The Dog That Whispered Read Online Free Page B

she had not shed during the last brief burst of sickness that took her mother.
    I needed to be strong for her.
    She placed the picture back on the table.
    Since there was no one else to do it for her.
    There had been no one to help with any of this. Not really. Yesterday she’d watched as a pair of not-too-interested workers manhandled the stone above her mother’s grave in the Skyline Memorial Gardens, overlooking Portland, although from that spot Hazel could only see a line of trees to the north, which in the summer blocked the views of the city and river.
    Some plots offer better views . Hazel found that notion endearingly odd.
    The setting of the stone took less than ten minutes. Both men had nodded, with practiced solemnity, as they gathered their tools—shovels, pry bars, levels, and the like—and motored off in the cemetery’s golf cart. The sedate puttering as they rounded the curve and disappeared from sight was oddly suited to the sedate location.
    I imagine cemeteries are pretty quiet places most of the time. How often do people visit gravesites? Or play raucous music?
    She remembered looking down at the small granite rectangle containing her mother’s name, her date of birth, and date of death.
    Hazel had the monument company add a single Bible verse to the stone. “Make it as small as you can,” she had said. “My mother would kill me if she knew what I was doing, but since I’m paying for it, not much she can do at the moment.”
    The monument company representative must have encountered such requests with regularity, because it had been met with not even the slightest hint of a raised eyebrow.
    “What’s the verse?” he had asked, pen poised in midair.
    “Jeremiah 29:11.”
    “That’s on a number of markers.”
    Hazel had felt obligated to repeat it. “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ That’s sort of been my life verse, you know.”
    The agent had nodded, offered a comforting smile, then added, “We’ll use an actual Bible for the quote—and we ask which version you prefer. We always do. In the past, you wouldn’t believe how many people get a word or two wrong, then want us to make changes after the stone is cut.”
    The representative, whose name Hazel knew but quickly forgot, had leaned closer and said softly, “It’s not like a computer. We can’t autocorrect engraving on granite.”
    “No, I am sure you can’t. And thank you for being thorough.”
    And now she sat picturing the engraved words.
    They had all been there.
    She looked out the window of her mother’s room to the sky, the sun breaking through a dense cloud cover, shafts of light dancing along the quiet and overgrown lawn.
    Now I am alone, Mother. All alone.
    Just like you always wanted to be, isn’t it?

Chapter Five
    W ILSON PACED around the house that afternoon, holding Thurman’s blanket. Thurman obviously considered following him, but he must have been cognizant of Wilson’s anxiety issues. Instead, he sat on the braided rug in the kitchen, enjoying the afternoon sun on his back. There were not many windows in Gretna’s apartment, and none of them seemed to let in a lot of natural sunlight. There were no windows in the shelter and Thurman did not know how long he had been there, out of the sun.
    So he sat, his eyes half-closed, his breathing regular, enjoying the warmth and apparently enjoying the quiet environment of Wilson’s home.
    At Gretna’s, well, there was always the sound of televisions or doors slamming or someone calling out to someone or a phone ringing with no one hearing well enough to acknowledge it and answer.
    In the shelter, there was constant barking and the metallic tang of bars being shut and locked, that clattering sound of dog nails on hard concrete.
    But here, in this smallish house, in the afternoon sun, there was quiet.
    And Thurman liked that quiet.
    Wilson, on the