Listen! (9780062213358) by Stephanie S. Tolan Page B

goes out to sit on the brick retaining wall. Coyote, under the dogwood, stays where he is, his eyes on her. “Brought your liver,” she says. His ears flick toward her. She holds a piece out toward him, but he doesn’t move. “Suit yourself,” she says.
    Half an hour later she goes inside, leaving three pieces of liver on the wall where she was sitting. Before she gets to the top of the ramp, he has snatched and gulped them down. Then he goes back to settle into his place again.
    The lights on the ramp are on a timer, set to go on before it gets completely dark. A little while after they come on, Charley goes out to check on Coyote. He isn’t by the fence where he was before. She checks under the camellia, behind the boxwoods, even goes out to look among the azaleas. He is not there.
    When she goes back inside, Sarita looks up from her jigsaw puzzle, a painting of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. The television is on. Other people watch television, Charley thinks. Sarita only listens while she does her puzzles.
    â€œHe’s gone,” Charley says. She had hoped he would stay the night.
    Sarita nods. “A good day, though,” she says, and fits a piece into the stream of light cutting across a bank of storm clouds.
    The moment she says it, Charley knows that it’s more than good. It’s the best day she’s had all summer.

14
Watchdog
    W hen Charley goes out the next morning, dressed to walk around the lake as always, Coyote appears from the trees across the road and stands at the head of the driveway, looking at her.
    She can hardly believe her eyes. “Good morning, Coyote!” she calls, then spreads out both of her arms like a mother inviting a child to come running for a hug. He doesn’t come. But he doesn’t back off, either. His tail, a pale golden plume, stands straight up over his back, and she thinks she sees it move, the beginning of a wag. “Want your lunch?” she asks, thinking it is time to change the word to breakfast if he is going to eat it first thing in the morning like this.
    But he does know the word. As soon as she says it, he takes a few hesitant steps down the drive. Then he sits, watching her expectantly.
    â€œOkay. I’ll be right out with it!”
    When she takes his bowl outside, he scuttles off into the trees. She puts it down where she has been feeding him lately, on the driveway near his place by the dogwood. Then she goes to sit on the retaining wall. “Come and get it!” she calls.
    He emerges from the woods onto the road. His tail is down, now, and his ears back, his shoulders hunched forward. He is a wild thing again.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Charley asks. “You took liver from my hand last night!”
    At the word liver his ears twitch, but he doesn’t relax. He’s been eating with her sitting and watching for days. What is the problem?
    And then she knows. The problem is that Sadie isn’t here. It’s just him and Charley. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “Really it is! You took liver from my hand yesterday, remember? Sadie wasn’t with you then.”
    But that was yesterday. There was a night to get through since then. Wherever he was, like all his other nights, he was alone. Alone meant having to be on guard, watch out, survive, even while he slept.
    Besides, sleeping can wipe out memory so that you have to start over again in the morning. Charley knows how it is to wake up in your old self and all over again have to get used to what has changed in your life.
    â€œOkay, guy,” she says. She goes back into the house. Almost the instant the door slides shut, Coyote comes down the drive and eats. He still leans forward and snatches no more than a bite or two between glances over his shoulder. But he eats, and when he is finished, he flops down in his place under the dogwood.
    Later, when Charley is reading on the terrace, a fishing boat comes by, its