The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances by Ellen Cooney

be part of the village, then at the supermarket. And never mind that Mrs. Walzer wasn’t paid. Or that the slipping of the quality took place just shortly after she became a widow.
    The snowmobile chugged off in splashes of snow that looked like sea foam. You had to admire her, Mrs. Auberchon felt, for riding that thing at her age, and also for going along with the new plan about where to make the treats. She never knew of the almost-firing, or the charges against her. When Mrs. Auberchon put it to her that the baking would have to be done at the inn, she had said it was the Sanctuary’s idea: a new rule, not to be argued with. This way she could take over ordering the ingredients and doing some supervising. She never had to talk about standards. She never had to say, “I’d welcome the companionship once a week.”
    It was a good companionship because it had formalities. Unlike Mrs. Auberchon, Mrs. Walzer hadn’t grown up in the village. She’d come to work in the bakery when she was barely out of her teenage years. Mrs. Auberchon hadn’t met her until after she’d married a local. They fell into the habit right away of never calling each other by their first names. They were friends but not
friends.
    Mrs. Auberchon went to the wood stove. In the urgency of the baking, she’d let it go. She looked at the red beads of embers and wondered why there was so much ash. Why did it look so powdery, compared with the regular stuff of the hardwoods? She reached for the ash bucket and the little iron shovel. Was something burned that she didn’t know about? Impossible. She must have put in rotten wood without realizing it. She scolded herself as she shoveled out the extra ashes, careful not to scoop up any embers. When the new fire was going, she found herself wondering about the guest. All was silent upstairs, but that didn’t tell her a thing. Was the girl being a slob and a pig? Probably yes, and yes. She was probably used to hired help. You could tell. Mrs. Auberchon provided meals for the duration of a stay, and she’d launder the towels and bed linens if a stay lasted longer than a week, provided the guest brought the towels and linens down. She did not provide daily cleaning—this wasn’t a hotel.
    She looked at the remains of the girl’s breakfast on the tray and brought it to the kitchen to take care of it. There wouldn’t be grocery shopping today, which was just as well, because more and more, lately, she’d been feeling herself putting up resistance to going out; but she had set aside a chicken from the treats. Well, she’d ordered one extra, on that budget. It was on the counter, cooling in its roasting pan. There’d be enough for dinner, then sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch, dinner tomorrow evening, then soup.
    It was making her restless that there wasn’t any Internet, so she bundled up for outdoors, craving activity. She found the long-handled brush and went out to clear snow off the roof of the rickety, slumping back porch. The roof itself was in good shape, but she’d decided the buildup might any minute make it collapse. Standing on a snowbank, she rained down sprays on herself with every stroke of the brush, so she was constantly spitting out snow. She could not decide what made her madder—her Internet connection or the Sanctuary, because they still hadn’t told her anything about the girl. All she could do was be equally angry at both.
    When the roof was as clear as she could get it, she returned to the kitchen, stomping and aching and breathing hard. The guest was sitting at the table. In front of her was the roasting pan containing the chicken. She was hunched over it. The silverware drawer had not been gone into for a fork, a knife. The cabinet had not been gone into for a plate. The rack of paper napkins on the counter had not been disturbed for a napkin. There was just the food and herself.
    Two flaps of breast