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.”
