At least I was out of that situation now, but it wasn't any better. The stale July heat stretched through the air as I shuffled along the road on my way home at one in the afternoon. My briefcase swayed at my side with every step as I gripped the handle in my paw, reminders of my discarded work and forgotten life too far behind me to return to.

The difference from my usual walk home strayed to the point of drastic. Even in July, the journey wasn't this light—It wasn't long after noon and the sun blazed from its highest point in the cloudless sky. This day was so vastly changed from every other that came before. Well, that was obvious, but not in the experience status. I was an outside view, watching myself walk home from work halfway through the day after being dismissed that much early after the turn of events of the morning. The truth was there, the memory and the fact, but it was not yet in my head.

I had been fired from the Happy Home Designer and Academy. There was no dancing around the topic. I had brought unspeakable damage to the company I had served for two entire years and karma had finally caught up to me for it. I had demolished the most treasured friendship I'd ever earned the blessing to have in this life. Not only that, but once the word broke out of what had happened today, I probably would have demolished any kind of friendship I ever had. Nobody could look at me the same way again. I couldn't look at me the same way again. Whatever the situation was, only the conclusion was set in stone. The life I used to know was done.

If I myself hadn't yet processed what it was, then why did the anguish still trouble my head? With every step I trudged along the baking sidewalk, an aching dejection stirred in my chest and my mind stubbornly kept itself a tortuous chamber of suffering, injurious thoughts. If I hadn't yet learned to accept what was happening thoroughly enough to care, why did I still feel this way? Why was I still being punished when I was not ready to accept the punishment?

Maybe it was the way she looked at me.

The padding of my paw was growing slick with sweat as it wrapped around the handle of my briefcase, seeming to hang heavier with every timeless minute. You only think about yourself and now look where we are because of it. Shuffling like wading through deep water, each hesitant step brought me closer and closer to my home, where I would be left to admit my failure to my parents. You don't know the half of what you put me through. The world crept on past me, but my eyes were down, rigid to follow the path in front of me. I was so excited to bring you here so that you could work beside me and now you took it all away from me. The very last argument with Lottie that had caused the final break and shatter of our diminishing string of friendship rang through every corner of my mind, the image of her distraught and mascara-stained pink face plastered across every last memory. I don't want you here anymore.

I don't want you here anymore.

Home was no longer home as I approached my front door, passing the faded red mailbox at the start of the path, but an empty shell of a house. The door was likely to be unlocked, since Mom and Dad were out and about there somewhere. I couldn't escape the questions they would have as soon as I walked through the door six hours early. The problem was that it was impossible to tell if I dreaded the moment or not—The morning's grief drowned out anything else that could have been hidden under the surface.

I latched a grip on the doorknob, twisting it and pushing open the door. At first glance, emerging through the doorway into the dining room that cast down a hallway from where I stood, any visible space had been abandoned. Silently, I stepped into the room, nudging the door closed after me with my free paw until it latched. Before I had even the chance to turn around again, a collection of approaching hesitant footsteps greeted me.

"Digby?" the fragile voice of my mother spoke up.

I turned back to find that the sound of my arrival had drawn her out into the hallway in piqued curiosity. Her pale yellow arms were wrapped around a tall laundry basket that wasn't quite piled up to the brim with clothes—She had always done well to be productive at home while I spent the day working—And wore an expression that merged puzzlement and concern painted across her face.

"What are you doing home so early, sweetheart?" Mom asked delicately when I turned around. The softness in her voice tugged forcefully at my chest with guilt. How could I possibly tell her? "Why do you have all of your things with you? You don't usually bring everything home, do you? Are you sick? Maybe I should make you some tea, hmm?"

There wasn't much that tea could do for how utterly broken my life had become, but at least I had a way out for the first words to say to her rather than spilling that something terrible had happened. I opened my mouth, ready to politely decline, but my throat was clenched tight and what slipped out wasn't my voice. It was more of a croak, a squeaking sound that had tried and failed so miserably to be the start of a sentence. That was it. Whatever was left of my emotional walls that I had built up immediately came crumbling down and a sob that had been unknowingly locked deep in my chest bubbled up. My paw lost its grip on the handle of my briefcase as I dropped it carelessly onto the floor, but my breaths had already become shuddering, giving way to gasping tears. And there I was, a pathetic excuse of an animal standing helplessly before his own mother and breaking down in tears.

Some kind of a strangled gasp escaped Mom as well as a cloak of distress instantly fell over her and she rushed to set down the laundry basket on the floor at her feet. She had already started off in motion even before the basket had completely hit the floor, hurrying forward to join me. Something in her hustle struck me with the truth: She knew.

