THE DOG THAT CAME BACK

“Mr. DeLuca, I saw your dead wife yesterday.”

Lorenzo DeLuca’s whiskey glass stopped halfway to his mouth.

Across his study stood Emma Walker, three years old, wearing a yellow cardigan and holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear. She was not supposed to be in this room. Most adults were afraid to enter it without an invitation.

“My wife died two months ago,” Lorenzo said.

“I know.” Emma pointed toward the window. “But I saw her by the old train station.”

Lorenzo set down the glass. Isabella’s car had gone through a guardrail in the rain. The vehicle burned. He had buried her beneath a white marble stone while two hundred people watched him struggle to remain standing.

“You saw a woman who looked like her.”

“She had shorter hair. And she was skinny.”

Emma’s mother, Sophia, cleaned this house. Emma had seen Isabella’s pictures on every floor. A child could mistake a stranger for someone in a photograph.

Then Emma said, “Bruno was with her.”

Lorenzo’s fingers dug into the edge of the desk.

Bruno, Isabella’s black dog, had disappeared the morning of the crash. Searchers had found no trace of him.

“What did the dog look like?” Lorenzo asked.

“Big. Black. His ribs showed.” Emma thought for a moment. “He had his old collar.”

“Lots of dogs have collars.”

“The metal part was bent.” She curled her index finger into a hook. “Like this.”

Lorenzo forgot to breathe.

Six years earlier, Bruno had snagged his leash ring on a fence. Lorenzo had bought a new collar that afternoon. Isabella had put the old one back on the dog.

“He earned that scar,” she had said.

Lorenzo walked around the desk and crouched in front of Emma.

“Where did you see them?”

“Behind the broken fence. Mama and me were walking to Aunt Jenny’s.”

“Did the woman see you?”

Emma nodded. “She called Bruno back. Then she ran.”

The study door opened. Sophia stepped in with a laundry basket and stopped cold.

“Emma. Come with me.”

Lorenzo looked up at her. “You saw the woman too.”

Sophia’s face lost its color.