Mrs Guidry held the photo up with both hands, and her own were trembling. Trent, still standing on the picnic table with his beer, leaned in to see what the fuss was about.
It was a photograph of a brown spaniel asleep in a sunny window.
Mr Guidry stood up, hat in hand, and told the table the story none of us knew. In the floods of 2023 the Guidrys lost their house, their truck, and nearly each other. In the chaos their dog, Biscuit, slipped his leash and ran, and they could not find him, and they spent the worst week of their lives certain he had drowned. Biscuit had belonged to their son, who died the year before. He was the last living thing that still smelled like their boy.
Callie found Biscuit half-starved under a flooded church. She was the one who bathed him, fed him, treated the infection in his paw, and kept him safe for six weeks while she tracked down who he belonged to. She drove him two parishes over and put him back in Mrs Guidrys arms herself, and she never charged them a dime, and she never told a soul.
Somebody has to clip the toenails, Trent had said. He did not know those hands had carried a grieving couple through the worst year of their lives.
Mrs Guidry told Trent, in front of everybody, that the girl he had just called a poodle washer gave them back the only piece of their son they had left.
Trent climbed down off that picnic table. He did not have a toast ready for this. He mumbled something about not knowing, and for the first time all night, nobody laughed, because there was nothing funny left in what he had said.
Callie just wiped her hands on her jeans and said, Biscuit was a good boy, he made it easy. Then she passed the corn, like she had asked for in the first place.
Her shop off Johnston Street still has a three week waiting list. Biscuit has a standing appointment. The Guidrys never pay, and Callie never lets them.