"Oh no," Mom whispered, tossing her arms around me and tugging me into a particularly firm embrace. She might have been at least a full six inches or more shorter than me now, but this didn't stop her from clenching me as close to her as she could manage. "Honey, no. Just like that?"

A wavering sob broke free from my tight throat at these words, crushing my chest in an iron grip and running tears down the sides of my face as my eyes squeezed shut, blocking out the room and the reality that hung from it. Mom's hand clamped gently onto the back of my head to soothe me while the other trembled as it rubbed my back.

"Tucker, come help," Mom urged, not of me, but of Dad, who had yet to make an appearance. There was hardly a second of pause before a second set of hasty footsteps neared from the other end of the hallway. Shivering with the waves of sobs prying from my throat, I sank into the warmth of her embrace. There was nothing more I could do. "Something's happened. Come now. We need you."

"It just happened so quickly," I mumbled.

After gathering together amidst my breakdown and unspokenly realizing what had happened to me today, the next several minutes consisted of nothing more than my sobbing into the arms of both of my parents. For the first time, I had realized with them, every event of the day tumbling down on me one after the other. But even once my life had transformed into what had been my worst nightmare ever since I'd first started hearing about the HHDA's deterioration, I could only cry for so long. My tears eventually died out, leaving a void drilling into my chest. I must have cried out not only the tears that had obviously been waiting for the moment to be released, but any ounce of feeling that clung to them. Mom and Dad sat me down at the dining room table, sitting across from me as I numbly recalled the story that had brought me here.

"I literally told animals who asked that nobody was going to be fired from this," I muttered. A mournful, sympathetic expression had sunk into Mom's face as she reached across the table, taking hold of my paw that rested there. "I guess that was wrong. I didn't even see it coming. Lottie was on the phone with Isabelle and got angry at something she told her, called me into her office, and that was the end of it."

"Digby," Mom spoke up hesitantly, as if unsure whether it was the best time to interrupt or not. Absentmindedly, she stroked the top of my paw as it sat atop the table. "This doesn't happen to have anything to do with the crisis, does it?"

"It does," I confessed. "It has everything to do with it."

Mom snuck an anxious glance over at Dad seated beside her for a few seconds before she turned her focus back to me.

"What... um..." Mom weakly cleared her throat, patting my paw beneath hers. "Can you tell me what that means?"

I had to tell her what happened with Isabelle. That was where all of this had started. I wouldn't have been here if it hadn't begun with the rigid tension that had split us apart when I was seventeen. I withdrew my paw from Mom's, running it across my sore face and brushing my untidy bangs further from my eyes.

"I didn't know what I was doing," I murmured, dropping my paw onto my lap. It was far up on the list of stupid ways to own up to your mistakes, but if I didn't get it out of the way first, it would have sounded like a lie or at least untruthful to some degree. "It started when I was still fighting with Isabelle a couple years ago. I was hurt, and I... It was a dumb thing I did. I barely even remember doing it. Apparently, I messed with the phone settings and changed them so that voicemails wouldn't be recorded anymore. The lack of communication after not having voicemails to refer to for the last two years basically put this wall between Happy Home and our clients. I tore down the company just because I wasn't getting along with her and now everyone that knows me, including Lottie, hates me for my choices."

"Well..." Dad began falteringly, the same way that Mom had. His arms were folded as he glanced between Mom and me, but more in a casual manner than an angry one. "I mean, it's good that we know what was causing all that damage, right? They were going to shut down the building if they couldn't figure out what was happening, you said."

"Tucker," Mom said faintly to stop him.

"Yep," Dad murmured, recognizing his mistake with a slight nod.

Silence settled in the heaviness of the room. It lingered as the moments crawled by, tense eyes meeting each other. It was only broken after several seconds, when Dad drew in a deep breath and leaned forward to address me.

"I suppose there's no use dwelling on the past at this point," he admitted, unfolding his arms to perch his elbows on the table. I couldn't read the emotion in his deadpan face, but I was sure that the disappointment was prominent somewhere I couldn't see it. "But we do need to talk about the future."

It was probably the polar opposite of what could have helped me, but I forced a nod of agreement anyway. Maybe it wasn't wanted, but I couldn't deny it was needed.

