that her food bowl has not been touched and her favorite chew toy—the longhorn with the two missing horns—is on the other side of the room. This is strange behavior for his otherwise enthusiastic and friendly dog, but Max assumes she is pouting because he is home late. Well, sue him. He watches out for his dad and his brother on top of a full-time teaching job and two massive research projects, and sometimes, a person develops an itch that needs to be scratched.
One
Austin, Texas
What a peculiar phenomenon it is to see something that the brain cannot comprehend. Not something that simply doesn’t make sense in the moment—like that time you saw your mother tiptoeing out of the neighbor’s house in the early morning hours half-dressed and giggling. Or that time your boss handed you a pink slip after you’d helped him reorganize the staff, and you smiled with delight because you didn’t get that you had efficiently organized yourself right out of a good job.
No, this was different. This was like a weird ministroke, but without a headache or heart palpitation. Carly felt perfectly fine. And yet she could not comprehend how the dog stretched out on her couch could look exactly like her dog and not be her dog.
It was a basset hound, just like her dog, with a black and brown coat with patches of white, long floppy ears, and ginormous paws and eyes that could look happy and sad at the same time.
“You’re not my dog,” she informed the imposter. “Where is Baxter?”
The dog had no answer for her other than a tail that thumped a happy beat against the pillows it had destroyed.
Actually, technically, Baxter was not her dog. He was her sister’s dog. Except that technically Baxter was not Mia’s dog, either. He was a dog her mother had tried to give one of Mia’s kids for his birthday, but of course things had gotten out of hand, because they always did where her mother was concerned. It was a long, complicated story, and, frankly, when you got right down to it, Carly’s entire family was complicated, and their lives were muddied together, and anyway, that’s how she and Baxter the Dog had ended up in each other’s company.
Carly had not wanted the responsibility of a dog. Carly was very busy. Carly was going to move to New York City as soon as she found a job there. A dog required attention and care and food, all of which Carly did not have. Nevertheless, she and Baxter had been going along with this arrangement since a tearful Mia had pushed the listless dog like a big sack of flour across her kitchen’s tile floor to Carly’s feet. That was Carly’s first glimpse into life with a basset hound: they were disinclined to cooperate.
But Carly had pitied the poor creature and had taken him just to spare him the chaos that was erupting around him in Mia’s house. And Baxter did seem to appreciate the rescue. Carly had never had a dog before, so in addition to a dog bed and water bowl, she bought a manual, something like, The Care and Feeding of Your New Best Friend. She read it cover to cover, and was happy to report to no one that in their monthlong acquaintance, Baxter had never once gotten on her beautiful cream West Elm couch. He liked to keep to his corner of her kitchen, near the back door. He liked to press his head to the wall, as if he thought if he couldn’t see anyone, no one could see him. Carly didn’t have the heart to tell him she could still plainly see him.
He seemed to be okay with her tiny backyard. He liked to sleep a lot, too, and he liked to chew on giant bones. Occasionally, he’d go outside and bark at something only he could see, but then he’d trot back in, mission accomplished. Sometimes, when Carly was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the coffee table, listening to Megan Monroe, the host of her favorite podcast, Big Girl Panties, give tips for how to navigate life when it was pummeling you with lemons, Baxter would come and sit next to her, his butt pressed against her leg, facing away. Carly would absently caress his back while Megan convinced her that she could have it all. Megan said she could have the perfect boyfriend (she would need a boy for that), the perfect home (if