I regarded my niece, impressed with both her sulkiness and her vocabulary. “What’s the matter, hon?” I asked, unable to resist petting her pretty cheek.

“There’s like this stupid, idiotic father-daughter dance at school this weekend, and like, of course I can’t go.” She glared at me in the way only a teen can manage…disdain, fury, vulnerability all rolled into one hot glare.

“Poppy would go with you, Bronte! He would love that!”

“I don’t want to go with my grandfather. If I don’t, like, have a dad, forget it.” Her eyes filled. Though Bronte had never met him, her biological father had died in Iraq, and of course, Hester had not provided an alternate father figure. “Do I, like, have to go on this stupid field trip?” she asked.

“No, sweetheart. You can stay with the grumpy old man, if you want.” I studied her mercurial face. “You want to talk about the dad thing?”

“No,” she said, then, realizing she was treating her beloved aunt with contempt that should only be reserved for her mother, gave me a grudging smile. “But thanks, Callie.”

“You’re welcome, baby. I’m always here.”

“I know,” she said. “You, like, tell me every week.” She gave another eye roll and glided away. My admiration for my sister grew. One thing to have children…another to keep them when they hit adolescence.

It was nice to be away from the office. The mood at Green Mountain had changed once the BTR people went back to San Diego. Ever since, Mark had barely spoken to me; we were busy, but still. There was something about being a child of divorce…I’d always felt somehow responsible for everyone’s mood. If I was cute and cheerful enough, I believed, everyone would be happy. If they weren’t, clearly I wasn’t trying hard enough. That was how it felt with Mark these days…like I was somehow failing him. And Muriel…forget it. What she actually did remained a mystery, though she sat at her desk each day, dressed to kill in her black and white—I had yet to see her in a color—clattering away on her keyboard.

“Are you ready, Auntie?” Josephine asked, grabbing my hand and nearly wrenching my arm from the socket. “Can we go? Please? Are you ready? Can we please go?”

“Sure, honey. We just have to swing by my place so I can change, and then we’ll be on our way. You have directions, right?”

“In my backpack,” Josephine replied. “Come on! I don’t want to be late!”

“We won’t be late, sugarplum,” I said. “Come here. Are you too big for Auntie to pick you up?” I scooped her into my arms. “Oh, I see that you are! Blerk! I almost dropped you!” I pretended to let go for a second, a game she always loved, and received her musical giggle as reward.

I set her down, took her hand and headed toward Noah. And get this. He was talking. To Jody, a woman who was not related to him by blood! This was a change. Jody had worked her magic, because Noah, while not looking exactly joyful, had not run for the door, either.

“Noah?” I called. “I’m taking Josephine to her Brownies meeting. Bronte’s going to stay with you.”

“Fine,” he grunted. He glanced over at Bronte, who was reading The Iliad. “You can sand.”

“Oh, joy, oh rapture unforeseen,” she returned without looking up.

“She’s a smart-ass, that one,” Noah said, unable to suppress a proud smile.

“You’ve got to love a child who reads,” Jody agreed.

I leaned in to give Noah a hug. “You could do a lot worse than Jody Bingham,” I whispered. He swatted my shoulder. “Ow. You hurt me. I may file charges,” I said. “Bye, Jody! Bye, Grampy! Love you!”

“Bye, Grampy! I love you!” Josephine echoed. There. Made him look good even if he resented it.

HALF AN HOUR LATER, I was clean and sweet-smelling and wearing comfortable pants so I could eat lots of Cabot’s cheese, food baby or no food baby. Josephine bounced on my bed, Bowie barking in approval. “Give me the directions, honey,” I ordered.

She hopped down and dug in her backpack, then handed me a sheet of paper. “Can I wear some of your lip gloss?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, scanning the sheet. Oh, heck! We weren’t going to a cheese bar…we were going to the Georgebury Veterinarian Practice. Ian’s, in other words. Huh. Clearly, this must’ve been set up long ago by Dr. Kumar, because I just couldn’t imagine Ian welcoming in a bunch of giggling five-year-old girls.

