Ben turned and left the woman standing there. He came back to Roxie’s car and I wagged. He climbed into the back with us, leaving the doors open. “Oofda,” he offered with a grin. “She figured we’d be quicker than Uber. Have you heard from your aunt, Sammie?”

  “She texted me. She’s home now.”

  Ben leaned out. “Roxie! Let’s go.”

  Roxie drove at a much calmer pace back to our house.

  “You have got to be the luckiest man alive,” Roxie marveled. “Anybody else and the fire truck would have been there, except they’re changing the tires and it’s ten-seven. So no one saw you bring a child and a puppy to the call.”

  “You betcha. Just meant to be,” Ben agreed.

  “Next shift I’m bringing my son’s three cats,” Roxie warned.

  Ben laughed.

  Roxie twisted in her seat to speak to me. “Ben talked Captain Bee into a new policy. Instead of running the truck on every nine-one-one call, we send car five forty—Rescue—by itself if it looks like a routine ambulance. But Lieutenant Hutchins disagrees. And the captain is out sick today, so Hutch is in charge, which means the truck would have rolled with us. But they’re changing tires on the truck at the moment, so they’re ten-seven, which means out of service. Otherwise Ben would have to explain to everyone why he brought a child and a dog along on a code blue.”

  “Which was fun,” Ben assured Samantha. “Glad to have you with us.”

  Ben walked us to the front door, and a woman I had never met before opened it. She reached out and clutched Samantha. “I’m so sorry, Samantha,” the woman murmured. “That must have been awful.”

  “Thank you for coming, Aunt Emily,” Samantha muttered into the woman’s shoulder.

  “Of course,” Aunt Emily replied simply.

  I would learn eventually that her name was Aunt Emily and that she was a nice lady, very much like Mrs. Middleton, except that she liked to talk on the phone a lot.

  They were still hugging, but Aunt Emily was eyeing Ben with her eyebrows raised and a slight, puzzled smile on her face.

  “I’m Ben Gustafson,” he introduced himself, “from the rescue squad, fire department station five. My partner in the rescue car is Roxanne Sabin.”

  “I’m Emily,” she responded, and they touched hands briefly.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” Samantha said mournfully, her voice muffled by the folds of the woman’s clothing.

  The woman petted Samantha the way Samantha sometimes petted me. “I didn’t realize that Samantha would be coming home in an ambulance,” she said to Ben, a question in her voice.

  Ben smiled. “Yah, well, the county’s trying to compete with the ride-sharing services, raise a little extra cash,” he responded with a chuckle. “We can charge more if we take people around in an ambulance, don’tcha know.”

  “Really?”

  Ben’s grin faded. “Ope. No, it was a joke. Sorry. No, I’m a friend of the family. That’s Ripley. He’s my dog. He’s going to be working at the fire department soon, but right now Samantha and Lizzy are training him. He’s about six months—still a puppy.” Ben glanced over his shoulder. “Well, I need to get back to work. Samantha, I’ll bring your mom home tomorrow. They’d like to keep her overnight because she hit her head.”

  “She hit her head?” Samantha gasped.

  Ben held up a hand. “Your mom says it’s nothing, but they have a protocol, rules they have to follow for something like this. I promise you, she’ll be okay.”

  The woman appeared surprised. “You’ll be bringing Lizzy home?”

  “In the ambulance?” Samantha added.

  “Oh, no.” Ben laughed. “I’ll drive my own car. I do have one. So I’ll see you tomorrow, Samantha?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s okay for you to take Ripley?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I heard my name and looked up, but no one said anything more and nobody had any treats.

  Ben left, the way he often did, and I followed Samantha and Aunt Emily into the kitchen. A marvelous smell of chicken wafted through the air from a bucket on the counter. Without even saying anything, Aunt Emily fed a small piece of chicken skin to me, and I instantly loved her.

  It was one of those nights where I slept with Samantha in her bed. Aunt Emily slept downstairs in Mom’s bed. I was a bit concerned. Had Mom left the family? Was Aunt Emily now going to take over preparing our meals? I appreciated the chicken, but I wasn’t quite ready to see my life reorganized like that.

