When I returned to the kitchen, Jude was kneeling beside Maeve on the floor. His hand on the rise of her stomach, and hers on top of his, holding it in place. Laughing together. A look on his face I’d never seen before—though maybe a glimpse of it, the night we’d found King on the beach and taken him home. Dancing in the kitchen, the dog’s paws up on his shoulders. The look when he’d turned to me and said, Can we keep him? Fear and awe, tenderness and wonder. Boyhood returned to him.
