She forgot her headache when she unlocked the door and eighty-five pounds of golden retriever jumped in her arms, licking her everywhere he could reach. She was glad he hadn’t knocked her on her butt with his love because she was still weak and it was close. She hugged him, whispered against his soft coat, “Yes, yes, Mama’s home. I was only gone for an hour, not back from Iraq again. You’re my beautiful boy, and I swear, tomorrow morning you and I will go to the dog park and I’ll throw your mangy ball until one of us collapses, and that would be me. Yes, okay, and I’ll get you a new chew rope.” She’d worried Helmut wouldn’t want to leave her friend Julia, who’d kept him while she’d been away. But when he’d seen Olivia, his joy was boundless.

Olivia slowly stood up and looked around her small entry hall into the living room through a graceful arch to her right. She’d fallen in love with the arches that framed every room, and several of the windows as well. The clincher was the big fenced backyard for Helmut. She signed her life away for this perfect little house tucked into a mess of oak trees next to Clifford Park. Three years ago now. Both she and Helmut were very happy with her purchase.

She wanted nothing more than to collapse into her bed. Still, she made her rounds out of longtime habit, checking the window locks in each of the rooms as she pulled down the shades, closed the draperies.

With Helmut at her heels, she walked back to her second mortgage—her marvel of a kitchen—opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of mineral water. She drank deeply to the sound of Helmut’s tail thumping like a metronome on the kitchen pavers.

She smiled. He loved sparkling water too. She poured the rest of the water into his bowl and watched him lap it up. “There you go, my man.”

Thirty minutes later, Olivia was in bed with Helmut sprawled on his back at the foot of it. She knew by morning, he’d be sleeping beside her, his head on the pillow next to hers, sometimes with the covers pulled to his neck. How he managed that, she didn’t know. She’d emailed photos of him snoring on his back to her family and friends. She remembered Mike laughing his head off. He’d met Helmut, thrown a football for him, roughhoused with him. Olivia sighed, forced herself to turn it off. She had to get well, and that meant long stretches of rest.