Tenisha decided to kill two birds with one stone. She could stop at the Blue Coyote for a peach smoothie, which she had a huge craving for, and pick up a Valentine’s Day card for her Grandma Emmaline. They always had nifty custom seasonal cards at Blue Coyote, heavy stock and genuine sentiments and bows or buttons or safety pins sewed on, besides the usual fuzz and glitter. Stuff Grandma Emmaline would get a kick out of. Tenisha remembered one of the Valentine’s Day cards she got from her grandma. She didn’t remember the card exactly, it might have been before Tenisha could read, but she remembered it had a big red heart covered with fuzzy velvet that felt wonderful to touch, and she touched it and touched it until it was worn completely smooth.

As it turned out, though, there were no cards at the Blue Coyote, seasonal or otherwise. Sipping on her peach smoothie, Tenisha asked the woman behind the counter how come they didn’t have cards anymore, and the woman related the sad story. It seems they hadn’t had cards for months. The woman who made them had died. Not only that, her body had not been discovered for several weeks. “She lived way out, and when she didn’t return our phone calls we got worried. Then the calls went straight to voicemail, and then we called the police. A few days later the police called back. They asked what our relationship to the woman was, and we said we sold her cards here and hadn’t heard from her in a while. That’s when they told us she was dead. They’d found the body in her house. She’d been dead about three weeks. She had puppies, and they were dead too.”

“That’s so sad,” Tenisha said. “Didn’t she have family? Neighbors?”

“She did, but the family lives in Indiana or Wisconsin or someplace, and the neighbors ... who knows?”

“How old was she?” Tenisha asked.

“Not that old. She worked at the post office, remember, and she’d just retired a year ago. She used to live in a trailer not far away but after she retired, she and her husband bought a house, but then the husband died not long after that. And now the woman.”

Mention of the post office reminded Tenisha that you could get cards there, and the post office was just around the corner from the Blue Coyote. After finishing her smoothie, she decided to try the post office. She could find a card and write a little note and mail it off to Grandma Emma. Two birds with one stone. Not the same two birds, Tenisha thought, and she swallowed.

The cards at the post office were not all that nifty—no buttons or bows or safety pins, no fuzzy hearts, not really Valentine’s Day cards at all—but Tenisha did manage to find one she thought would do. She stood at the preparation counter at the post office and after drawing a big heart with an arrow through it, she couldn’t decide what to write other than Dear Grandma Emma. She thought about including something about the woman who made the custom cards you used to be able to buy at the Blue Coyote, but after all it didn’t seem quite fitting or appropriate, so in the end she just wrote: I hope you have a very very very good year!!! One exclamation mark for each very. Love Tenisha.

But then she realized she didn’t have Grandma Emma’s address. She knew the state and the town and the street but not the street number or the zip code. There were people she could call or text to find out, but she didn’t feel up to it. She felt glum. I’m not a good granddaughter, she decided. Grandma Emma could be lying dead on her kitchen floor for weeks and I wouldn’t know a thing about it. She stuffed the card into her purse and hurried out of the post office, down the many steep steps to the street, not in a good mood, not in a good mood at all.

Waiting for her was the puppy. Oh, you little cutie, she thought. What are you doing here? Are you lost? The dog didn’t have a collar. It wagged its tail and looked up at Tenisha with big puppy eyes.

Right then Tenisha decided to rescue it. She looked around. No one seemed to be noticing them. “If I put you in my bag you won’t pee or poo, will you?” she asked the puppy. The puppy wagged its tail. Tenisha picked up the puppy and put it into her purse. The puppy squirmed a little and poked its head out but didn’t seem to mind being in the purse.

“Good dog,” Tenisha said. “I’m going to name you Emma. Let’s go home now.”