They were allotted three hours per day to work together. Two weeks, fourteen days only. It was assumed that by the time their sessions were complete, the dog and Meghan would have perfected their partnership. By the end of week one, it already looked that way, but neither Meghan nor Rosie suggested that the mission had been accomplished. They were both enjoying the process too much. Shark enjoyed the process too much. Even though the focus was on the dog’s training, conversation had begun to flow between the two women, and within three sessions, Meghan felt as if Rosie completely understood her. She didn’t lavish sympathy on her; she pushed Meghan to work harder. Maybe it was having been raised with a handicapped brother, or maybe it was just her nature, but Rosie didn’t give Meghan any passes; if she said, “Don’t praise him until he’s done the job,” Meghan obeyed. In return, Meghan didn’t shy from asking Rosie—quite against the rules—what had put an intelligent woman like her in a place like this. So Rosie told her.
It occured to Meghan that she had very few female friendships. Good female friendships. Maybe none. With all the moving around she’d done as a kid, she’d learned early on not to form attachments. Some pals were better correspondents than others, but even the good ones tended to peter out; or maybe it was that she let go, more so than that they were spun out of her orbit. Her military friendships were deep, but equally temporary. And her wounding had further separated her. She was on one side of a divide from those who had never lost their purpose. Or had it taken away from them. Maybe that was why she felt such kinship with Rosie. She, too, was looking out over a chasm.
“And you?” Rosie asked after telling her story. “What happened?”
Even Meghan’s parents hadn’t heard that story. They knew what had happened, but not how. They knew, approximately, where, but not the details of the blinding, choking, terrifying helplessness. The losses. The way Meghan had been rendered null and void.
Shark rested his chin in Meghan’s lap, then shifted to Rosie’s, back and forth as he tried mightily to be of comfort to a pair of women who exuded equal amounts of anguish. At first, he thought that they were hurting each other, and he whimpered. But then he began to understand. As a mother dog will sacrifice her food for her pups, these beloved humans were gifting each other with their hearts.
At home at Carol’s, one day away from finally leaving Mid-State Women’s Correctional Facility with the dog, Meghan and Carol talked about Rosie’s situation. “She’s really a victim of abuse,” Meghan said.
“Don’t you think that maybe that’s what they all say?”
“No. She never actually called it that. Just told me about how controlling her boyfriend was, how he separated her from her family when they needed her.”
“Was that enough for her to kill him?”
Meghan can feel herself getting mad. “First of all, it was an accident.”
“Again, isn’t that what they all say?”
“Carol, are you playing devil’s advocate, or do you really think I’m that poor a judge of character that I could be taken in?”
“A little of both.”
Meghan took a breath, sipped her predinner glass of wine. “I haven’t told you what he did, what she found out he did. It’s pretty heinous.”
Meghan was no stranger to awful things done to living creatures, human or otherwise—IEDs, missile attacks, car bombs that killed women and children, the killing fields of war. But for a grown man to be so cruel as to snuff out the life of a small dog hit her hard. Rosie had knelt beside her, and it seemed to Meghan that she was telling this story for the first time. She kept her eyes on the ugly tile floor, only raising them to Meghan at the very end. Meghan could see that the image of that little dog’s body had never faded for Rosie.
They had one more day together. Tomorrow she’d bring Shark home. And within a few weeks, Meghan, with Shark’s help, would launch herself back into the world. She had a plan. And she would never forget what Mary Rose Collins had done for her.