With another winning smile, Micah drained his Coke.

PART FOUR

HEALING TRUTHS

Healing is a matter of time,

but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

—HIPPOCRATES

This above all:

to thine own self be true.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Zane drove up the long, winding road toward home figuring he deserved a very large drink, considering not only the day he’d put in but the evening he’d have to spend on insane party preparations.

Even as he made the last turn, the wild, deep-throated barking tore through the quiet. Something bounded around from the back of the house, a blur of black-and-white speed.

And teeth, Zane noted as it bared them when he parked.

He took a good long look from the pathetic safety of a convertible with the top down as Darby came on the run.

“Zod! Stop.” And clapped her hands twice.

The thing that might be a dog stopped barking, looked back at Darby with a face that appeared to have been smooshed together by a strong, jagged vice.

“Sit!” she ordered, and it did, sort of wagging a stub of a tail. When she leaned down to give it a pet, it stared up at her with huge, protruding eyes full of adoration.

“Is that a dog?” Zane asked as he—slowly, carefully—got out of the car.

“Yes. He doesn’t bite. He was just letting me know someone was coming. I didn’t mean to do it,” she continued in a rush. “I swear on all that’s holy I only meant to take a look, then depending, maybe we’d have a conversation. Then he … hell.”

“You’re sure it’s a dog?”

“Of course it’s a dog. He’s General Zod.”

“From the Phantom Zone by way of Krypton?”

“Vicky’s kids named him.”

“Vicky.”

“You went to school with her. Micah—it’s really his fault.”

“Okay.” Crouching, Zane took a longer look. The smooshed face was mostly white, like the stubby tail. The rest of him, about twenty-five pounds of compact muscle on legs slightly less stubby than the tail, was a streaky mix of black and white. The bulbous eyes gleamed like saucers full of oil.

“This is one homely dog.”

“I know. I thought, barking dog, another security measure, and I’d been thinking about getting a dog once I had time to train one. A puppy maybe that I could train from the ground up not to dig or run off. Then Micah brought up dog, and how he had this friend who fosters. I was just going to check it out.”

“Zod.” Watching the dog, Zane patted his knee. The dog trotted right over, licked his hand with a wide, wet tongue. “Security measure?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, as you’ve already seen, he barks like a maniac—but stops when you tell him to stop. That was a key. And he doesn’t bite, he’s good around kids—Vicky has two sets of twins. “

As Zane scratched Zod’s pointy little ears, the dog moaned as if in deep, desperate pleasure. Those weird eyes gleamed as he rested his chin on Zane’s knee.

“See! He does that! Looks at you like you’re the center of the world. And Vicky said he’s never dug in any of her flowers. He’s house-trained, good with other dogs and people. He sort of tries to herd them, but he’s gentle. He likes riding in the truck. That was another requirement because he’d go to work with me. He did really well when I took him on the job today—and I should have talked to you first.”

“We weren’t allowed to have pets when I was a kid.”

“Micah told me.”

“I couldn’t get a dog in Raleigh, living in a condo, at work more than I was home. I figured when I got one, maybe a Lab or retriever. You know…” He opened his arms to indicate size. “A dog.”

After rubbing his way down the strange muscular body, earning more grateful moans, Zane rose. “General Zod,” he muttered, and had Zod wagging all over.

“Vicky’s had him about three months. The people who owned him decided they didn’t want a dog after all. He was about a year old, so they took him to the pound. He was on, you know, death row when Vicky rescued him. It’s what she does. I’ll take him out and feed him and all the stuff when I’m here.”

Zod plopped down, rolled on his back in the grass.

“Why should you get all the fun?”

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be? Jesus, he’s what my grandmother would call ugly as homemade sin. I kind of like that about him.” He bent, rubbed the wide head. “Kneel before Zod!”

With a laugh, Darby threw her arms around Zane, had the dog worming his way between them, then Zod lifted his head high, let out a long howl.

“What the hell kind of dog is he?”

“She wasn’t sure. Maybe some bulldog, maybe some beagle, maybe a bunch of a lot more. I was just showing him around, trying out the woods for his personal business.”

“Good idea. Let’s get a drink and walk the dog.”

“He has a quirk,” she warned as they walked around the house with Zod between them.

Amused, Zane watched the dog manage a kind of prance on those weird legs. “Darlin’, he is a quirk.”

“He steals any article of human clothing that ends up on the floor. He doesn’t chew them, just hordes them in his dog bed. He likes to sleep with a sock or a T-shirt that smells like people. He’ll even get something out of the hamper if he can manage it. If you try to take it back before morning, he howls until you give it back.”

“I can handle that one.” He looked down at her and the dog between them, and felt pretty good about it. “Anything else?”

“Well, you don’t want to say t-r-e-a-t unless you’ve got one handy because he goes a little nuts.”

“Have we got any?”

“Vicky gave me a bag. I put a couple in my pocket in case I needed to lure him off the lawn into the woods.”

“Okay then. Treat.”

For an instant, Zod froze—the world’s homeliest dog statue—then to Zane’s complete delight bounced a good foot in the air like a dog on springs, his eyes wild and wide with mad glee. When the treat didn’t magically appear, he continued to bounce, managed an ungainly flip in midair.

“Circus dog. Let him have it.”

Obliging, Darby tossed one. Zod snatched it, ran in circles, then gobbled it.

“He’s ugly,” Zane decided, draping an arm around Darby’s shoulders, “but he’s sure entertaining.”

And the boy inside the man reached into Darby’s pocket and, grinning, said, “Treat!”

* * *

Just after dawn, with a day of party preparations ahead of her, Darby headed to the job site. A couple of hours, she calculated, would finish up most of the work ahead of schedule, give her canine companion more experience on the job, and get her back to Zane with more than enough time to set up for the evening festivities.

Zod sat beside her in the truck, his pointy little ears vibrating in the air blowing through the open windows. As she turned away from town, took the quiet road beyond the lake that led into the hills, she decided she and Zod made a pretty lucky pair.