't. The way you said ‘I haven't asked anyone else' had gotten under my skin, and I wanted to know why. Then I texted a lawyer at ten o'clock at night, and I still don't know if it was the most courageous or the most idiotic thing I have ever done.”

“You're comparing…”

“I'm not comparing. I'm not excusing what you did, either.” Her voice was steady, though her eyes were bright. “I'm telling you that I'm not the only honest person in this arrangement, and that's all right. We're both a little ridiculous. I would like to stop pretending that one of us is the villain.”

The stove ticked. The dog sighed, and shifted, and licked Julian's wrist.

“I don't forgive you yet,” said Elodie. “I want to be clear. It's going to take time. I think I'll be angry for a while, and sometimes I'll go quiet, and you're not allowed to take that as a sign that it's over.”

“I won't.”

“But when I came out here, across the ice, I wasn't thinking about the memo.” Her voice dropped. “I was thinking that I couldn't bear it if I lost you. Which is a very strange thing to feel about a man I am furious with.”

He didn't move. He barely breathed.

“That's all,” she said. “That's the whole speech.”

“It's the best one I've ever heard.” His voice shook. “Elodie, can I… may I…”

“You may hold my hand,” she said. “That's all. Just that. For now.”

He took it. He held it in both of his, the way he had on the first day in the car, with a palm that trembled and was warm. They sat there, the two of them, with a very old dog asleep between them and the winter sun climbing through the dusty window, and neither said a word.

That was how Rafe and the groundskeeper found them an hour later, when they came pounding down the path with a toboggan and a flask of brandy. The dog was asleep. The man and the woman were asleep, too, against each other, propped against the wall, her head on his shoulder, his cheek in her hair.

Rafe stood in the doorway, looking. Then, very quietly, he took off his hat and held it against his chest, and told the groundskeeper to wait outside.