My husband did not sleep the night Max disappeared. By morning he had found the Facebook post his sister wrote, Free to good home, must go today, and the comments under it, and the name of the man who had come for our dog.
His name was Walter. A widower, it turned out, whose own old dog had died that winter. He had seen the post and thought he was giving a lonely golden retriever a home, no idea the dog had been given away behind a familys back.
When my husband called him and explained, gently, that Max was nine years old, that he had been his dog since before we married, that the baby we had just brought home had been born into a house that smelled like that dog, Walter was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “A dog belongs with his family. Come get him. I would not keep a boy from his people for anything in the world.”
The man my sister-in-law handed our dog to turned out to have more decency than the whole plan behind it.
Three days later it was my sister-in-laws birthday, and the family was all at her place, and the doorbell rang.
She opened it, and standing on the porch was my husband, with Max on his leash, tail going like a helicopter. Max did not even look at her. He pushed straight past her legs, through the whole party, and found the baby, and lay down under the bassinet with a sigh you could hear across the room.
Nobody yelled. My husband just said, in front of everyone, “Max is home. He stays home. And nobody in this family gives away what is not theirs to give, ever again.” His sister did not have a word to say.
We stayed in touch with Walter. A few weeks later we went with him to the county shelter, and he walked out with a gray-faced old retriever nobody else wanted, and now the two of them take their walks past our house on Sundays, and Max trots out to say hello every time.