What Happens When a Navy SEAL Comes Home After a Year and Meets the Puppy He Never Knew Existed?

Chapter 2

Eleanor Hart had been watching Kira keep the same appointment every evening for eleven months, and she still did not fully understand how a creature without a calendar could measure time so precisely.

At 5:47 each afternoon, the German Shepherd would rise from wherever she had been resting, walk to the basket beside the stairs, and lift James’s worn navy training glove between her teeth. She would carry it to the front door, place it between her front paws, and sit facing the threshold.

Some days she stayed for ten minutes. Others, she stayed until dark.

During the first month after James left, Kira had searched the entire house each evening. She checked the basement, pushed open the mudroom door, circled the shed, sniffed beside the faded blue truck that remained parked in the driveway, and once stood behind the bedroom curtains as though he might be hiding there.

After thirty-two days, she stopped searching.