The donkey was gaunt – the ridges of its shoulders and the points of its hips clearly visible. One gangly ear pointed forward and the other backward, while its neck canted a few degrees to one side. It looked old and was heavy in my hand.

“Should I get this?” I asked. “It looks like Myrtle.”

“Maybe if you didn’t feed her for a month,” Becky replied.

“Jeffery, I made your chicken dinos for dinner.” Annie used a towel to remove the hot tray from the oven and slid the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets onto a plate.

Mike asked, “Why don’t you have him eat real food with us?” He and Annie had been together for only a few months, though they’d known each other since they were kids.

“He likes chicken dinos.”

For better, for worse For richer, for poorer In sickness and in health ‘Til death do us part She’d been thinking about those vows a lot lately. Lord knows they’d laughed, cried, slogged, and danced through the first six parts, and now here they were—toiling away on the seventh. It was a standard line of theirs at cocktail parties that they hoped to live long enough for a platinum anniversary. Turns out we won’t even make gold. The man—motionless on the bed—took a deep, ragged inhale, held it for about five seconds, then exhaled.

Kim was shaking me out of a dead sleep. I was in the middle of a naked dream. You know, the one where you’re back in high school, naked in the hallway and can’t remember your locker combination?

“Whut, whut?” I opened my eyes into deep darkness.

“Someone’s in the front yard. Headlights are shining on the riding ring.”