The golden retriever lying by the side of the highway wasn’t guarding a lost wallet. He was waiting beside the last thing his owner had left behind…

Someone had left him with the one thing that still smelled like Walter.

The one thing that could keep him waiting.

The man took a step backward.

Then another.

“Look,” he muttered. “I don’t have time for this.”

That sentence told me everything.

Not grief.

Not guilt.

Inconvenience.

As if Bo had become one more problem left behind by death.

Then Janine said something that stopped him cold.

“The lawyer found Walter’s final letter this morning.”

The man froze.

For the first time, genuine fear crossed his face.

“What letter?”

Neither of us missed the reaction.

Janine’s voice turned ice cold.

“The one he wrote after you tried to convince him to put Bo down.”

The color drained from the man’s face.

Traffic thundered past.

Bo never took his eyes off him.

Not with affection.

Not with recognition.

Almost as if he finally understood something too.

“You have no right—” the man started.

“Oh, I have every right,” Janine interrupted. “Because Walter recorded the conversation.”

The world seemed to stop.

The man stared at the pavement.