Ten Weeks Later

"H i, little guy. Are you ready to go home?" she asked her brand-new puppy.

The German Shepherd didn't answer her, but his giant ears, which were too big for his head, flopped as he tilted his head to the side.

"Yeah? Come on," Violet said and picked him up.

The puppy was eight weeks old and perfect, she decided. Unfortunately, he still didn't have a name and would need one soon because she couldn't call him ‘Little Guy' forever. She had wanted to adopt and not shop, but she'd also had this need to find a dog that reminded her of another one. This puppy was purebred and from a reputable breeder. He reminded her of the dog she'd had as a child who had been her best friend and protector. All those pesky squirrels in the trees outside her bedroom had to deal with him chasing them back up trees. She'd hurt when he died when she'd been in college. She'd cried more over her childhood dog passing away than over just about anything else in her life. So, when she decided to get a dog, she'd wanted one just like him, if she could find one.

Taking him home, Violet was really excited to finally have someone else in the house with her, and as the small creature bounded around the living room and kitchen, she just watched and laughed. He sniffed everything. Then, he promptly peed on her floor. That was more her fault than his because she hadn't put the pee pad down for him yet, and she should have known that his tiny puppy bladder wouldn't be able to deal with the excitement of a new place.

For now, the backyard was off-limits, though, so the front yard would have to do for his business. Violet leashed him up and took him out there to see if he needed to go again. She'd known that she would need to put a fence around the pool when she decided to get a dog. The previous owner already had a fence around the whole backyard, which meant that the pool was up to code because no kids or animals could just fall in without first going through a gate, but she didn't want to risk a dog falling in. And while she planned on letting him get in the pool eventually, she'd also hired a dog walker and wasn't very trusting that they wouldn't let a puppy run straight outside when they weren't looking. Of course, Violet also wanted kids someday. She wasn't sure if this house was where she'd have them, but a four-foot fence with a gate around it would keep anyone out, and that was what she wanted.

It was supposed to be a simple process. The fencing company came out and measured. She'd picked out what she wanted. They were supposed to install it and be done, but the day they'd shown up, one of the installers had noticed that the grass around the pool had been soaked through. That had led them to discover that there was a leak in the pool lining, which, she'd figured, would explain why she'd had to refill it so often. Upon further inspection, though, it had turned out that the leak wasn't just in the lining. The foundation of the pool was cracked.

"It's a new pool. Like, a couple years old," she'd said.

The pool guys that had installed it had shown up and told her that the only thing they could do was tear up the lining, find the leak, and either patch it if they could, or, possibly, tear up the entire pool.

The water had been drained since, and the lining had been peeled back the day before, and now, they were out there, trying to figure out what had happened.

"Miss Armstrong, can I borrow you for a minute?" the man in charge asked.

"Sure," she said, leaving her dog inside the house and walking out back.

"So, we need to dig it up," he told her.

"Dig what up?"

"There's something sharp down there that must have been there when we laid the foundation because it got into the wet cement."

"Concrete," she corrected.

"Sorry?"

"Cement is an ingredient in concrete," she said.

"Right. Most people don't know that." He looked at her in surprise.

"I'm not most people." She sighed. "So, something is down there? A tree root?"

"No, it's pretty sharp. There's a point that's made its way through the concrete and into the lining, which is why it started leaking. It's taken time to move through the dirt a little, but that's the cause of the problem, anyway. We need to dig up that section, at least, pull the thing out, and repour."

"And then re-line and put everything back together? "

"Yes," he confirmed.

"And what if I just didn't want the pool at all?"

"You want us to take it out?"

"What's more expensive?"

"Removing it," he answered. "We'd have to demo the whole thing, bring in dirt to replace what was lost, and you'd have to re-sod or put in grass or whatever you want back here."

"How long until it's fixed, then?"

"Once I get whatever it is out of there – a few days, maybe. We need to re-level and run concrete. It has to dry."

"Can you get me an estimate?"

"Yeah, no problem. What do you want me to do with whatever we dig up?"

"If it's not something natural, like a really sharp tree root or something, just leave it by the back door. I don't know what it is."

"Will do," he replied and turned to talk to the three guys that were currently standing in the empty pool.

"I shouldn't have even bought the damn house with the pool," she muttered to herself. "I wanted it for those kids I don't have yet. Stupid."

Violet pulled open the door and went back inside.

Hours later, after the men had left, she took her puppy outside through the front door but decided to swing by the back to see if they'd yet dug up the item that would cost her thousands of dollars. They had , apparently, because there was a very dirty metal case about the size of that bread basket everyone just kept comparing things to despite people not really having bread baskets anymore, sitting by her back door.

"What the hell is that?" she asked herself.