In the morning he took Shadow to the vet, the same clinic they had used for years. Dr. Patel examined him thoroughly: weight loss, mild dehydration, elevated stress markers, arthritis in the hips that had probably been worsening for a while, a cut on one paw that had been cleaned at the shelter but still needed salve. "He's been through it," Dr. Patel said gently. "But he's a tough old man. Keep him calm, keep him warm, feed him well, get him on a joint supplement. And no more shelters. Ever."
"Never," Marcus said.
He paid with the card he had barely used overseas. He bought the good food, the soft bed, the supplements. He bought a new leash even though the old one still worked, because he needed to do something with his hands that felt like repair. At Denise's, he set up a corner of the living room as Shadow's: bed, bowls, a toy that Shadow sniffed once and ignored in favor of lying with his head on Marcus's boot.
Jasmine texted. Then she called. Then she texted again. Marcus read the messages without answering for two days. On the third day he answered one: I'm at Denise's. Shadow is with the vet's instructions. I need time. Do not come over.
She replied: I understand. I'm sorry. I'll wait.
What Jasmine had lived through in those eight months was not nothing, and Marcus knew that even while the anger still sat in his chest like a hot coal. He had known it abstractly when he left — the rent, the loneliness, the way an apartment gets too quiet when the person who filled it is gone. He had not known it in the bones. He had not known what it meant for a twenty-seven-year-old woman to carry a senior German Shepherd's needs alone while working double shifts at the clinic where she was a medical assistant, while the car needed brakes, while her mother in another state kept asking when they were getting married, while the news cycled through images of places that looked like the places Marcus was, and while Shadow, grieving in his own wordless way, paced at night and whined at the door and sometimes, in the last weeks before she broke, snapped at the neighbor's dog in a way that frightened her.
None of that excused the shelter. Understanding was not the same as forgiving. But understanding was a door he would eventually have to walk through if he wanted to know who he was on the other side of rage.