I was right, I found out twenty minutes later.

“Dr. McFarland will be right out,” Carmella Landi said for the fifth time.

“Marissa, don’t eat that, sweetie,” I said over the din. “It’s for doggies. Spit it out.” I turned to Carmella. “Is he hiding?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. “He looked like he was passing a kidney stone when I told him this was on the calendar.” We both laughed merrily.

“How’s business?” I asked.

She sobered a bit. “Well, it’s a little quiet. Dr. Kumar was so…lovable. This guy…not so much. People want someone to worship their pets like they do. Dr. McFarland’s kind of an iceberg, know what I mean?”

“I do.” Clearly, Ian needed my professional help.

Given that the girls weren’t breaking anything yet and Michaela Oh, the other chaperone, was meting out bribes in the form of Life Savers, I took the opportunity to wander down the hall and find our host. The place seemed mostly empty. A tech I didn’t know was getting ready to go…there was no sign of Earl, my old buddy.

As I passed an open door, Ian’s beautiful Irish setter rose gracefully to her feet. “Hi, Angie!” I said, kneeling to pet her and, apparently unable to help myself, began channeling Mick Jagger once more. “‘Angie…Aaannngie…You can’t say we never—’”

At that moment, Ian emerged from his office, looking much as Carmella had just described him. He wore a suit, but in place of a jacket, he had on the expected white lab coat with his name embroidered in black. His shirt was blue, his tie red, and he looked…well, formal. Stiff. But kind of nice, too. Aside from creepy Louis, I didn’t know a single man who wore suits. There was a lot of Carhartt up here, a lot of flannel. Ian…he stood out. Once again, the image of a Russian assassin came to mind. I smiled up at him, and Angie’s tail swished.

He did a double take when he saw me squatting on the ground with his dog. “What are you doing here, Callie?” he asked. “Don’t tell me one of those…children…is yours.” He swallowed.

“See, that’s exactly what I could help you with,” I said, my smile dropping like lead. I stood up. “A more appropriate greeting would be, ‘Hello, Callie, it’s so nice to see you!’ And is it really so hard to imagine that some guy found me attractive enough to knock up? Hmm?” No wonder business was off.

He rubbed his jaw. “I didn’t mean…I—never mind.” He looked down the hall, where the noise level in the waiting room was approaching home-run-in-the-bottom-of-the-ninth levels. I took pity on him.

“I’m here with my niece. Don’t worry. We’ll make this as painless as possible.” He looked dubious. “Come on, big boy,” I encouraged. “They don’t bite. Well, Mariah and Paige might, but the rest of them are completely safe.

“Girls!” I said, opening the half door into the waiting room and shouting a bit to be heard. “Dr. McFarland is here, and he’s so happy that you all came to learn about how he takes care of animals! Dr. McFarland, thank you so much for seeing us!”

He looked at the girls like a wounded calf might regard a school of underfed piranhas. “Hello,” he said.

“I have three dogs!” Keira Kinell shouted, lifting her skort and dancing in place. “They’re purebreds! They cost $4,000 each!”

“I have a cat named Eddie and he’s so cute!” Hayley McIntyre claimed.

“No, you don’t!” said Josephine hotly. “You don’t have a cat. I was just at your house! That cat is fake!”

“He’s not fake!” retorted Tess McIntyre, Hayley’s twin. “He’s imaginary! And he didn’t like you, so he hid!”

“I have a pony and two dogs and a hamster,” Kayelin Owens said, “except the hamster died and I found it in the cage and it was all curled up into a ball and I cried and my mother said it was in heaven so we buried it in the backyard!”

Ian looked as if electrodes were being applied to various parts of his body. Again, I grinned. “Dr. McFarland is going to give us a tour, girls! You can see where he does all that vet stuff that keeps our pets healthy. Right, Dr. McFarland?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “All right. Um, please don’t touch anything and follow me.”

“Good luck!” Carmella said, booting up solitaire on her computer. Michaela and I herded the girls into the rough approximation of a line and followed Ian down the hall.

