Chapter 7
Kayla
William was at the fence again.
That afternoon, I stood at the kitchen window with a glass of water, watching him through the glass.
He’d been home from school for an hour—snack eaten, homework done.
He’d gone straight for the backyard the moment I’d said he could go play.
Straight for the same spot he’d been gravitating toward lately.
He wasn’t touching the fence. He was standing a few feet back from it, weight on his toes, body angled toward the section where Ben had replaced the broken slat. Just standing there. Watching.
That same intense stillness that looked so wrong on a six-year-old boy who should have been running and making noise.
I set down my water.
I’d been turning this over for days. Running through the possibilities at night after William went to bed, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror while I brushed my teeth.
Was this just standing there behavior normal?
Was William processing something? Was this some new manifestation of the anxiety he’d developed during the months with Craig—a withdrawal, a retreat, some internal world he was building because the external one hadn’t felt safe enough?
His pediatrician had given me the name of a child therapist when we’d first moved here. Just in case. I’d stuck the card to the fridge with a magnet and told myself I’d use it if things didn’t improve.
But things had improved. William was doing better in school, sleeping through the night, talking more. The move to Summit Falls had been great for him, or so I thought.
But this—this fence fixation, this silent vigil in the backyard he’d developed recently—I couldn’t read it. And the things I couldn’t read about my son scared me more than the things I could.
I dried my hands on the dish towel and went out the back door. Quietly. Not sneaking exactly, but wanting to observe before I intervened.
William didn’t hear me. He was too focused on whatever held his attention at the wood in front of him.
I was halfway across the yard, about to call his name, when he crouched down.
His knees hit the grass. He leaned forward, peering at something near the bottom of the fence.
Then he straightened, took two steps back, and reached into his pocket.
He pulled out a pinecone—one of the hundreds that littered our yard from the big ponderosa near the property line—wound up his arm and lobbed it over the fence.
He waited.
His whole body was motionless, eyes locked on a narrow gap at the bottom of the fence. A space where the wood didn’t quite meet the ground, not far from the slat Ben had repaired. Just wide enough for—
I jerked slightly as something appeared in the gap. Brown, round, slightly battered. The pinecone. It rolled through from the other side, wobbling across the dirt and coming to rest near William’s feet.
William cackled.
Not laughed. Not giggled. Cackled—a wild, unrestrained sound that I hadn’t heard from him in months. He scooped up the pinecone, scrambled to his feet, and threw it over the fence again. Higher this time, with more arc. He danced backward, his whole body vibrating with anticipation.
A pause. Then the pinecone came back through the gap, faster, like something on the other side had batted it with real enthusiasm.
William shrieked with laughter and threw it again. It came back. He threw it again. It came back faster. He threw two in quick succession, and they both returned, one right after the other, tumbling through the gap like the other player had figured out the rules and was raising the stakes.
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
He’d been playing with Jolly.
The whole time. The days of crouching by the fence, the quiet vigils, the intense focus I’d misread as withdrawal or anxiety—he’d been playing with the dog next door or waiting to see if Jolly was around.
A game invented by a six-year-old and a K9 who weren’t supposed to know each other, conducted in secret through a gap in the cedar, and apparently so absorbing that William had been out here every chance he got.
He’d known about Jolly before I had. Before Ben told us the dog’s name last Saturday.
That flicker I’d seen in William’s expression in the confrontation about the fence—it hadn’t been nerves.
It had been recognition. And protection.
He’d been guarding his secret, afraid that if the adults found out, they’d take it away.
I backed toward the house before he could see me. I slipped through the door, up the stairs, down the hall to my bedroom, where the window faced the backyard at a higher angle.
From up here, I could see over the fence into Ben’s yard.
Jolly was right there. Belly low to the ground, front legs stretched out, rear end up in the air, tail a blur.
A pinecone sat between his front paws, and as I watched, William threw another one over.
Jolly lunged for it with the unhinged delight of a dog who had discovered the greatest game ever invented.
He nosed it toward the gap, pushed it through with his snout, then dropped back into that eager crouch and waited, tail going, body quivering, for the next one.
A trained K9. A police dog who probably did serious, dangerous work for a living. And here he was, on his belly in the dirt, playing fetch through a fence with a first grader.
His tail hadn’t stopped wagging once.
I didn’t know where Ben was or if he was even home right now. I had no idea what he would think of this. Would he even allow Jolly to play? Did that affect his job ability? I didn’t know, and seeing my son laugh again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask.
I watched them for a long time. William was talking to Jolly—I couldn’t hear the words from up here, but I could see his mouth moving, see him crouch down and speak through the gap. The earnest, one-sided conversation of a boy with a dog who couldn’t answer but listened anyway.
