The hospice nurse, Sharon, took me aside after that one. Sweet lady, she’s seen it all. She told me the dog was making Mom worse, that the fear was real and it wasn’t going to get any better. “She doesn’t know him anymore, hon,” she said. “And he scares her now.” I knew she was right.

I just didn’t want to be the one who had to do something about it. Because once I did, there’d be no taking it back.

So I found Biscuit a home. Took me about a week of calling around. A retired couple four miles away, the Hendersons, big fenced yard, no kids, and the husband walks three miles every morning and wanted the company. They cried when they met him. Good people, you can just tell. I drove Biscuit over there myself, and then I sat in their driveway for a good twenty minutes before I could see straight enough to drive home. I’m not made of stone. I want that on the record.

And wouldn’t you know it, that’s when my family decided to show up. Not in person, mind you. My brother Greg put it on Facebook. Said his heartless sister gave away their dying mother’s only comfort. Ninety-four comments last I had the stomach to look. People I’ve never met in my life calling me cruel and selfish and a disgrace to the family. One woman wrote that she hoped I’d remember this when it was my turn to die alone. My own niece left a little crying faceunder it. Sweet.

Then Diane, my sister, drove six hours to do her yelling to my face. Stood in the kitchen where I crush the pills and called me every name she could think of. “How could you take him from her,” she kept saying. I let her. I didn’t have it in me to fight.

I just kept thinking, you’ve been here twice in seven months, Diane. Twice. But I didn’t say it. What’s the point. They needed somebody to be the bad guy, and I was the only one in the room.