“This is the operating room—please don’t touch that,” he said, as Keira began fondling an oxygen tank. Keira looked at him assessingly—she was a piece of work, that one—and, correctly assessing his efficacy, touched it again.

“Hands in your pockets, Keira,” I said, and she obeyed with a mutter.

Ian took a deep breath. “Well, this is where we operate when—”

“Do you cut out uteruseses?” Josephine asked, proud of her vocabulary, given that her mommy was a doctor.

“Um…sometimes,” Ian said. “We call that spaying.”

“What about peniseses?”

I bit my lip, trying not to laugh.

“Well, not exactly, no.”

“What’s a girl dog called?” Tess asked, smiling angelically. “It rhymes with ‘witch.’”

Ian, sensing that he was being led into a trap, glanced at me. I shrugged. Ian decided to ignore that question and attempted to educate the girls. “It’s important that a dog or cat or any pet doesn’t have a litter unless—”

“I never litter,” said Caroline Biddle.

“Not that kind of litter!” Keira shouted. “Dummy!”

Caroline looked like Keira had slapped her. “Keira, apologize to Caroline immediately,” I ordered.

“Sorry!” Keira sang with great insincerity, and my jaw clenched, something like hatred rising hot and ugly in my chest. Keira was the daughter of New Vermonters and new money, and a nastier, more spoiled child there had never been. And Caroline, who often played with Josephine, was a special-needs kid, sweet as a butterfly. I wasn’t sure what her official diagnosis was, but since I volunteered in Josephine’s kindergarten, I knew that Caroline was a few years behind her peers.

I took Caroline’s hand and kissed it, and she gave me a watery smile, making me wish all sorts of misery on Keira. That the Jonas Brothers would come to Georgebury and forbid Keira to come to the concert, where Caroline would have a front-row seat. That her purebred dogs ate the heads off all her Barbies. That…well…other bad stuff. But not too bad. She was just a kid, after all. It was her parents who really deserved to be punished.

“Do dogs sometimes die in here?” Hayley asked.

“Yes,” he said. We all waited for more. More never came.

“Are there ghostses?” she persisted, clearly hoping for something a little more colorful.

“No,” Ian answered, jamming his hands in his pockets.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Marissa said, and Michaela led her from the room.

“Dr. McFarland,” I said, “can you tell us some of the most common operations you do?”

He shot me a grateful look. “Okay, well, we neuter and spay animals so they can’t, um, have babies. Sometimes, animals get something stuck in their intestinal tract, their stomachs, so we might have to operate for that. Uh…I remove tumors, set broken bones—please don’t touch that,” he said as Hayley began squeezing the pump on a blood pressure cuff.

“Maybe we could move on, Dr. McFarland,” I suggested.

“Sure,” he said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

“I broke my leg once,” Paige offered. “I screamed so loud. Then I got candy at the hospital.”

“My mommy screamed when she had my little brother,” Leah Lewis said. “She said it was beautiful, but I heard the screaming and I’m never having babies. I only want puppies.”

We herded the girls back into the hall. “Ian, why don’t you examine Angie and sort of show them what you look for,” I suggested in a low voice. “And if you gave out a souvenir, that would be great.”

“I don’t have souvenirs, Callie. This is not a gift shop,” he said tightly.

“Tongue depressors, Ian. Cotton balls. They’re five. They won’t care.”

He nodded. Swallowed.

“You’re doing fine,” I said, laying my hand on his arm. “They’re just kids.” He gave me a dark look, as if I’d just said, It’s just a pit of poisonous vipers, Ian, but he went down the hall to his office to fetch his dog.

Michaela and I crammed the girls into an exam room. “Crisscross, applesauce,” I called out, and like magic, all the girls collapsed Indian-style on the floor. When Ian brought Angie in, they squealed in delight.

“She’s so pretty!”

“I want a dog like that!”

“Can I ride her?”

“No, you can’t ride her,” Ian said, but he smiled. He gently lifted Angie up onto the metal exam table. “This is Angie, my dog.”