He parked behind a low building with no signage. I killed my engine half a block back, sat in the dark, and tried to slow my breathing.
I got out of my car slowly and moved toward the fence. Peter had opened his trunk and was pulling out large bags of something and a stack of neatly folded blankets.
I watched him carry them to a side gate, where a woman in a fleece vest was already waiting as if she'd been expecting him.
A woman in a fleece vest was already waiting.
I crept close enough to see through the chain link, and nothing I'd imagined on that long, cold drive over could've prepared me for what I was looking at.
It was a dog shelter—small, overcrowded, barely held together by donations and willpower. Metal kennels lined the walls, and dogs pressed against the doors, tails thumping.
Peter crouched beside a wire pen in the far corner.
Inside it, a litter of puppies, four or five of them, tumbled over each other. He fed them through the fence one at a time, his voice low and unhurried, like he'd done this dozens of times before.
Peter crouched beside a wire pen in the far corner.
The woman beside him spoke, glancing toward the kennels. "We would've had to transfer this litter out next week if no one stepped up. We're already stretched thin."
And there was my husband, the man I'd been suspecting of the absolute worst, on his knees in the cold, tucking a blanket around the smallest puppy like it was the only thing that mattered.
"Peter??" I said, startling him.
He spun around. Mouth open, not a word ready.