"I think the only thing left you can do is move on at this point," Dad explained. "It sounds harsh, and I know it feels harsh, but it's the only thing you can do. I've been fired from jobs before and it's not a good feeling. I'm going to be honest with you, though. I'm sure there are a lot of animals that are still very upset with you. It's not your fault. This turned out to be a bigger issue than you understood at the time. I think it's best if you stay home for a while, but I strongly advise you start looking for another job when you're ready to. We can help you with that. Whatever you need. You can even go back to school first if you wish."

I'm back where I started, I realized. Two years ago, I was out of school and searching for either a college to attend or a job that would take me with only high school education. Receiving Lottie's letter and being invited to work at the HHDA was a memory that would be burned into my head until the day I took my final breath. I had been down this road before. But I wasn't going back to where I had once gone.

"Do you have a backup plan?" Dad asked me. "What do you want to do with your life from here on out?"

It was one thing imagining what this conversation would have been like and another entirely to be sitting through it. Last year, I could have said that I couldn't even put together an image of a future where I would stop working at the HHDA and need to focus on other aspects of my life. Last year—And even as recent as yesterday—I had something to do with my life. I once couldn't begin to picture a life without the firm schedule of my designing day. Now I sat here with nothing.

"My work at the HHDA was my life," I mumbled.

. . .

It was almost like the seldom days in my puppyhood when I missed school, trapped at home instead by some kind of sickness. Closed in by the all-too familiar pale walls of my house during hours they weren't usually seen. Watching the hours tick by, wondering where my friends could have been at that very moment, struggling to shake the gnawing feeling that I wasn't where I was meant to be.

Not another word was spoken that day. At least, none that stood out to me. Mom and Dad kept their distance to give me space, resuming their daily work that I never got to see during the day while I was at work, like the laundry that Mom had been doing when I first arrived at home. I was not short of options that I tried to distract myself from the crushing reality. I picked up a particularly thick book to read in bed, one of a tale of fantastical horror that I hadn't yet begun, but a duo of close friends from the beginning only painted Lottie's face in my memory and wrenched my stomach into a knot. Hours into the afternoon, I questioned whether I was hungry, but the thought of putting food into my system wasn't something that I would have called appealing right now. I shut myself off in my bedroom to have a short stretch, seeking to set a surge of serotonin going from the exercise alone, but blinked and discovered myself curled up under the blanket of my bed again. After that, I didn't bother getting up for the rest of the day. There wasn't much point otherwise. It wasn't like I had anything else to do.

It wasn't entirely clear when I had first fallen asleep, but it must have happened quickly. I awoke several times in the afternoon and evening, stealing a glance at my alarm clock to check the time and settling back into the bed to sink back into sleep. Two forty-five, five forty, eight o'clock, nine fifty-five. I'd expected someone to knock on my door and awaken me at some point for dinner, but it finally snuck into my drowsy mind at almost ten at night that I had missed it.

Shadows slowly suffocated the house in the setting sun until a dimness clouded my room completely. No matter how detached I was going into the first night, my one comfort was recognizing that my bed seemed all the more cozy with every hour I isolated myself with it. I surfaced between consciousness and sleep as the night dragged on for a lifetime. Disquieting dreams were strung through the brief periods of sleep, flashing with impressions of my very last conversation with Lottie. The words exchanged refused to replay into my memory after awakening, though the same screaming and hysterical sobs imprinted on my mind. Multiple times, I broke free from sleep with my face flushed with heat, a haunting and rancid vibe overwhelming the dense darkness, and a certain bubbling in my stomach that I knew would have been a challenge to fall asleep with.

It wasn't until the morning that the expected knock arrived. It was a soft knock, ripping me from sleep, and was followed by Mom's gentle question of whether I would want some breakfast to begin the day. She even offered to prepare me a nice, steaming cup of coffee, since I would usually do it myself. For a heartbeat, I actually did consider the idea of dragging myself out of bed and easing into emotional existence over a cup of coffee, but then I caught a glimpse of the time. It was past eight, almost eight forty. The first day of my lost lifestyle had already begun while I wasn't awake to process it. Something in my sluggish mind flicked a switch and decided that I couldn't bear that thought, so I gave a sleepy mumble about wanting to be left alone. Mom had willingly accepted this answer, but a fragility in her voice hinted of either worry or hurt. Maybe both. I didn't know. Guilt pinched at my stomach as I listened to her footsteps receding, but the feeling was short-lived as I rolled over and fell back asleep.

The next time I woke up was the last, as I struggled in squeezing out any more sleep once the twenty-four hour mark hit. The hour of two in the afternoon struck about ten minutes after I had torn myself from sleep once again, finding me laying still with my cheek pressed into the pillow as I rested on my front for several minutes afterward just for my efforts to return to sleep to fail to bear fruit. Twenty minutes past two, I collected myself at last and lugged myself out of bed to dress myself in something other than my uniform.

