I looked down at Bo.
His ribs were visible beneath the dusty fur.
His paws were cracked.
The fabric around his muzzle had rubbed a raw patch into his skin.
“Then why was he left here?” I asked.
The question landed harder than I expected.
The man blinked.
Just once.
Then looked away.
“I stopped for gas,” he said. “He must’ve gotten out.”
Janine laughed bitterly through the phone.
The sound was so sudden it startled me.
“That’s a lie.”
The man heard her voice.
His eyes narrowed instantly.
“Janine?”
“Tell him what you told me,” she snapped. “Tell him what you said after Walter died.”
His expression darkened.
The confidence was gone now.
Replaced by something defensive.
Something cornered.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I know exactly what I’m talking about,” Janine said.
Then her voice cracked.
“Walter spent three years fighting cancer. Three years. And through every surgery, every treatment, every hospital stay, that dog never left his side.”
I looked again at the photograph from the wallet.
The hospital bed.
The oxygen tube.
Bo pressed against Walter’s chest.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
Janine continued.
“The day before Walter died, he made me promise something.”
Nobody spoke.
Even the man stayed silent.
“He said, ‘If Bo survives me, make sure he knows he wasn’t abandoned.’”
A lump formed in my throat.
Because suddenly everything made sense.
The highway.
The waiting.
The wallet.
The way Bo kept watching every passing vehicle.
Someone had not only left him there.
Someone had left him with the one thing that still smelled like Walter.
The one thing that could keep him waiting.
The man took a step backward.
Then another.
“Look,” he muttered. “I don’t have time for this.”
That sentence told me everything.
Not grief.
Not guilt.
Inconvenience.
As if Bo had become one more problem left behind by death.
Then Janine said something that stopped him cold.
“The lawyer found Walter’s final letter this morning.”
The man froze.
For the first time, genuine fear crossed his face.
“What letter?”
Neither of us missed the reaction.
Janine’s voice turned ice cold.
“The one he wrote after you tried to convince him to put Bo down.”
The color drained from the man’s face.
Traffic thundered past.
Bo never took his eyes off him.
Not with affection.
Not with recognition.
