“What?" She drew herself up, stern as a cat presented with the wrong food for dinner.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” “You’re lying. The last time we were both at dinner, you got up in the middle of Mom’s fajita presentation and said you forgot to feed your cat.”Uh-oh.“So?”“You don’t have a cat.”

“Drowning yourself won't help, she told herself sternly. Now, drowning Will, on the other hand...”

“Grow up? Get herself straightened out? Her mind reeled from the verbal battering. No matter what she did, her father would tell her she was wrong. Worthless. Undeserving.”

“When someone asks, Dogs or cats? I usually say, For what, dinner?”

“Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down. Burgeon, indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was--the feeling that presently, that at any moment now, she might crop out all green.”