Rex was now constantly sleeping outside their bedroom door. George would find him there in the mornings, upright and alert rather than curled and drowsy the way dogs usually woke, as though he had been on duty through the night rather than sleeping.
It was the consistency of it that got to George. Rex wasn’t reacting to anything visible — no noises, no disturbances. He had simply chosen a post and was keeping it. George mentioned it to Zoe one morning, and she said she didn’t know why he did that, and glanced away just quickly enough that George filed it alongside everything else he was filing.
He was building a picture, piece by piece, with most of the pieces still missing. Late-night phone calls. Careful envelopes. A dog standing guard. A wife who was warm and present and somehow, underneath all of that, very far away. He was still waiting patiently for an explanation or an event that would bring matters up.