Serendipity (Book 1 of the Dana Halliday series)

SHOEMAKER'S KIDS. BURNOUT. GEOGRAPHIC CURE.

I was the last one to leave that night. I sat in the office, drinking an ill-advised coffee in lieu of dinner, and writing up records. I'd let them pile up over the past week.

"Your dog is awake," Jen called from the door.

"Oh, good. You heading out?"

"Sure, unless you want to go get a beer or something."

I shook my head. "Maybe this weekend? I have to get these done. And I suppose I'll take the dog home for the night."

"Okay."

There was a laden pause before Jen walked over and sat on my desk. "You don't have to take her, Dana."

I looked up for a moment and shrugged. "I should keep an eye on her. Took a while for her to come out of it."

"Poor thing. She's so skinny." Jennifer opened the right hand desk drawer and pulled out an oak box, about the size of a brick. The brass nameplate on the top of the box read "Joker." She set it carefully between a pile of medical journals and a plastic model of a dog's knee. "Why don't you take this guy home, too?"

I shrugged again. "Not ready, I guess."

"You did everything you could for him."

"Except figure out that he was sick until it was too late."

"I didn't see anything, either. Neither did Jack." She placed my dog's ashes gently back into the drawer. "Six-year-old dogs aren't supposed to die of kidney failure."

"No, but vets are supposed to notice when their own dogs are sick." I sighed. "I let myself get too distracted."

"Well, I wonder why!" She swatted me on the shoulder. "You were going through a fucking divorce, sister!"

"What is it they say, about the shoemaker's kids?" I extracted a framed picture from behind the box and gave it a crooked smile.

The picture was of a pleasantly nerdy-looking guy on a stretch of rocky, gray Washington beach. Next to the nerdy dude sat a medium-sized, fluffy brown canine creature, like a spaniel crossed with a haystack.

The dog looked all innocent, panting happily, just as though he remembered any of his extensive obedience training, and just as though he hadn't destroyed hundreds of dollars worth of shoes and clothing—not to mention some very expensive textbooks.

God, I missed that little asshole. The dog, not the guy.

Jen took the picture and put it back with Joker's urn. "You need a break." She hesitated. "I mean, I love working with you, Dana, but...maybe you need to do something else for a bit?"

"What do you mean?

"You're burned out. Don't you think so?"

I bristled. "I am not burned out."

She gave me a pitying look. I ground my teeth and glared back at her, but she didn't look away.

In a microsecond or two, I replayed everything in my mind. Okay, maybe she was right. I'd had a damn panic attack before work, and there were the anxiety dreams, too. Probably I was drinking a bit much, to be honest.  I mean, I've never been a health nut, exactly, but I'd stopped paying attention to anything like sensible diet and exercise.

I'd even lost a few of my regular clients—something that normally would have made me obsess over what I could do better—but it was just too hard not to seem indifferent, about everything from cute kittens and puppies to euthanasia.