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day she and I planted it as a sapling. The other is a huge oak. For months I begged Robert Cobb to help me build a tree house in its branches. For months he made excuses. Eventually I stopped asking. I told Mom I’d discovered I was afraid of heights. We both knew the real reason—I didn’t have any friends to share it with.
    I raise an index finger, hoping for a few minutes to decide, striding back and forth between the fireplace and an empty windowed curio cabinet. The cabinet used to be home to a collection of Lenox china. Cobb must have sold it when the bills began to mount.
    There’s clawing at the kitchen door. Frieda sounds like an enormous and highly motivated rodent.
    “Dr. Mills?”
    This is ridiculous. Bedside Manor is supposed to be a windfall, a financial lifeline to professional vindication, not a shortcut to personal bankruptcy.
    Then I notice something faint etched onto the plaster wall, lost in the shadows next to the barren dresser. I take a step closer and see a series of short faded horizontal lines, seven or eight of them, one above the other, each scratchy pencil mark accompanied with a date, handwritten by my mother.
    “Dr. Mills?”
    The fog inside my head clears enough for me to hear Ruth Mills say, “Shoulders back, head straight. There you go. Almost two inches taller than last year.”
    “I must insist, Dr. Mills. I have other business to attend to.”
    I come back. “Let me get this straight,” I say to the man studying his watch. “If I turn this business back around, prove I can make their minimum monthly profit, Healthy Paws will buy it as a going concern.”
    “In theory, that’s correct.”
    “So, in theory, I can sell in the next thirty days.”
    “Yes, but as you said yourself, it’s impossible. If you want my opinion, I’d grab a few keepsakes, pack my bags, and head back to—”
    “Where do I sign?”
    Finally I appear to have taken Critchley off script.
    “Man has a choice,” I say, “and it’s a choice that makes him a man.”
    Critchley’s expression switches from incredulous to mystified.
    “It’s a quote. From East of Eden . Cal Trask, James Dean’s first big role.”
    The man from Green State appears none the wiser. Not that I care. I can convince myself that this has nothing to do with sentiment and everything to do with Critchley’s provocation. How dare he tell me what’s possible and what’s not. And besides, I really don’t have anything more to lose.
    “What makes you think you could do better than your father?” he asks.
    I’ve got nothing, no idea, but I’m determined to finagle some sort of a reply. “I’ll be using a completely different business model,” I say with unabashed confidence.
    “Really? Different how?”
    It’s obvious he’s humoring me.
    “For starters,” I say, “billing for services rendered has always been slack and tardy. Stuff gets overlooked and forgotten and bad debt ignored. As soon as I’ve worked my way through that lot I’ll have a better sense of where things have gone wrong and how I can put them right.”
    Critchley waits for more. “That’s it?” he says, looking pleased that his low expectations of me were correct. “You’ve never run a veterinary practice before, have you?”
    This is not a line of questioning I want him to pursue. I brace, but he changes course. “If I were in charge, I’d start making cuts right now.”
    I nod, say nothing.
    “For example, your health insurance costs are ridiculous.”
    “They are?”
    “Yes, they are. You have only two employees, and yet you offer one of the most expensive health care plans in the state.”
    Two employees? Other than Lewis, who else is on the payroll?
    “Choose a cheaper plan and you’ll save yourself some money right there.”
    Frieda lets loose with a sequence of booming barks that cause the kitchen door to reverberate. If Mr. Critchley does have other thoughts on the matter, he no longer wants to share them. He gets to his