“And I’m not here now,” Camille said. “I’m here about the dog.”

“What dog?”

Camille sighed. If Violet had to ask, then she obviously didn’t know. “Do you have any dog food around? Or anything I could use for dog food? And do you have last night’s paper?”

Asking Violet was a mistake. Once she knew the details she immediately wanted to drop everything and come help. Thankfully, a customer showed up and occupied her sister, which left Camille free to raid the farmhouse kitchen. Vi had enough cat food to feed a zoo of felines. And three days worth of newspapers, none of which listed any reference to a lost dog.

She stomped out of Violet’s house, more aggravated than ever, carting a grocery bag full of dry cat food and a mixing bowl. How on earth had this come to be her problem? She couldn’t care less about a dog she didn’t know from stone and wasn’t conceivably her responsibility.

Getting the bowl of food close to the shepherd was an uphill struggle, since it seemed to want to kill her even more than it wanted to eat. She ended up storming back up to Vi’s kitchen, slamming doors around, heating up some dadblamed hamburger and driveling it into and over the cat food, then storming it back to the worthless mutt.

It quit snarling and lunging when it smelled the ground beef. The tail didn’t wag, the fur didn’t stop bristling, the eyes didn’t look any less feral…but at least the damn dog let her push the bowl within its reach.

Then it fell on the food as if it hadn’t eaten in a week, looking up and growling every few bites-but still, gulping down the chow almost without stopping to chew. By then, Camille had managed to get the heavy mixing bowl of water secured within its reach, too. God knew why she was going to so much trouble. The dog was pitiful. Too mean to love, too ugly for anyone to care, and definitely not her problem. But pitiful.

She never meant to go inside and wash windows. She hadn’t done a single thing to make the cottage more livable, and still didn’t plan to. But because she had to keep glancing out to check on the damned dog, the filthy windows were distracting. And once she rubbed a spot clean, the rest of the window looked disgusting. And then once one window got cleaned, the others looked beyond disgusting.