I don’t get out of bed until I hear the dogs going crazy downstairs. The night before, Dad kept talking about the big court date, and Mom spent the evening on the phone with Gram, planning the “Kat Coolidge birthday party.” The whole time, I watched Lion hop on three legs around the kitchen. The dog does fine. Wes rescued the three-legged Pomeranian from Nice Animal Shelter, but he couldn’t find a home for him. Now he’s saving Lion for his mom, when she gets out of rehab and has a place of her own. But what I thought as I watched the little dog was how he’d been tossed from home to home, returned because he was too much trouble. And I know that’s what would have happened to me if the Coolidges weren’t the kind of people they are. I’d be the one returned to sender. The dogs are still barking downstairs. I walk to the banister and peer down. Fiona! She and Hank are standing on the front porch. I dash back to my room and pull on clothes and my wig, brush my teeth, and get downstairs as fast as I can.
