Yes. She wanted to. She didn’t take his hand but she fell in step beside him on the dirt road that led north past the hospital outbuildings and the staff housing, toward the west shore. They didn’t speak. A tangle of low bush and a stand of trees separated them from the nurses’ residence on the north side and from the shore on the other. When she’d last walked this way it had been an uninhabited stretch of road, but now a solitary tipi rose palely from the darkness on the shore side, close to the trees.
She became aware of the crunch of gravel under their feet and the rising and falling of the grey-white mound near the door. The adult husky came to its feet and growled. She leaned toward Gideon. “Shhhhh. Just keep walking.” The dog crouched with the coiled energy of a spring and showed it
