“Oh, he’s back there someplace,” the nurse said. “He’s not so talkative today.”

We sat in the waiting room for twenty minutes. Finally, he emerged from the back, eyes bloodshot, with a loosened Goofy tie visible under his open white coat.

“Sonny and Cher,” he said when he saw us. “How’s that good girl of yours?”

“Kiki’s fine,” I said.

“Excellent, excellent,” he said. “What can I help you with?”

“We’re here to see the corgi. The one whose surgery I paid for.”

“Oh. Right,” he said solemnly. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right.”

“What is it?” Julia said.

“That dog … well, he took a big chunk out of a volunteer this morning. Attacked her. She needed fifteen stitches, actually.”

“Oh my God,” Julia said.

“We had to put him down,” the vet said. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you. I guess you’re lucky it wasn’t you that got bit, though. You know?”

“Is this true?” I asked the desk nurse. “Did this girl get mauled? By a corgi?”

“I just got here,” the nurse said. “Nobody tells me about anything.”

“There’s really no way to know, is there?” I said. I had a dim but rising fear that I’d hallucinated the past twenty-four hours.

“You want to see him?” the vet said. “He’s still in the back. I mean, his body is.”

“I think we’re fine,” Julia said.

“I do,” I said. Misplaced kindness had gotten me into this, and now morbid curiosity was going to see me through to the end.

“Come on, then.” We walked back into a consultation room and he closed the door behind him. On the wall there was a framed photograph of baby Cameron holding hands with a diapered chimpanzee.

“You think we just keep dead dogs lying around here?” he said hurriedly. “Grow up, man. You wouldn’t have been able to keep it anyway.”

“What did you do?”

“I refunded you the cost of the surgery,” he said. “So you don’t have to worry about your credit card bill.” He said it like it was some made-up thing that he was only acknowledging to humor me.

“And you murdered the dog?”

“I’m not saying that. Look, the whole thing’s been pretty complicated, man. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

He leaned unsteadily against the rolling metal examination table for support and let out a big, sick-sounding breath.

“I heard that your father died,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard that, too,” he said. “Must be something going around.” He put his head down on the table and rolled it forward a few inches, then pulled it back. My own father would have called this “thrashing”; it meant a nap was in order. I stood there in silence.

“I’m sure there’s a dead animal back here somewhere,” he said. “Or will be soon enough.”