Part 4 – Signed but Forgotten
The papers trembled slightly in Ruth’s hands as she sat at the kitchen table, the brown wrapping torn open beside her.
She ran a finger over the ink—faded but legible. Mei Lin’s signature, neat and deliberate. The other blank line, labeled “Adoption Coordinator,” remained unsigned. But someone had tried. A pen mark hovered there, mid-stroke. Hesitated. Stopped.
“Who would leave this?” Ruth murmured.
Harper stood barefoot across the table, the locket warm against her chest. “I think it’s a clue.”
Cloud lay beneath her chair, alert but calm, like he already knew what they’d found.
The papers told a quiet story: Cloud had been meant for someone. He hadn’t run off. He’d been kept back. Lost in the shuffle when the program collapsed.
But who had tried to make sure he stayed lost?
Later that morning, Ruth made calls.
One to Maple Grove Elementary, where no one answered—it was Sunday.
One to a woman she hadn’t spoken to in years: Joy Tomlinson, Mei’s old coworker at the therapy program. They’d grown apart after Mei’s illness. Some friendships couldn’t weather certain kinds of grief.
To Ruth’s surprise, Joy picked up after two rings.
“Ruth Lin,” Joy said, voice aged and cracked by time. “I wondered when you’d reach out.”
“I think you know why I’m calling.”
A long pause.
“I do,” Joy said softly. “Come by. I’ve got something for you. Something of Mei’s.”
Harper rode in the front seat, Cloud curled behind her on a blanket. The rain had stopped, but the clouds still hovered low, like they were holding their breath.
Joy lived on the north side of town, in a creaky blue house with ivy climbing one wall and wind chimes made from old spoons.
She met them on the porch, hair now white, eyes still the same soft green Harper remembered from the therapy days.
“You’ve grown,” she said to Harper. “Just like Mei said you would. Brave in the mornings.”
Harper blinked. “That’s what she always told me.”
Joy nodded, her eyes misting. “She said Cloud was your dog. Even before you lost her.”
They stepped inside.
Joy led them to a box wrapped in cloth and bound with a leather strap. She set it on the table with both hands, as though it might fall apart if handled too quickly.
“I kept this when the program ended,” she said. “I don’t know why. Maybe I thought someday she’d come back and ask for it.”
Inside the box were scraps of Mei’s handwriting, Cloud’s training logs, and photos—dozens of them—of therapy sessions: children reading, Cloud laying his head in their laps, Mei kneeling beside them, smiling with quiet pride.
But in the bottom corner of the box was something else.
A spiral notebook labeled “Emergency Records – Personal.”
Ruth opened it with shaking fingers.
The last entry, written in rushed pen:
Something’s wrong. I found a second file of Cloud’s adoption papers with another child’s name on them. But I never signed off. If anything happens, please tell Harper I didn’t let him go.
There was no date.
Just a line below, underlined twice:
Dr. V. – check initials in staff file.
Harper leaned in, wide-eyed. “Who’s Dr. V?”
Joy’s face turned pale. “Victor Hanes. The district’s mental health coordinator. He oversaw the therapy dog contracts for the school. Said Mei was too emotional to make decisions toward the end.”
Ruth stood. “That man nearly barred Mei from her own program.”
“She wouldn’t back down,” Joy whispered. “He wanted control. Mei kept saying the dogs weren’t just tools.”
“They were family,” Harper said.
Joy looked at her with watery eyes. “Exactly.”
That evening, Ruth made a quiet dinner—soup and toast, the kind Mei used to make when words were too heavy.
Harper sat at the kitchen table with the notebook open in front of her. Cloud lay across her feet, warm and steady.
“What if he was going to give Cloud to someone else?” Harper asked.
Ruth sighed. “It wouldn’t have mattered. Without your mother’s signature, it wouldn’t have been legal.”
“But what if Dr. V tried to hide that?”
Ruth didn’t answer.
Outside, the streetlight flickered. The wind picked up, sending dry leaves skittering across the porch.
Then Cloud lifted his head.
Growled.
Not loud.
Low. Protective.
Harper stood slowly and crossed to the window.
A figure was moving near the edge of their yard—just beyond the bushes. Not close. But watching.
“Grandma.”
Ruth was already at her side. She pulled back the curtain just as the figure disappeared behind the fence.
“Get my phone,” she said. “We’re not alone anymore.”
The next morning, they visited the school.
Mrs. Plimpton, the school secretary, was an old friend of Ruth’s. She let them in through the side office door and pulled up the archived staff records while Harper waited quietly on the bench beside Cloud.
The office smelled like hand sanitizer and paper dust.
“Victor Hanes retired last year,” Mrs. Plimpton said, squinting at her monitor. “Moved to Nevada, I think. Didn’t leave a forwarding number.”
“But his initials were on the dog contracts, right?” Ruth asked.
“Yes, here.” She tapped the screen. “See? VH signed off on a reassignment request for Cloud, dated two weeks before Mei passed.”
Harper’s voice was a whisper. “Reassigned to who?”
Mrs. Plimpton scrolled. “Let me see… strange. The student name is missing. Just says ‘pending placement.’ No final adoption form. Nothing ever completed.”
She clicked again.
“Wait… that’s odd. This entry is marked ‘destroyed.’ But it’s still here.”
Cloud sat up sharply.
A deep whine came from his throat.
Harper looked at him. “You remember who it was meant to be, don’t you?”
Cloud’s tail tapped once, then stopped.
Ruth exhaled. “We need to know who wanted to take him.”
Back at home, Harper curled on the couch with the spiral notebook open in her lap.
She traced the handwriting.
Every letter from her mom looked like it had been written with purpose, even when scared.
The words “didn’t let him go” echoed like a promise.
Cloud jumped up beside her and nudged the locket at her neck with his nose.
Then he pressed his paw against the notebook, as if to say: Start there.
That night, Harper dreamed again.
This time, the hallway wasn’t empty.
This time, there was a child at the end—face turned away, hand holding a leash.
Not her.
Another little girl.
And Cloud, in the middle, torn between.
When she woke, her cheeks were wet.
Outside, the mailbox door hung open.
Inside it, a single envelope.
No stamp.
No return address.
Just her name: Harper Lin.
Inside?
A photograph.
Cloud, standing beside a different child—blonde, unsmiling.
And a sticky note, faded and sharp with six printed words:
He was never meant for you.
