Connor laughed as he watched Trigger romp through the fresh snow. The dog slung the white powder into the air with each twist and spin. Startled by the noise, a bird rose from a frozen tree branch, squawking in irritation as Trigger chased it across the yard. Yapping in joyous celebration, he searched for another bird to pursue. To the dog, the morning’s wintry weather was sheer magic.
More yellow lab than anything, Trigger exuded pent-up energy every morning, but the cold, wintry air and fresh snow amped him further. He raced in circles with abandon, hopping from drift to drift, lowering his head, and bulldozing the snow with his nose. Reaching the fence, he raised his head and stood still, as if surprised to find his snout caked in the powder. He shook enthusiastically, turned with his tail wagging ferociously, and grinned in doggy delight.
Connor scooped a mound of the powder, packed it into a snowball, and threw it high into the air. Trigger raced under its arc and waited for the descent. With expert timing honed by hours of chasing Frisbees and tennis balls, he leapt and snapped his mouth around the falling snowball, clearly surprising himself with the explosion of icy chunks. Trigger barked at the shower of debris as his object of fetch disintegrated. Laughter from his boy made him wag his tail even faster.
With ice glistening off the fur around the frosty smile on his face, he looked back up at his human and waited for the next game. When one didn’t immediately come, he tore across the yard and leapt into the air, planting his big paws on the teenager’s chest and knocking them both sprawling into piles of snow.
Laughing, Connor sat up as Trigger raced in circles around him. Dogs never lose their sense of wonder, he thought. Or maybe Trigger still celebrated, even five years later, having been adopted out of that crowded shelter where his previous family had abandoned him. Connor had sat on that shelter floor, laughing as the dog danced around him, understanding exactly how he felt. While his freshest wound back then was the death of Duke, the canine who had been his constant companion since he was an infant, Connor’s scars included an often-absent father, an overworked mother, and a long-missing younger brother. Boy and dog bonded instantly in their desire to heal each other.
Trigger froze in the middle of his snow dance, stared at the front of the house, and chuffed softly, a warning that interruption to their play approached. The crunch of tires through the snow on the driveway reached Connor’s ears long after the dog had detected them. His mother should have been getting home soon from her third-shift job at the hospital, but the dog would have reacted happily to her arrival, not warily.
The boy stood, brushed the snow off his jeans, and walked from the backyard to the front with the dog dancing around him. When he rounded the corner, he halted at the sight of the black SUV. Trigger sensed his master’s concern and leaned his body against the boy’s legs, his vigorous tail wagging slowing to a gentle swoosh.
“Good morning, Connor.” The sheriff unfolded his tall frame from the driver’s seat and walked toward them. “Guess you’re happy to have a snow day off from school.”
Connor shook his head and absentmindedly rubbed the whining dog’s ears. “Graduated last year. Guess you could say every day is off from school now. I’m working second shift—part-time until something permanent opens up.”
“Out of high school already? How time flies.”
Connor’s heart pounded, and his palms sweated despite the cold air. When his little brother disappeared, the sheriff—then a detective for the department—had been a regular fixture at the house. At first, he’d seemed to be an ally, leading the pack of police officers searching for Jaxon. But as the hunt stretched into days and seemed to be increasingly focused on their absent father, things grew tense. Connor knew his father couldn’t have harmed either of them, at least not on purpose, even if he did lots of stupid things. His mother had protested the same, though less enthusiastically and with some hints of doubt.
When Harold Lathan had been found and arrested, things got worse. David Newman was sure he had his man and only needed to break him. Officially, he told the media “no comment,” but the same reporters said over and over that “unnamed sources inside the investigation” expected Harold to confess and lead them to Jaxon’s body. And when that never happened, he was still charged and convicted under a litany of other charges, with numerous allusions to the heinous crime. It was bad enough to have had a father who couldn’t be relied on to show up when he was supposed to. But after the trial, the man had been totally absent, doing his time in a state prison down east.
With the case all but closed, the sheriff had few reasons to visit. The rare times he did stop by were tense, since he was never very welcome in the Lathan house. Heather doubted Harold’s involvement. Connor knew it wasn’t true.
When they did see the sheriff’s car pull in their driveway, they both braced themselves for the worst news possible—the discovery of a body. By the time months had become years, their resistance morphed into a reluctant acceptance of the loss. Ultimately, they began to secretly wish, though they never discussed it aloud, that his younger brother’s body would be found so they could stop wondering. Closure seemed merciful as the years passed. No matter how much they hoped the doubts would end, though, each official visit started with a jolt of fear—that day could be the day.
Connor bristled at the sheriff’s presence. The man had never found his brother and had tagged his father as a murderer. He hadn’t come out for a social call, so he needed to end the stall tactics and move along. “Mom’s still at work. Do you have news I need to tell her?”
“Sorry, it’s hard for me not to think of you as the little kid I first met. I guess you’re all grown up now.”
“Sheriff, I grew up that day. Now tell me whatever you’ve got to say.”
The sheriff glanced again down the road and sighed, his breath forming a big cloud. He returned his look to Connor and nodded. “We think we found Jaxon.”
Connor’s breath caught as he heard the words they had been expecting for nearly a decade. “When? Where?”
“Last night, along I-40 in the gorge.”
Connor looked down at the dog to hide the tears in his eyes. Trigger looked back at him, tail swishing slowly in the snow. “Last night? How would you know it was him? Doesn’t it take time to get DNA results back once you found his…”
David stepped forward and rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We didn’t find his body. We found him. Alive.”
Connor shook off the sheriff’s hand and stepped back. Confusion swept over him as he let the words soak in. Trigger whined and licked his hand. His voice cracked as he struggled to speak. “Alive?”
“Yes, alive. He’s pretty banged up but able to answer some questions. He told us his name, told us about the day he went missing.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“More than seen him. I’ve talked to him. I wanted to make sure I did that myself before I came out here and raised your hopes. He’s sitting in a bed at Millerton Community Hospital with your mom.”
Connor’s hand gripped the dog’s neck to balance himself. The world felt like it was tipping. “Mom’s with him?”
“Yes. Talking to him. Catching up.”
“He’s really alive?” Connor dropped to his knees and buried his face in Trigger’s fur. The dog wriggled in delight under his arms. “How’s it possible? Where’s he been?”
He listened as the sheriff explained about the search, the treatment at the hospital, the questions he had answered so far. “We don’t have all the details yet. Wherever he was wasn’t good, but he survived it.”
Connor sniffled and tried to focus on the sheriff through teary eyes. For years, he had been prepared to hear his brother was dead, a confirmation of something he always suspected. And he tried praying late at night—alone, without raising his mother’s own hopes—that maybe, just maybe, Jaxon might come home alive. But he struggled to accept that his prayers had been answered. “So he’s really okay?”
“Put Duke in the house and get in my car. I’ll take you down to see for yourself. He’s been through a lot and is going to need a lot of time and help, but yeah, he seems like he’s doing okay.”
Connor looked down at the dog. “Trigger.”
“Huh?”
“Duke died years ago. This is Trigger.”
The sheriff looked perplexed and then shrugged. “Okay. Sorry. Put Trigger up, then.”
An airplane buzzed through the sky as Connor struggled with the news. As much as he wanted it to be true, he couldn’t wrap his head around it. But he did as he was told.