My eyebrows shot up and Mr. Desmond and I exchange a surprised look. How’d she know that? I’d mouthed to him. He’d shrugged.

I’d spoken up, “Maybe we should talk about what you’re interested in negotiating for at this point, Veronica.”

I’d left them to talk about custody of the dogs, both prized German shepherds who were pure-bred, born in special kennels in Germany, and then imported into the US and trained in a special school in North Carolina. They’d each cost over a hundred k, and I’d been shocked when I found that out.

Mr. Desmond had explained he’d gotten one for Veronica, for security purposes. The dog turned out to be such a good companion for her that he decided to get another one, “so that the dog wouldn’t be lonely.”

Soon enough, he’d also grown fond of the dogs, and, although he’d initially left them with her when they separated, he was now asking to get them for some days of the week.

From his description of the legal fights that had erupted over their divorce, it sounded like the dogs had become one of the bitterly-contested aspects of the divorce.

From the start, when I reviewed the files of the divorce, I’d had a gut feeling that the divorce had become unnecessarily contentious the longer it had been drawn out. A lot of disputes had arisen only after lawyers from one or the other side began to egg for more of this or less of that. Just nit-picking. The initial understanding the erstwhile couple had drawn up by themselves on a yellow legal pad had actually been a good basis for dividing things. They just got side-tracked into unnecessary motions somewhere along the way once they’d each hired legal representation to document things.

Soon after I took over the case I’d started to slowly steer Mr. Desmond back to that charmingly written up understanding the couple had reached at the start. I could see that his frame of mind became decidedly less stressed the closer we got to that initial understanding.

Maybe an agreement about the German shepherds would be the tipping point that would allow things to get to that point.

Unfortunately, her lawyer got on the call fifteen minutes after we’d started and he immediately walked things back.   I started to argue the points Veronica and Mr. Desmond had reached on their own concerning the dogs, without any help from me. I could see her lawyer was steadily dismantling the progress they’d made, however, and I was desperate not to lose the momentum the couple had gained over the last fifteen minutes. But he was unyielding, and soon, Veronica and Mr. Desmond took over the argument I was having with her lawyer. In the blink of an eye, they were back to throwing veiled insults at each other over the phone.