At 3:12 a.m., the phone jolted us awake.
“There’s a dog on Hines’s porch,” Mrs. Lila whispered. “He’s scratching the door. I think it’s yours.”

Rook.
I sat up so fast the room tilted. Evan stumbled in, hair wild, eyes wide. On Lila’s ring camera, the image was grainy but unmistakable: a black dog, soaked from mist, shoulders trembling, claws tapping a soft rhythm against a rotting door. He was sitting exactly where a year ago he’d been tethered. No rope now. He had walked himself back.

We had given Rook twelve months of routines and kindness. Desensitizing sessions in a quiet room. Little victories: waiting for a cue before eating, taking treats from an open palm, sleeping through fireworks with a white noise app humming. I am an ER nurse; I have watched bodies relearn safety. Rook was proof it could happen. And then, sometime after midnight, he slipped the latch and disappeared.