My appetite was still messed up; not a single pang of hunger touched my stomach. Per suggestion from Mom, I choked down a snack of sliced apples that she had prepared for me so that I could have eaten something today. It was probably a good thing that she had gone ahead and cut me up a snack when she did once she knew that I was awake—I doubted that I would have done the same for myself today.

Around three in the afternoon, Mom, Dad, and I clustered around the table like we had done yesterday, but there was no pressing matter to be addressed this time. This was rather more of a casual hangout, as far as I was concerned. We flitted meaningless conversation back and forth, like how it had been too cloudy to see the stars last night and a daughter of Mom's friend graduating high school. But maybe thirty or forty minutes into the lighthearted converse, we were unanticipatedly interrupted.

"But yeah, that's just like what I was saying," Dad went on. He leaned his elbow on the back of the chair as he addressed Mom more than he addressed me. I hadn't offered much word in conversation, what with the void burrowed in my chest that I had yet to learn to ignore, and they had both appeared to pick up on it as they gradually began to direct the conversation more and more towards each other instead. "Why would you take that risk when there's still so much you could do without it?"

"Mm-hmm," Mom agreed with a slow nod. Her paws wrapped snugly around a white mug on the table as she delighted in a cup of reddish herbal tea.

"And that's just it, for the most part. I don't understand why..." Dad began before his voice was silenced in halt when a hammering knock rattled the front door. It wasn't a particularly aggressive knock, just one that seemed naturally heavy.

"Oh, I've got that," Mom said. She slipped her hands from the mug and rose from the table, politely scooting her chair back in and crossing the floor to reach the door. I noticed wisps of steam still sprouting from the auburn liquid. It was only as she dragged open the door that an idea revealed itself in my mind, coming to the light as the sound of the knock finally registered, and quite abruptly at that.

Lottie. It had to be Lottie. It was a rare occasion in a day when somebody stopped by at all, but I'd created some tense history with Lottie yesterday. In fact, it was just like her to make a point to discuss what had happened after a fight and work through it, so much so that my mind was dead set the moment the thought struck. If I could have just spoken to her, if I could have explained myself, then with the right words, this could have all been in the past. A second chance.

"Well, good afternoon!" Mom gushed cheerfully in greeting to the animal that stood at the door, but I was not at an angle to earn a glimpse past the doorway. As she spoke, Dad heaved himself up from the table, shuffling around to stand beside me instead, and nonchalantly perched his arms on the back of my chair. "I haven't seen you around here in quite a while. I didn't expect to see you so early, either. What can I do for you?"

Motion sprung to life in me, my mouth dropping open in a sudden surge of hope as I whirled around to look at Dad behind me. "Is it Lottie?" I inquired.

Dad leaned past me, striving for a glance through the doorway. He examined the sight for a couple of seconds before he looked back at me and shook his head. It wasn't her. The energy drained as swiftly as it had arrived, drooping my limbs as I inched back into place in my chair.

"Oh, of course! He's just in here, actually. Digby, you have a visitor," Mom pointed out, her floppy ears swinging as she tossed a glance back at me again and stepped out of the way for the guest to enter.

Ducking through the doorway, Lyle tugged on the sleeves of his red jacket to adjust them before his gaze fell upon me. A familiar frown etched into his face, but what I saw in his eyes as they met mine I didn't recognize, nor was I able to comprehend fully. There was a certain coldness there as they sat behind his thick black glasses, but I might have seen a touch of anger cross them, nothing more than a flick, a sliver of light before the clouds rolled in.

He knew.

"Well, I'll leave you two to talk," Mom offered courteously, gesturing for Dad to join her as she disappeared back into the hallway again.

Lyle's last glance in her direction was short, offering nothing more than a little nod of gratitude. Not a word. He didn't yet look back at me, but instead pushed back his sleeve to study the face of his watch until the click of my parents' bedroom door closing behind them sounded. Suddenly, I wasn't entirely sure that being alone with Lyle was what I wanted.

In the new solitude, Lyle pushed his sleeve back into place and spoke.

"Let's have a little chat, Digby," he said, withdrawing the chair across from me at the table and lowering himself into a seat. It was an abruptness—Professional, of course, but an abruptness nonetheless—That I had not seen for years. I'd gone back to square one with his trust. We might have been family once, but that life was no longer reality.

