On a bright autumn day, Flynn Marlowe lost his best friend, a beagle named Barley, while out on a hike in Seattle’s Discovery Park. On a cold winter day, Mac Bowersox found his best friend, a lost, scared, and emaciated beagle, on the streets of Seattle. Two men. One dog. When Flynn and Mac meet by chance in a park the next summer, there’s a problem -- who does Barley really belong to? Flynn wants him back, but he can see that Mac rescued him and loves him just as much as he does. Mac wants to keep the dog, and he can imagine how heartbreaking losing him would be -- but that's just what Flynn experienced. A “shared custody” compromise might be just the way to work things out. But will the arrangement be successful? Mac and Flynn are willing to try it ... and along the way, they just might fall in love.

Lost and Found

When he got home, he thought he just might make Dee a big pan of that tuna-noodle casserole as a welcome home from the hospital.


He opened his eyes, looking around the living room—at the Hummel figurines in the display case he’d made for her in high school shop, at the windows with their lacy curtains, looking out on the forest behind the trailer park, at the ancient TV with its big picture tube out the back, at her stack of Peoplemagazines, at the coatrack just inside her kitchen door, still hung with jackets and the winter coat she once wore.


He lowered his head and let go of his grief, sobbing until his eyes burned and his throat felt raw.


And then he went to bed in his old room.


Chapter 63