Dog Bless You Read Free

work
before I was back on the job market. I was still following up on a couple of
stories about graduating seniors with stellar accomplishments, and developing a
series focused on incoming freshmen with quirky backgrounds.
    “I’m sorry, Steve,” Mike said. “I wish I could keep you
on, because there’s a lot more that you could contribute. But once Babson gets
his mind set there’s no changing it.”
    Crap. I thought that Babson liked me and would keep me around.
I said, “I appreciate the opportunity you gave me. Do you know how long—”
    He interrupted me. “Sorry, I’ve got a call on the other
line. We’ll talk again this afternoon after I get back.”
    The cell phone went dead against my ear. Crap and
double crap. I was losing my job. And that was going to screw up my life twelve
ways to Tuesday.
    Since returning to Stewart’s Crossing from California,
I had begun to rebuild my life—adopting Rochester, worming my way into the
Eastern administration, even meeting a woman I had begun to care about a lot.
But I had little financial cushion; between paying restitution to California
for my crimes, and my basic household expenses, I was skating on the financial
edge.
    My life was coming back together. But would one loss
lead to another, and another, the way I’d lost my wife, my job and my freedom
in the past?
    When Elysia came back with Rochester’s pills and a copy
of the bland diet Dr. Horz had promised, she found me sitting on the floor with
my dog’s head in my lap as I stroked his soft, golden fur. I didn’t know what I
was going to do without a job, but I knew that whatever happened to me I was
determined to take care of him.

Opportunity Knocks
    Once we were finished at the vet’s, I drove Rochester
to the campus with the windows up and the air conditioner on. He sat on his
haunches next to me, already looking better. I hoped I’d be able to bounce back
as quickly as he had.
    Two years before, I’d had a very different life in Silicon
Valley. My wife was a successful software marketing executive and I had a job writing
instruction manuals and developing web-based training, which involved a bit of
programming and a lot of Internet expertise. We owned a big house in the
suburbs and we were trying to have a baby.
    Mary had suffered a miscarriage a year before, and then
went on a spending spree with our credit cards as a form of retail therapy. I
picked up as many freelance writing assignments as I could to pay off the
resulting charges. By the time she got pregnant for the second time I’d wiped
out all the debt and felt like I could breathe.
    Then she miscarried again. I had developed some basic
skills as a computer hacker through my tech jobs, and I got the idea to hack
into the three major credit bureaus and block Mary’s credit cards. I thought I
was looking out for both of us.
    I got caught, and though I hadn’t done any real damage,
the credit bureaus wanted to make an example of me, and I was sentenced to two
years. While I was in prison Mary divorced me and my father died, leaving me
the townhouse in Stewart’s Crossing, only about a mile from the ranch-style
house where I’d grown up. After a year, the state’s rules on prison
overcrowding offered me the opportunity to swap my last year inside for two
years’ parole, and I took the deal.
    My mother had passed away soon after Mary and I moved
to California, so by the time I was released from the California Men’s Colony
in San Luis Obispo, I was an orphan, with no wife, no job, and no family other
than a bunch of cousins. I petitioned the parole board in California for
permission to return to Stewart’s Crossing, and once it was granted I was
assigned Santiago Santos as my parole officer. He was an amateur boxer with a
sociology degree, and through a series of unannounced home visits he kept track
of everything I was doing to rebuild my life.
    My parole was due to end in September, and I had been
looking forward to regaining my