"I don't know what to say," I confessed.

"Okay. So don't say anything," Lyle told me. "However, I do have something to say."

A rotten bitterness had begun to spill out into my stomach, poisoning the tip of my tongue. Lyle was an irritable animal in general. That much I knew for sure about him, even though there was probably a mountain of things I didn't. But I'd witnessed him put aside that irritability to show love to those around him that he was close with in the way it was most well received. Lottie and her hugs. Me and the empty promises of a better future. If we had lost that now, I didn't dare contemplate where I stood through his eyes.

I didn't speak.

"The reason I'm here is to talk about what happened," Lyle went on after a pause of wait, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. "I'm sure you understand well what I mean. You should know that I spoke with Lottie. I'm not going to make you talk about that part, at least. I'm not a monster. She told me everything that happened. I think it's best if I refrain from letting you know exactly how I feel about that.

"Anyway, the truth is, Lottie isn't really supposed to fire you just like that. She needs to run all final decisions by me first. She doesn't have the status to make that choice herself. So, we worked together to create a plan regarding whether or not you have a future at the HHDA. Usually, she would stop by or give you a call and discuss it with you directly, but... well, uh, saying she doesn't want to be around you right now is quite likely an understatement. I can't say I don't understand where she's coming from."

A jab of an ache tugged at my chest. Oh. My troubled mind had hurled similar messages at me, but hearing them out loud was the most evident reminder of how much of a problem-causing failure I was. Nobody could even pretend it wasn't true anymore and now it was even being said to my face.

"I'll be honest here. What you've done has hurt Lottie deeply to the point where she feels personally victimized as well as having suffered trauma to some extent and that isn't okay," Lyle went on. His dark eyes peered unmoving at me from behind his glasses. "I'm hesitant to allow you around her at all from here on out. Nevertheless, we've come to a decision on your future. You were a good designer, Digby. A good worker. We were thinking that firing you isn't the best way to go here, but that doesn't mean we're bringing you back, either."

My heart was thumping in my chest as I continued to listen in silence, but it wasn't my former work that my mind had locked onto. I had provoked Lottie to the point where she genuinely hated me. Trying to avoid harming our friendship to any degree before now had been like walking on a tightrope, but now, it seemed that I'd just plunged right down—All by accident.

"Here's the plan." Lyle sat up again, shifting his arms on the table to fold his paws in front of him. "We've settled on a work suspension for you, but a particularly lengthy one at that. Yes, there will be a day when I will start providing you with your work again, unless you decide to step away completely before that time comes. You will use this time to reevaluate the poor choices you made and the damage you've caused. You'll need to come back to work with the right motives to patch up what's left of your mistakes after the fixing that'll be done while you're gone or you're out of there for good. If you choose to return to work, I'll be expecting you in the month of June of next year, which is approximately eleven months from this current date."

Eleven months. Eleven months before I could work again. I should have just been happy that I was allowed to return to work at all, after everything I'd done, but the only sensation that struck me was my stomach diving sharply in dismay. Eleven months was as good as nothing. It wouldn't have even mattered at that point. All of my work over the years would have been undone. If I wasn't still disgraced at that point, my name would have faded away entirely. Forgotten. Left behind. Every story that carried me to the final chapter forced to be rewritten.

I couldn't start again. Not after everything.

"Well, if you've still got nothing to say, then I believe this discussion is over," Lyle concluded, shuffling back his chair once again to rise carefully to his feet. "I need you to start taking this seriously, Digby. If not for my sake, then for Lottie's."

"Wait," I interjected immediately before he could begin his leave. In the fleeting moments of our encounter, pleads proceeded to spill from my tongue like a faucet turned to full power. "No, please. There must be another way out of this. Right? I can be different. I can change. I can't lose this. I need you to reconsider or talk to Lottie again, or... or something. Anything. Please. You need to understand me."

Lyle's dark eyes staring blankly down into mine and his wordless lack of response to my urging left me to falter. I needed no words from him for the truth to descend upon me once the silence reigned in the room, fueling the thin tension between desperate eye contact. Lottie and I had two different requests. I cared about my presence in the HHDA more than anything else in my life and Lottie wanted nothing more than for me to be gone from that place. As of right now, it was my word against hers. Lottie or myself. There was nothing else to it. Lyle could only choose to honor her needs or my own.

"Goodbye, Digby," Lyle said, tucking in his chair before he quietly crossed the room, dismissed himself through the doorway, and was gone with nothing but the abrupt latch of the door in his departure.

Lyle would always choose Lottie.