"Everybody's always asking you to," said Viola Gadsden, and hung up.
They came at ten minutes to four, in the green Pontiac, and Toomer had Cassius keep the dog in the office with the door shut, because she did not know what was going to happen and wanted to be able to see it coming.
Bosun knew anyway. He heard the car. Or he heard the doors, or he smelled them through the cinderblock and the Pine-Sol and three hundred other animals, Toomer never knew which. She only knew that he stood up off the floor of her office at the sound of the Pontiac on the shell drive and went to the door and put his nose to the crack at the bottom of it and stood there trembling all over, his tail going so hard his whole back end went with it, and that he did not make a sound. Cassius looked at her over the dog's back. She nodded. He opened the door.
Tilly Gadsden was just inside the lobby, in a pink sweater that was too big for her, holding her mother's hand, with the blue Red Cross backpack on both shoulders. She saw him come out of the hall. She let go of her mother.
Toomer had seen a lot of reunions that fall. She watched this one. The dog did not jump on the child. He ran to her, flat out, and stopped a foot from her, all four feet braced, and then he dropped and crawled the last of the way on his belly with his whole body wagging, and put his head against her stomach, and the child folded down over him and put her arms around his neck and her face in his fur and said his name, and said his name, and said it again. Dessa stood behind her with her hand over her mouth. Viola Gadsden stood by the door with her pocketbook held in front of her in both hands, and did not move, and her face did not move, and the tears ran down it anyway, and she let them.
Adelaide and Pinckney Prioleau had come at three-thirty. They stood by the counter, out of the way. Adelaide had not sat down. She stood very straight with one hand on the edge of the counter, watching the child and the dog, and her husband stood beside her with his hand at her back.
Toomer made the introductions, because somebody had to. Viola Gadsden shook Pinckney Prioleau's hand, once, and nodded to his wife, and said, "Ma'am," and nothing more. Dessa said, "Afternoon," to the floor. Tilly looked up from the dog long enough to say, "Are you the lady that wanted him?" and Adelaide Prioleau said, "Yes. I am," and Tilly considered her, gravely, with her arms still around the dog, and said, "He's real good. You got good taste," and Pinckney Prioleau made a sound in his throat that was very nearly a laugh.
It was perhaps ten minutes after that. Tilly had been talking without stopping, telling the dog everything, laughing, out of breath, and Viola had said twice, "Tilly, baby, settle down," and Tilly had not settled. Toomer would think afterward that she ought to have seen it coming. Not enough sleep in a strange bed for five weeks. The excitement. The crying all Saturday. Dessa saw it first. Toomer saw her face change and saw her take one step forward, and then the dog's head came up off the child's lap, sharp, and he whined, high, and got up and stood over her.