I nodded. “If you think about it, you have to be pretty damn lucky to have these problems. If we had bigger problems, we’d never get to them. This is the good life, you know? We’ve got it. Now we just have to not screw it up.”

“Here-here,” John said. We kissed, long and leisurely, like floating out to sea on a sunny summer day. Except that we were sitting on an ancient plaid couch in the cat room with five cats and one dog staring at us.

Horatio plopped down at John’s feet. Sunshine and Squiggy crawled up on my lap. John and I both yawned.

“One more thing?” I said. “You know the scruffy dog on the beach? I can’t get it out of my mind. What’s if it’s still running around loose? It could freeze to death. A coyote could get it.”

“Or the Marshbury Animal Control officer could have caught it when I called and it has a good home by now.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But what’s really bothering me is that you said you wanted a dog to be a companion for Horatio, but when a perfectly good dog crossed our path that was a great match for Horatio—”

“I love your big heart. But you can’t take in every animal you see.”

“But you’re planning to get a dog anyway. I’m saying rather than throw money at a dog whose breed I can’t even pronounce, let’s fill the slot with one that no one else in the whole wide world but us might give a chance to.”

John crossed his arms over his chest. “We can’t just go around scooping up random dogs. And we certainly can’t bring a strange dog into a house filled with other animals. First it has to be seen by a vet—”

“It could stay up in my dad’s man cave until we’re sure it’s okay. Or out in the trailer with Johnny. They’ve both had their shots.”

I thought it was a pretty good line, but John didn’t even laugh. He just shook his head.

“I need to think about it,” he said finally. “Speaking of Johnny, how did it go with his wife?”

“Smooth change of subject,” I said. “And excellent question.”

I knocked on the trailer door. Then I actually waited for Johnny to open it for me, which in our family passes for extreme civility.

“Hey,” he said. He stepped back to let me in. He was holding an unopened beer bottle against one eye, which was well on its way to becoming a shiner.

“You okay?”

He nodded. “You know Dad. No decent punches at all, but he’s got a mean right elbow.”

We took seats at the tiny dinette. Johnny peeled the plastic wrap off an individual slice of processed cheese, stuffed it into his mouth.