Page 3

I crouch down, and he leans his whole weight into me, forty-five pounds of warm dog. The fur on his right side is starting to grow back where they shaved him for surgery. Three weeks ago he got into the neighbors' trash and ate most of a corncob, and the corncob got stuck in his intestine. I spent a night in the waiting room at the emergency vet while they cut it out, and then a week sleeping on the floor next to his crate because he cried whenever he couldn't see me.

He's fine now. He's eating, he's pooping, and he's already tried to get back into the neighbors' trash twice.

I give him his prescription food with a little warm water poured over it. He finishes it almost before the bowl touches the floor, then looks up at me like I haven't fed him in a week.

"That's all you get. Doctor's orders."

He checks the empty bowl again anyway, just in case.

I clip his leash to his collar, loop the other end through my belt so I have both hands free for the poop bags and my phone's flashlight, and take him down the stairs for his last walk of the night. He takes his time with every bush on the block. I let him.

Back upstairs, I finally do what I've been avoiding since the parking lot and open my banking app.

Checking: $43.18.

The vet bill was a little over six thousand dollars. My savings covered the first two. The rest went on a credit card I applied for in the hospital waiting room at three in the morning, because the woman at the front desk said they needed a deposit before they could take him back. The first payment is due next week. Rent is $2,340. Suspended through Sunday, with no Fridays after that, my next paycheck is going to be maybe three hundred dollars. And if Doug really does call a lawyer, I can't even afford to find out what that means.

I don't need to run the numbers twice. I sit down on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets and the notice in my lap, and try to breathe through the panic.

Billy Bob wanders over, lies down against my leg with a groan, and puts his head on my knee. I scratch the soft spot behind his ears, the one that makes his back leg twitch.

I'd do it again. I would sign for that surgery every single time.

The mail is on the counter where I dropped it before my shift: a credit card offer, the electric bill, a coupon book for a pizza place that closed in April. Underneath all of it is an envelope I didn't notice this afternoon.

It's black, square, and heavy. My name and address are printed across the front in raised silver letters. There's no return address, but the postmark says Portland, Oregon.

Inside is a single black card with silver lettering.

The Monster Club requests the pleasure of your company at the Summer Solstice Celebration Saturday, the twenty-first of June Portland, Oregon

That's all it says. No RSVP, no dress code, no website. I flip it over, expecting a QR code or an ad for bottle service.

On the back, someone has written three words in blue ballpoint, in small, slanted handwriting.

Come north, kiddo.

I know that handwriting. It takes me a minute, standing there under the kitchen light with Billy Bob snoring on his bed by the fridge, but I know it. It's been on a birthday card every year of my life. A plain card, always postmarked Portland, with a twenty-dollar bill folded inside and Love, D. at the bottom.

Uncle Dez. My mom's older brother. I met him maybe four times when I was little, and all I really remember is that he was tall and quiet. Mom said he worked nights at some club up there and that they'd never been close. But the cards never stopped coming. Not when I turned eighteen, and not the year after Mom died, when I didn't get a card from anyone else.

The last one came in March. It's still in my nightstand drawer.

I have no idea why he'd send me an invitation to a nightclub in Portland, and I don't have the energy to figure it out at two-thirty in the morning. I set the card on the counter, take a shower to get the bar off my skin, and crawl into bed.

Billy Bob follows me up his ramp, the carpeted one I bought when the vet said no jumping for six weeks, and settles in the middle of the mattress with his back pressed against my stomach. I put my arm over him. He's the only one who's ever shared this bed with me, and tonight that's fine.

My phone wakes me at 9:12. The screen says Unknown, with a 503 number underneath.

I answer it anyway, because my landlord has been calling from a blocked number all month. "Hello?"

"Good morning. Is this Tara Iverson?" A man's voice, older and careful.

"Who's calling?"

"My name is Harold Pike. I'm an attorney in Portland, Oregon, and I represent the estate of Desmond Hale." He pauses. "I'm afraid I'm calling with difficult news, Ms. Iverson. Did you receive a letter from our office this week? A black envelope?"

I sit up. Billy Bob grumbles and doesn't move.