Stormy filled them in on the latest drama from the bar, which consisted mostly of overheard conversations about lobster fishing rivalries. Not much happened in their sleepy harbor town. She broke off to squeal over Angie a few minutes later.

Like Lillian, Angie’s hair was still wet, and she’d looped it into a loose, heavy braid that tumbled over one shoulder. She wore a simple three-quarter sleeve dress that hugged her curves, made of a material that looked so soft Morgan felt an immediate desire to stroke it. She refrained. Acknowledging clothing was dangerous: it often sparked long conversations about fashion and thrifting, topics Angie, Stormy, and Lillian could debate at length.

Danielle Watson and her wife showed up loaded down with a cheese dip that smelled heavenly, followed by a cluster of veterinary technicians and assistants. Morgan checked her watch. 6:05. Still no sign of Emilia, but there was plenty of time. She exchanged a few jokes with her friends and then went to prepare the steaks.

• • •

Emilia pulled into the driveway of 16 Bay road and slid into a spot on the grass next to a Jeep with a zombie stick figure family, complete with an absurd number of pets, stuck to the back window. The white farmhouse gleamed in the evening light. She could see people through the porch window, and wood smoke flavored the air. She wished her heart would relocate from her throat to her chest, where it belonged.

She killed the engine and got out of the car. Dogs barked somewhere nearby, an echoing, contained sound that she remembered from working in shelters. So many unwanted animals. So many wasted lives. You’re done, she told herself. You don’t have to do that anymore. You don’t have to care. Her therapist had termed part of her condition compassion fatigue. It was common among health care professionals, and an unavoidable result of the sheer volume of cases seen in a day. The formula was simple: too many pleading eyes, plus limited resources, equaled a psychological distancing that ultimately made it impossible to connect with anything at all. This, in turn, often led to crippling depression and other coping mechanisms, like drugs and alcohol. She’d known what she was getting into when she’d decided to go into shelter medicine. Like so many others, she’d thought she could handle it. She’d believed in the necessity of her work.

Now here she was, afraid to enter a house full of her peers, shattered by the sound of a bark. Her hand fumbled for the car door. Leave, her mind urged. She could text Morgan with an excuse. Flat tire. Sudden illness.

Laughter floated toward her as a door opened and shut elsewhere in the house. If she left, she’d be running. Running was different from taking space and time to heal, and she knew herself well enough to understand that once she started running again, she’d have a hard time stopping. I can always leave early if it gets to be too much. She checked her mascara in the car’s mirror, smoothed the front of her shirt, and forced her legs to march across the drive, up the steps to the porch, and to the green front door.