  I shouldn’t have worried. Ben and Mom were back at the house the next morning. We had just finished breakfast (Aunt Emily gave me eggs!) and Mom was the first in through the front door. She carried two sticks, one under each arm, and her one leg was wearing a stiff, white, impractical-looking boot that encased her from her ankle to her upper thigh.

  “Mom,” Samantha cried shrilly. She ran up to Mom but stopped just short of hugging her, though in the room it felt as if a hug was taking place anyway. “I’m so sorry.”

  Mom shook her head kindly. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, Samantha. I was the one who fell off the ladder. It was my fault.”

  Ben helped Mom get comfortable in the living room. Aunt Emily sat on the couch across from her and Samantha plopped down on the floor cross-legged to be with me.

  “I’ll be right back. Just going to duck down the hall for a second,” Ben said.

  I heard him go into the small room at the end of the hall and close the door.

  “Does it hurt?” Samantha asked.

  Mom shook her head. “No. They gave me something for the pain.”

  “Who,” Aunt Emily interrupted in a low voice, “is Ben?”

  I heard Ben’s name so I looked at Aunt Emily, noticing that her eyes were bright and she was looking at Mom with interest.

  “He’s a friend,” Mom replied in similar quiet tones.

  “Is he single?” Aunt Emily pressed.

  “Come on, Emily.”

  Samantha’s eyes widened, and she turned to regard her mother as if seeing something she’d never noticed before.

  Aunt Emily leaned forward. “He’s handsome, he’s a firefighter, and he’s got an adorable dog.” Aunt Emily looked at Samantha. “What do you think?”

  Samantha frowned. “About what?”

  Aunt Emily laughed.

  “Just let it go, Emily,” Mom requested, with a warning in her voice.

  “Sure.” As she stood up, Aunt Emily leaned forward. “Ben’s a catch,” she whispered. “Make your move, sis.” With a wave of her fingers, Aunt Emily left through the front door.

  Ben came out from the room down the hall, smiling. His hands were damp and smelled of soap. “Well, what can I do for you before I go to work? Need me to clean the gutters? Or would you rather break your other leg?”

  Mom smiled and shook her head. “Maybe a little too soon for broken leg jokes?”

  “Ope. For sure. Sorry,” Ben agreed with an easy smile.

  “And about work,” Mom continued. She gestured to her leg. “Obviously, I can’t train Ripley with my leg in this cast.”

  “Oh,” Ben looked surprised. “I didn’t think about that, but I guess you’re right.”

  “Especially,” Mom added, “with what you want me to do with socialization. I can’t very well take Ripley with me to shops and other places. I obviously won’t be going anywhere myself, for a while. We’ll get delivery for groceries.”

  “Nonsense.” Ben frowned. “I can shop for you. But I see your point about Ripley. From what I’ve read about border collies, they really need to get accustomed to people, especially in groups. Their instinct is to herd animals. If you wait too long to train it out of them, they see any gathering of individuals as a bunch of sheep that need to be rounded up and steered into a pen.”

  “At what age does that need to happen?” Mom asked. “This wasn’t covered in the dog training manual I ghostwrote.”

  “Honestly? I talked to my friend Robin last night and he said we should have started already,” Ben confessed.

  “Not good,” Mom murmured.

  “I’ll do it,” Samantha blurted.

  Ten

  Ben and Mom stared at Samantha in surprise. “What do you mean?” Ben finally asked.

  “I mean I’ll train him. Mom can tell me what to do. Ripley listens to me better anyway.”

  “Ripley listens? I guess I’d have to see that.” Ben chuckled.

  Samantha’s tension was rising within her again. I turned to look at her, staring, willing her to understand that with me there, she had nothing to fear.

  “Honey,” Mom began carefully, “it’s not just about basic commands like Stay or Come or Sit.” I flicked a glance at Mom, but she didn’t seem to want me to do anything, and she didn’t have any treats, so I went back to looking at Samantha. “It’s much more complicated than that. Working dogs need a lot of socialization. That means being in crowds. It means…” Mom made a small gesture with her hands. “It means leaving the house, Samantha.”

