“He got away from us, ran off into the woods, and came back like this,” Mrs. Little said. “Please tell me it’s not rabies. He tried to bite my husband.”

“It’s not rabies,” my mom said. “But you may want to say good-bye to this fella.”

After Mom transferred the agitated dog from the carrier into a kennel and a distraught Mrs. Little left, I made my way down the stairs and asked, “What’s the deal with all these angry bitches?”

“Ha,” Mom said. “Who knows, at this point? I’ll do my exam and run my tests, but I suspect we’ll continue to keep Mr. Marsh busy.”

Ugh. I’d seen enough dog corpses—and ashes—to last the year.

As Mom went upstairs to shower, I decided it was too late for me to try to get back to sleep. I thought all that barking—which continued from the other room—would have woken up Jordan, but when I opened his door a crack, he was sleeping the sleep of angels. I know it’s a cliché, but he looked so peaceful—all that daytime tension having slipped away. I wanted to walk up to him and run my hand over his curls, kiss that forehead. That’s how I would have loved to be awakened. But, no, I wasn’t going to do that.

Instead, I sat by the office computer and tried to open a web browser. My muscle memory still thought this would work. Then reality kicked in again.

I spotted a box from the mortuary on the counter. Every time it cremated one of the dogs, it returned the remains. I opened the box to the depressing sight of seven dog collars—three blue, two red, and two black—with names on the tags: Skeeter, Muffin, Jake, Bowzer, Rooster, Danny, and Bull. Next to the collars was a plastic bag containing little metal discs with thin wires snaking out. The discs were dusty and scuffed up, like spoons that had gotten jammed in the disposal.

When the mortician previously showed us such pieces, Mom dismissed them as broken bits of the grate or something else mundane. I disagreed.

I took them to a back room that was used both for storage and as a lab. I had to move boxes out of the way to make room for the heavy case that I pulled out from under the desk. I carefully lifted the microscope out of its felt-lined container and plugged it in.

I placed one of the biggest discs beneath the lens and peered down. It was out of focus, and as I adjusted the lens up and down, I realized I needed to clean it. A few minutes later, I had a clear view of the piece.

It looked different from what I expected. Although it felt smooth in my fingers, like a piece of crafted aluminum, the flat surface had a pattern etched or stamped into it, some sort of hexagon. I checked the magnification and did some quick math in my head; each hexagon appeared to be less than a quarter of a millimeter across.