Stray

The dog had no tags, no collar, but a coat thick and shiny like he was washed and cared for. He was skittish when he neared the waterfront, as if seeing Pike Lake for the first time. Ella wondered if the dog belonged to a neighbor. Instead of driving off to work in her grandfather's muddy Buick, she meandered to the woodshed and found a spare length of yellow rope. She squatted and coaxed the dog from the shore to the back patio. He trotted to her and didn't fight when she looped the rope over his ears and around his neck. He was like no dog she had ever seen: a muscular fox with sleek, short hair and the pointy ears of a Doberman, but he was too diminutive to have much of any large breed in his blood. There were dark streaks in the brindle of his reddish fur.

Ella guided the dog next door, hoping the Markins would know who his owners were and where she could drop him off at home. He stayed at her side and didn't pull against the makeshift leash. She had spent more than a month at her grandfather's old cottage but had not reacquainted herself with any of the seasonal neighbors. Sometimes she would see one of the Markin clan in the driveway and wave as she hopped in the car on her way into town. Her parents told her to knock on the Markins' door if she needed anything. Maybe the dog was staying with them and this would be an easy fix. She wouldn't even be late for work. Her shift at the general store in Petoskey started in half an hour, and it was a twenty-minute drive without traffic. The roads of Northern Michigan were rarely crowded, but during the summer a flux of tourists and construction slowed everything down.

Mr. Markin answered the doorbell on Ella's second ring. He was dressed for the water and held a can of Miller High Life in hand. On mornings it wasn't raining, Ella watched the Markin family and their friends lug bright plastic coolers out to their pontoon boat so they could spend the day drifting about and drinking. She was surprised they weren't out on the water already. Ella guessed Mr. Markin was pushing sixty, but his muscles bulged from under his tight green t-shirt, even though he carried a bulk of beer weight in his stomach. He was the oldest man Ella had ever known to wear board shorts.

"You're Garrison's granddaughter," Mr. Markin said. Everyone she met on their stretch of lakefront referred to her that way. "What kind of dog is that?"

"Yup, that's me," Ella said. The last time she talked to Mr. Markin was more than a decade ago, when her grandfather borrowed the pontoon to take Ella perch fishing. He was a few inches shorter than her. "I'm not sure of the breed. I was hoping you could tell me who he belongs to."

"Looks like he's got some pit in him."

"I don't know."

"You can see it in the profile. Definitely some pit."

"Have you seen him around the neighborhood?"

"Nowhere around here," Mr. Markin said. He guzzled his beer and lumbered out the door onto the front walk. He placed a hand low on Ella's back in the airy part of her oversized work shirt, one of two gray uniform tees that read Symon's in clean white lettering across the front, and pointed toward her grandfather's cottage. "There's not much on the trail past your place in that direction. State land is fenced in about half a mile or so. But going east, the trail will take you all the way around to the other side of the lake. Odds are he broke free from someone's yard and came from that way."

Ella squatted to shake Mr. Markin's hand away and massaged the dog's scruff. Her tight jeans scrunched at the knee. It was too hot for pants, but she...