  Samantha swallowed. “I can do it.”

  Strong emotions swirled in the heavy silence. Mom, Ben, and Samantha were all tense. Mom and Ben exchanged a long look. Samantha squirmed a little and gazed at Ben. “Please?”

  “What’s going on, honey? Why’s this so important to you?” Mom asked.

  Samantha bit her lip. “It’s just better for me when Ripley’s around. I feel calm.”

  “But you know eventually Ripley’s going to be working at the fire department,” Mom reminded her gently.

  “Yes, but not yet,” Samantha pointed out. “And then only twenty-four hours on, and forty-eight off. Ben’s still going to need a dog sitter when he’s not at the station.”

  “That’s true,” Ben agreed. “Yah.”

  Mom gazed levelly at Ben. “The point is for Ripley to view large crowds of people as completely routine, so that he’ll ignore them when he’s working, right? That’s a tough situation for Samantha. Will it really be best for Ripley to process her anxiety on top of everything else?”

  “Mom! Please let me at least try,” Samantha urged, anguished. I pressed up against her leg, willing her to be happy.

  Ben took in a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. He returned Mom’s stare. “Maybe it will be good for Sammie,” he suggested.

  “It will,” Samantha insisted. “Mrs. Middleton is teaching me how to deal with bad memories.”

  “It’s your dog, Ben,” Mom replied simply.

  Ben stared down at me in a way that suggested he couldn’t decide if I was being a good dog or not. Finally, he smiled. “You betcha. Let’s give it a shot.”

  Samantha was happy—pressing up against her had worked! I was proud to be so good at my job.

  Ben left shortly after that. I was surprised when Samantha came to me with the leash in her hand. Normally it was Mom who put me on the leash and took me out for walks.

  Today, instead, Samantha walked me out the front door and drew to a halt on the front steps. We stood there for a long time, looking for squirrels. But I didn’t see any, and that was probably a good thing, because Samantha was breathing hard and seemed very concerned. I sat attentively. Whatever was happening, I needed to protect this girl, and I would do so.

  Eventually she put one foot on a step. Then another. I stayed close, and in a moment we were down the stairs. As soon as we reached the sidewalk, she turned.

  “Okay. Okay, Ripley. We’re on the sidewalk,” she told me. “Forward.”

  I’d heard that word before but had never seen how it applied to me. But when I started off down the sidewalk on our walk, Samantha clicked her toy and handed me a treat. Well, this was a wonderful way to make a walk even better than it already was!

  With Mom, every walk was the same. She would yank on my leash and say a word to me I didn’t understand, like heel, or halt. Normally, my response would be to chew on the leash or roll on my back or hunt for birds landing nearby. Mom never handed out treats on a walk, so I didn’t bother to pay that much attention to her.

  But Samantha had already given me a click, and a treat too! And since her heart was pounding so hard I could hear it, all I really wanted to do was remain by her side.

  “Halt,” she commanded. She stopped moving, so I stopped with her, regarding her curiously. She handed me a treat and clicked. “All right then. Forward,” she said again. Another treat, another click, another few steps. “Halt.”

  This was a game I could play all day. I could smell that there were plenty of treats in the pouch firmly affixed to Samantha’s waist.

  “Okay. Forward,” she said again.

  A car approached to our side and I felt a quiver of anxiety. I remembered the horrible shriek from the car that had charged at me when I was about to catch a squirrel and I didn’t want my girl to endure something like that.

  Luckily, I was already between Samantha and the car. I bumped into her knee with my shoulder, pushing her away from the car and toward a smooth green lawn.

  After a few more vehicles passed and I did the same thing, she seemed to understand.

  “You don’t like cars driving past. That’s good, Ripley,” she murmured.

  “Hey there, Samantha!” a familiar voice called.

  I wagged at Mrs. Larson, who was kneeling in the grass nearby.

  The woman waved. “Beautiful day, yah?”

  “Sure is, Mrs. Larson!” Samantha responded.

