Hudson woke as he usually did on August fourth, but he knew instinctively that something was amiss. “Hound?” He lifted his head off the pillow and looked for his dog, who never slept more than a foot away from Hudson.
Until this morning.
Something was definitely wrong.
Hudson’s first thought was that his dog—an eleven-year-old golden retriever—had finally crawled away in the night and passed away. His heart started pounding like a bass drum, and he hurried to get his old bones out of bed.
“Hound?” he called louder, praying that if the dog had died that it had happened peacefully while the canine slept.
The clicking of claws came down the hall as Hudson pulled a T-shirt over his head. “Hey, bud,” he said, his adrenaline still soaring through his bloodstream. “There you are. Did I sleep