My eyes burned. I blinked hard and went downstairs.
I gave them another twenty minutes before I opened the back door.
“William. Time to come in.”
He jumped. Spun around. His face cycled through surprise, guilt, and then something deliberately blank that he was far too young to have perfected.
“Okay.” He walked toward me, hands stuffed in his pockets, not looking at the fence. Trying so hard to be casual that it was the least casual performance in human history.
I waited until he was inside, shoes off, hands washed. Then I sat at the kitchen table and pulled out the chair beside me.
“Come sit with me for a second.”
He climbed up. His feet dangled, and he swung them once before catching himself. His hands found his lap. He went very still—the kind of still that used to precede bad things, and the fact that his body still defaulted there made something twist behind my ribs.
“So. You and Jolly.”
His chin dropped. His shoulders pulled inward. Bracing.
“You’re not in trouble,” I said. “William. Hey. Look at me.”
He did. Slowly.
“You are not in trouble. I just want to hear about it.”
Whatever he saw in my face was enough. His shoulders came down, one degree at a time.
“I heard him in the yard,” he said quietly.
“Right after they moved in. I could see him through the crack in the boards. He kept looking at me, and his tail was going so fast.” The caution in his voice began to dissolve.
“So I threw a stick over. Just to see. And he brought it back to a hole at the bottom and pushed it through.”
“And you’ve been playing together ever since.”
A nod. Still watchful, but warming.
“What do you and Jolly do? Besides the pinecone game?”
The dam broke. Not all at once, but in stages—eyes brightening first, then posture straightening, then the words spilling out faster than he could organize them.
“He likes the pinecones best, but he’ll push back sticks too.
Sometimes he just lies by the fence, and I talk to him.
I told him about school and about Theo and about the snake guy who’s coming to school next week.
Jolly listens, Mom. He puts his nose right up to the gap, and I can see his eyes. They’re brown with little gold parts.”
He took a breath.
“He’s my friend. He’s my very best friend.”
I pulled him into my side. He leaned in without hesitation, and I held on.
I should tell Ben. I knew that. This was his dog—his highly trained, professionally deployed working animal—and he had a right to know about the unsanctioned pinecone exchanges happening on a daily basis.
The fence gap, the broken slat which I was positive had something to do with this—all of it led to a conversation that needed to happen.
But William was warm against my side, and his voice was the brightest it had been since before Craig, and I couldn’t do anything that might put an end to this. Not yet.
I would tell Ben. I would figure out the right way. Just not tonight.
“Hey,” I said. “Want to see what I’m working on? I think you might like it.”
I pulled my sketchbook across the table and opened it to the Barley spread. William leaned forward, eyes wide.
“Is that a golden retriever?”
“His name is Barley. The book is about how he helps a boy learn to be brave.”
William studied the drawing with the focused attention he reserved for things that mattered. His finger hovered above the page, tracing the outline of Barley’s ears without touching.
“He looks nice.”
“He is nice. He’s a very good dog.”
“Like Jolly.”
“Yes. Like Jolly.”
William was quiet for a moment, still studying the page. Then he looked up at me, and I saw something settled in his expression—a decision already made.
“Mom, Jolly is a police dog. That means he catches bad guys and protects people.”
“That’s right.” At least, according to the movies and TV shows I’d seen. Always the most realistic source of information.
“I want to be brave like that.” His voice was steady, the way it got when he’d been thinking about something for a while and had finally decided to say it out loud.
“Maybe I could be a policeman when I grow up. Then I could have a dog like Jolly, and we could be partners. I’d take care of him, and he’d take care of me. ”
I looked at my son. This careful, watchful boy who had spent the last year learning to read moods and tiptoe around silences and make himself as small as possible. This boy who had found a friend through a gap in a fence and kept him secret because he was afraid someone would take it away.
“I think you’d be a great policeman,” I said. “And I think your dog would be really lucky to have you as a partner.”
He grinned—full, unguarded, the kind that used to come easily. Then he slid off his chair and headed for the living room, already talking about what he wanted for dinner, his voice carrying through the house.
I sat at the table with my sketchbook open, listening to him rummage through the living room, probably looking for the remote.
Outside, the late-afternoon light was glowing gold through the kitchen window, and somewhere on the other side of the fence, a K9 with a perpetual grin was probably still waiting for the next pinecone to come sailing over.
But damn it, I would still have to talk to Ben. Hope that the man who’d apologized unprompted in a coffee shop and carried a stranger’s bags to her table without a second thought would understand that what was happening between his dog and my son was something worth protecting.
But that conversation could wait for tomorrow. Tonight, the house was full of my son’s happy voice, and I wasn’t ready to share it with anyone.