  Mrs. Larson bent back down to her flowers and we kept walking. As we traveled down the sidewalk, I felt something rising within Samantha. It started when a big truck blew by, rumbling so deep I felt it in my chest. I steered my girl farther away from the street than usual.

  Then I stopped nudging Samantha away from the street. Trailing after the big truck were the most wonderful smells I’d encountered all day. For a moment, I lost myself in those odors, lifting my nose to them.

  “Just a garbage truck. It’s just a garbage truck,” Samantha told me, but she had stopped moving, this time without saying “Halt.” And with no click and no treat, either. Suddenly she spun in her tracks. “Okay. Okay,” she muttered. Her fear was growing and I wasn’t surprised when she broke into a run. I was delighted as we raced down the street, past Mrs. Larson’s flowers, toward home.

  I bounded next to my girl as we turned and ran up the walkway and flew in through the front door. Samantha shut the door behind her and leaned against it. She put her hands in her face. For some reason, she was very sad all of a sudden.

  I leaned against her legs while she breathed very quickly. After a little while her breathing slowed and she bent down to unfasten my leash from my collar. It clicked when she did that, but I had already learned that leash clicks did not earn treats.

  “We’ll keep trying, Ripley,” she whispered to me.

  We went for another walk the next day, and many more in the days after that. I came to understand that Samantha didn’t like walks, which made no sense to me. What could be more wonderful than strolling down a sidewalk with a dog on a leash? Well, catching that squirrel, of course, but that was not something Samantha wanted to do.

  Ben seemed to enjoy walks more than Samantha did, and he often took me for one on the days I stayed with him. Samantha taught him how to play Halt and Forward and he was good about remembering treats.

  Between Ben and Samantha, I was beginning to learn how I could coax them into making a click and handing me a treat from the pouch even if we weren’t on a walk. Sit and Down and the rest of them were all very similar, once I understood that they were simply the tricks I needed to perform when a solemn, I-deserve-a-treat expression wasn’t enough to get the job done. Mom mostly just watched all this with her stiff white leg up on a stool.

  One morning Ben took me extra early to my Samantha, and after she finished a breakfast with only a small piece of toast for a deserving Ripley, she announced, “I’m going to take Ripley to the mall today.”

  Mom was sitting in her chair with her full-length boot jutting straight out at me. Ben was standing, drinking coffee. Mom looked at Samantha with some worry on her face. “The mall?” she repeated.

  After a quiet moment, Ben observed, “Yah, that’s the absolute best place to socialize Ripley. There’s all kinds of distraction, music, people milling around, children running. If you can keep Ripley’s focus there, it will make a huge difference in his training when he goes to the fire department.” He looked at his wrist. “Well, thanks for the coffee, Lizzy. Time for my shift.”

  I followed Ben to the door because he loved me almost as much as Samantha did, but I returned swiftly to the kitchen as soon as he shut the door because I could still smell toast.

  “It’s three blocks away, Samantha,” Mom was saying. “Are you sure?”

  Samantha nodded. “I have to,” she replied in a quiet voice.

  Mom nodded sympathetically. “Okay, then. Take your phone. Call me with any issues. You know you can call Ben, too, right?”

  For the first time in what seemed like a long time, Samantha smiled. “I don’t see me calling nine-one-one for a trip to the mall.”

  Mom smiled back.

  “I like Ben,” Samantha observed as she reached for a glass of sharp-smelling orange juice and took a long drink.

  Mom gave her a careful look. “He’s very nice.”

  “Aunt Emily’s right, isn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she said Ben was handsome. Don’t you think he’s handsome?”

  Mom laughed lightly. “My sister seems impatient with me.”

  “Dad’s been dead for more than four years now.” Samantha put her glass down. “Aunt Emily reminded me when she was here.”

  Mom sighed. “It doesn’t seem that long,” she said. She sounded sad.

  “I know,” Samantha agreed. She was sad now too!

  I laid my head down on Samantha’s knee to help her feel better and to remind her that I could still use some more toast.

  A little while later, we were back on the front steps. Things had changed. Samantha no longer stood there breathing, looking around for squirrels, and fidgeting. These days she walked straight down the steps to the sidewalk and made a turn.