The vet's waiting room smelled like antiseptic and fear. I sat on the edge of a plastic chair, my Golden Retriever's head heavy in my lap, and watched the clock tick second by second. Shiloh's breathing was steady, but his eyes—those warm, chocolate-brown eyes that had looked at me with nothing but trust for six years—kept drifting past my face. Not through me. Past me. Like I wasn't there. That was the first time I felt the cold knot tighten in my stomach. It started three days earlier, on a Tuesday morning that seemed perfectly ordinary. The sunlight slanted through the kitchen windows the way it always did, catching the dust motes floating above the tile floor. I opened the cabinet where we kept Shiloh's toys and pulled out his favorite red squeaky ball. The one he'd carried everywhere since he was a puppy. The one with tooth marks so deep you could see the rubber core peeking through. I held it up. "Ready, boy?" Shiloh looked at me. Then ...