“Mom, Dad!” She shoved open the front door, tripping over the doormat. The tears stung her cracked lips. “Dad!”
He appeared at the kitchen door.
“Pip?” he said. And then he saw her. “Pippa, what is it? What happened?”
He hurried forward as she picked herself up from the floor.
“Barney’s gone,” she said. “He didn’t come when I called. I went around the whole woods, calling him. He’s gone. I don’t know what to do. I’ve lost him, Dad.”
Her mom and Josh were in the hallway now, too, watching her silently.
Her dad squeezed her arm. “It’s OK, pickle,” he said. “We’ll find him; don’t worry.”
He grabbed his padded coat and two flashlights from the hall closet, and made Pip put on a pair of gloves before they headed out.
Night had settled by the time they reached the woods. Pip walked her dad around the path she’d taken, their two beams of light cutting through the heavy darkness.
“Barney!” her dad called in his booming voice, thrown forward and sideways, echoing through the trees.
It was two hours later and two hours colder when her dad said it was time to go home.
“We can’t go home until we find him!” she sniffed.
“Listen.” He turned to her, the flashlight casting shadows across his face. “It’s too dark now. We will find him in the morning. He’s wandered off somewhere, and he’ll be OK for one night.”
Pip went straight to bed after their silent dinner. Her parents both came up to her room and sat on her bedspread. Her mom stroked her hair as she tried not to cry.
“I’m sorry,” Pip said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, sweetie,” her mom said. “He’ll find his way home. Now try to get some sleep.”
She didn’t. Not much, at least. One thought crept into her head and burrowed there: What if this was her fault? What if this was because she’d ignored her final warning? What if Barney wasn’t just lost; what if he’d been taken?
They all sat in the kitchen the next morning, eating an early breakfast none of them were hungry for. Pip’s dad, who looked like he hadn’t slept much either, had already called to take the day off work. He listed their plan of action between bites: He and Pip would go back to the woods and then widen the search and start knocking on doors. Her mom and Josh would stay back and make missing posters to put up along Main Street.
Two hours into the search, they heard barking, and Pip’s heart picked up. But it was just Lauren’s mom walking their beagle and a neighbor’s labradoodle.
Pip’s voice was hoarse by the time they’d circled the woods for the third time. They knocked on their neighbors’ houses up Thatcher Road; no one had seen a lost dog.
Early afternoon, and Pip’s phone blared in the quiet forest.
“Is that mom?” her dad asked.
“No,” Pip said, reading the message. It was from Ravi. Hey, I’ve just seen missing posters for Barney in town. Are you OK? Do you need help?
Her fingers were too numb from the cold to type a response.
They stopped briefly for sandwiches and carried on, her mom and Josh joining them now, traipsing through trees and across private farmland, shouts of “Barney” carrying on the wind.
But the world turned on them, and darkness fell again.
Back home, drained, Pip picked through the Thai takeout her dad had collected. Her mom put a Disney film on in the background to lighten the mood, but Pip just stared down at her noodles, wrapping them tighter and tighter around her fork.
Her pocket buzzed and she dropped the fork. She placed her plate on the coffee table and pulled out her phone.
The screen glared up at her.
Pip tried to blink the terror from her eyes as she put the phone facedown on the couch.
“Who’s that?” her mom asked.
“Just Cara.”
It wasn’t. It was Unknown: Want to see your dog again?