By the time she pulled into the driveway twenty minutes before Nolan was due to arrive, her nerves were stretched thin. An accident on the main road into town had added half an hour to the ride. Inside the house, she used the phone in the hallway to leave a message for Hunter on his office voicemail to let him know she’d decided to come home and he was off Homer duty.

“Hey, Home Boy,” she said, using the nickname Caleb had given his dog as a puppy after the multicolored mutt had decided he belonged with Caleb. No one was really certain of his breed, but speculation ran the gamut from German shepherd to Lab to beagle. “Where are you, buddy?” Hannah checked the sitting room, where she and Homer spent most of their time, as well as the studio, where she worked and he kept a bed on the floor, but saw no sign of Homer.

At sixteen, he didn’t do the stairs on his own anymore, so he had to be somewhere on the first floor. She went into the kitchen and stopped short when she found him sprawled on the floor, his eyes open and trained on her, his distress apparent.

Hannah dropped to the floor next to him. “Hey, buddy. What’re you doing in here?” She stroked his face and back and noted the choppy cadence of his breathing and his seeming inability to raise his head off the floor. He tried to stretch his paw out to her the way he always did, but couldn’t muster the strength. Tears filled her eyes. “No, Homie. Not yet. Please not yet.” She lay down on the floor next to him, petting him as she wept.

Hannah knew she should get up and call Myles Johansen, the local vet. He’d been making house calls to check on Homer for quite some time now and had told her to call any time she needed him. Somehow she knew if she got up, if she made the call, that this time would be different.

“Oh, Homie, I’m sorry I left you today. I know you haven’t been feeling good for a long time, but you’ve stuck around because you don’t want to leave me alone. I promise I’ll be okay. Before I call anyone though . . . While it’s just you and me . . . When you see Dad, make sure you tell him I love him, and I miss him, okay? You’ll take good care of him, won’t you? He’ll be so happy to see you.”

One more minute, she told herself, sobbing as she clung to Homer. One more minute and then she’d get up to call Myles.

“Hannah?” Nolan’s voice echoed through the first floor. “Are you home?”

How long had she been lying there with Homer? She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, trying to fix the unfixable. “Back here.”