Ranger moved before Emily could even process what she was seeing. One moment, Lily was toddling unsteadily across the grass, clutching her red ball. The next, Ranger was a blur of motion, shooting toward her low and fast, his nails scraping harshly against the patio stone. Emily heard the scene before she fully saw it: Lily’s startled cry, the soft thud of small legs hitting the lawn, and Ranger’s deep, urgent growl vibrating across the entire yard.
Her heart lurched into her throat. The dish in her hands fell, forgotten, as she sprinted for the door, panic blurring the edges of her vision. “Lily!” she screamed, the name tearing from her lungs. Another sharp yelp cut the air, followed by a frantic rustle in the grass. Ranger’s bark was not playful or gentle, but sharp and alarming, a sound of pure warning.
By the time Emily burst outside, Lily was on her side in the grass, crying and struggling to sit up. Ranger circled her tensely, his muscles rigid, a continuous growl rumbling in his chest directed at something Emily couldn’t see. From her vantage point, it looked like pure chaos. It looked like imminent danger. It looked, with a sinking certainty, like a dog she never should have trusted.
That trust had been born from a quiet longing. Emily Thompson never imagined her life would settle into a rhythm so quiet. Not boring—she loved her family too fiercely to ever call it that—but quiet in a way that made days blend seamlessly together. Mornings were filled with Lily’s giggles echoing through the sunlit kitchen. Afternoons passed to the steady sound of David typing in the small office they’d made from a guest room. Evenings were spent folding warm laundry while children’s songs hummed softly from the baby monitor.
It was a comforting, predictable pattern, so familiar that Emily sometimes forgot the outside world existed at all. Their house in Eugene felt like its own small, self-contained universe—steady, gentle, and secure. Yet, while Emily thrived within that universe, she occasionally felt a quiet tug in her chest. It was a whisper that something was missing, not in any dramatic or sweeping way, but a subtle ache she noticed while watching Lily stack blocks or tracing the soft curve of her daughter’s cheek as she slept.
When Lily turned one, the conversation resurfaced. “Maybe it’s time,” David said one night, lowering himself onto the couch beside her. He carried the faint scent of coffee and the cedar from the candle Emily always kept burning in the living room. “We could start thinking about a second.” Emily looked over at him, her fingers drifting unconsciously to the baby monitor. The screen showed their daughter curled around her stuffed rabbit, breathing deeply in sleep.