A Heartbeat Away by Eleanor Jones Page A

support him.
    His eyes were half-open and already glazing over, his pink tongue lolled from the side of his mouth and his busy tail sat motionless on the dusty lane. I think that was the one thing that really brought his death home to me—that tail, always waving like a flag behind him and now it would never wag again. On a day full of life and promise, he had finally breathed his last tired breath.
    I crouched beside Daniel, wrapping my arm through his, and he looked at me with such emotion in his eyes that the pain in my heart spilled over.
    â€œOh, Luce,” he groaned.
    We just sat there for a while in silence, close together, stroking Fudge’s soft golden coat while the warmth seeped out of his body. Daniel was the first to move. He reached out to me, and I went into his arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
    â€œOh, Luce,” he cried again. “He was so full of himself today. He even brought me a stick to throw. It must just have been too much for his poor old heart.”
    I buried my damp face in the warmth of Daniel’s shoulder, and for several minutes we just sat like that, taking comfort from each other at the death of our old friend. Eventually Daniel’s arms dropped away from me, and he bent over again to place his hand on Fudge’s broad head.
    â€œI know it was time,” he sighed. “And I couldn’t have asked for him to go in a better way.”
    â€œBut there is no better way, is there,” I declared. “There’s no such thing as a good day to die.”
    â€œIsn’t there?” A distant, cloudy expression came into his eyes.
    â€œWell, I think that today was a good day to die for poor old Fudge,” he said.
    I looked around at the blossoming world and thought that perhaps Daniel was right.

CHAPTER 9
    T here were other dogs after Fudge. Daniel already had another golden Labrador pup named Buster and two young sheepdogs he was training, but nothing could ever fill the place in his heart that was kept for his old friend. His childhood and mine were entangled with memories of the big yellow dog and his death brought all those memories tumbling back, restoring some of the old closeness that Daniel and I seemed to have lost along the way.
    Any spare minute I had was spent at Homewood again, lending a hand around the farm or helping Daniel break in the youngster, who was now four years old. As spring turned to summer, she became well enough trained for us to go for long leisurely rides together. Daniel had named the elegant gray filly Promise, because he said that she came along when his life was full of promise. He was full of crazy ideas like that, Daniel. I laughed and asked him how he arrived at that conclusion, but he just made his usual irritating gesture of tapping the side of his nose with his forefinger.
    â€œYou’ll see,” he told me. “I just feel it—that’s all.”
    So Promise she became, and if the promise was to give pleasure, then she certainly did fulfill her name, for we rode out for hours that summer. I proudly mounted the big bay gelding, Timmy, while Daniel sidled and pranced along beside me on his high-spirited filly.
    At one time he would have quite probably bragged to me about his latest girlfriend, but nowadays he kept quiet on that subject, and for some reason I never asked about them, either. I don’t know why, though, since he was always trying to wind me up about my love life. However many times I told him that Mickey and I were finished, it never sank in, and if there was an evening that we didn’t see each other, then he always greeted me next day with the same old line.
    â€œWell, whose turn was it last night?” he would ask with a knowing expression on his face.
    â€œA sick dog named Bruno, actually,” I chuckled one sunny morning in early July when I arrived at Homewood just as they were sitting down to breakfast.
    I had been at the kennel all evening the