Unbound by Meredith Noone Page B

gleefully, smiling a toothy smile, her eyes wide. The pupil of her left eye was blown wide, reflecting the light in the room like a mirror. An old crescent-shaped scar, pale with age, ran through her eyebrow, down through her eyelids, and onto her cheek, where it ended.
    Dale held out a hand to stroke her short, uneven hair, cut by the hand of someone who was not an expert hairdresser.
    “Yes, my dearest,” he said. “The dog needs our help. Isn’t it marvelous?”
    “Dog?” she repeated, her smile turning feral. “Oh, yes. This dog. I see it.” Her blind eye shone dully, but her good eye was sharp, and she stared at Ranger with the intensity of a hawk homing in on a mouse in a field of swaying grass. Ranger averted his gaze, turning his eyes to his paws, and Michelle’s shoes, which were incidentally lime green sneakers.
    Michelle shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, and the wolf watched her shoelace twitch across the linoleum, hopping like a bug. He was tempted to slap a paw on it, but restrained himself in the name of propriety.
    “Look,” Michelle said, her voice a note higher, sounding strained. “Even if Ranger was here because he needed your help, you can’t leave.”
    There was a pause, during which the wolf became aware that Clyde had joined them, moving as silently as a ghost to sit down by Michelle’s other side with his knees tucked up under his chin.
    “I think you will find, Mickie, that we can leave this institution in more than one way, right now,” Dale said, and although he sounded calm, there was threat implicit in his tone.
    “You wouldn’t ,” Michelle said.
    “Ah, but my girl, I most definitely would. I’ve spent entirely too long languishing here. Wouldn’t you agree, my dearest?”
    “Definitely,” Yani echoed.
    The wolf chanced a glance at Clyde’s face. The boy was biting his lip, staring at Dale, his eyes wide and fervent.
    “I’ll – I’ll speak to Doctor Halliday,” Michelle said, then turned and headed for the exit.
    Ranger followed on her heel, whining softly.

    Doctor Halliday agreed to release Dale and Yani and Clyde on a provisional basis. It would need some time to arrange, she told Michelle, while Ranger lay on the rug at their feet and tried not to lick his nose over and over again in anxiety. Halliday wanted to know if Michelle would be living with Dale and Yani and Clyde alone, or whether there was someone to help her in light of her disability and the challenging nature of her relatives’ illness.
    Michelle replied that she would be living with her brother, Lowell, and her sister, Nicole, in the family’s old home, and that she could ask her Aunt Abby for help if she needed it. Ranger glanced at her in surprise when he heard that, because everyone in Tamarack knew that Lowell was never coming back. The wolf supposed it wasn’t knowledge that had spread outside of town.
    Doctor Halliday said that it would take some time to organize a nurse to travel in to Tamarack daily to make sure Dale and the two teenagers were having their needs adequately met, and a while to make sure they had their medication and belongings sorted, but they would probably be ready to leave Fox Creek in about two weeks.
    Michelle agreed.
    Halliday wanted to know why Michelle suddenly wanted Dale and Yani and Clyde at home with her, and Michelle shrugged lopsidedly and replied that her brother was home from abroad now, and it was time.
    In the car, on the way down to Norfolk to find a dog-friendly hotel where they could stay the night, she admitted to Ranger: “It won’t take them two days to get Uncle Dale ready to go, and he’d take the longest out of all three of them. It’s probably paperwork or some bureaucratic nonsense holding things up. I don’t mind that much, though. Have you seen the family house recently?”
    The wolf had not.
    “I haven’t been there in, like, five months,” Michelle said, only a little sheepishly. “But last time I was there, the window