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Travis often wondered whether The Outsider had thrown Einstein against the nursery ith great force and then had assumed he was dead Or at the moment when it held the retriever’s life in its hands, perhaps the thing had reached doithin itself and found soned into it but which had somehow been there anyway Perhaps it re had shared in the lab-the cartoons And in re, perhaps it saw itself, for the first tis Seeing itself as like others, perhaps it then could not kill Einstein as easily as it had expected After all, with a flick of those talons, it could have gutted hih he had acquired the limp, Einstein had lost the tattoo in his ear, thanks to Ji fro" very hen he wished

At tianza, Minnie regarded herwith charmed befuddleh she could never fully understand thes ever received half the love that she was given by those she’d brought into the world She watched over theuardians of each other

At the dark end of that good day, when the guests were gone, when Jimmy was asleep in his roo down for the night, Einstein and Travis and Nora gathered at the pantry off the kitchen

The scrabble-tile dispenser was gone In its place, an IBM computer stood on the floor Einstein took a stylus in his e appeared on the screen:

THEY GROW UP FAST

"Yes, they do," Nora said "Yours faster than ours"

ONE DAY THEY WILL BE EVERYWHERE

"One day, given time and a lot of litters," Travis said, "they’ll be all over the world"

SO FAR FROM ME IT’S A SADNESS

"Yes, it is," Nora said "But all young birds fly from the nest sooner or later"

AND WHEN I’M GONE?

"What do you ’s thick coat

WILL THEY REMEMBER ME?

"Oh yes, fur face," Nora said, kneeling and hugging hi as there are people fit to ith them, they will all remember you"