I sometimes wonder if she met someone who told her things that made her unhappy with our life, because she seemed to change overnight.

She still sat with me in the evenings and did all those mom things but she rarely smiled anymore and she started to get lines around her mouth and eyes. Her lips pulled down much more often than up and I couldn’t reach her through the bars to push her cheeks into a smile.

I was six and a half years old when she fell in love.

She told me about him, how kind he was and how much he cared about her. She told me he was going to marry her. Us. That she would tell him all about me when the time was right.

He took her on trips every weekend, and the first night she left me alone, I cried every time I woke up. But when she came back she was like she used to be when I was little, before I ever freeze-framed, happy and excited, cooing to me and talking about plans for our future again.

Then one night, a week before my seventh birthday, she came home really late and soaking wet, and just walked right past my cage without even looking at me, went into her bedroom and closed the door.

Her expression was so terrible as I’d stared up, excited to see her, that I hadn’t said any of the interesting, funny things I’d planned all day to say.

I just curled up and listened to her cry all night.

I was pretty sure he’d decided not to marry us.

I think he broke her heart.

My seventh birthday came and went but she didn’t notice. For the first time, there was no Irish stew and ice cream and no shared stories of One Day.

I celebrated anyway, having an imaginary meal with my imaginary dog, Robin, that lived in my cage with me and could talk and told the funniest jokes and we were always cracking ourselves up!

One day we were going to both be OLDER and go OUTSIDE and we were going to zoom around everywhere in the city that we wanted to go, and we were going to fix other people’s problems for them because that was just about the nicest thing you could do for anyone was notice them and fix their problems and sometimes even just spend time with them!

After that she stopped going away on weekends. For a while we didn’t have very much food and she no longer wore the work uniform she used to wear. Then one day she dressed up so pretty and went to work in the afternoon and came home much later than she used to. She started bringing bottles of wine home with her, instead of groceries or carryout.

She’d slide a Heat ’N Serve into my cage and, instead of telling me about her day or daydreaming with me about our plans, she’d drink in silence, staring at late night TV while I tried desperately to say something that would make her smile.

Or even look at me.

She began coming home even later after work, sometimes early in the morning, and when she did, she was slurring and stumbling and sometimes she was so very, very nice and sometimes she was…really not. Sometimes it was nearly dawn, with me pinching myself and making up all kinds of new games in my head to stay awake. Eager to see her, and tell her about the things I learned on TV that day, and what life was going to be like when I was OLDER and could go OUTSIDE with her. I was sure if we could just go OUTSIDE together, everything would be all right again.

One night she didn’t come home at all.

It went that way for a while, every four or five days she’d stay out all night. She lost weight and got dark smudges beneath her eyes.

Then she didn’t come home for two nights in a row. She stopped bringing bottles with her but her slurring and stumbling got even worse.

Then it was three nights. And when she finally did come home, she didn’t look at me very much and her eyes were unfocused and empty. Her gaze would kind of move around the room then hurry up when they got to the cage and I knew I was becoming invisible somehow.

The more she didn’t come home, the harder I tried when she was there to make her want to stay.

I knew if I could just make her remember how much she loved me, she wouldn’t want to leave. I’d never forgotten.

I guess my world changed slowly, but it felt like it happened all at once.

One day I just knew.

I wasn’t her daughter anymore.

I was the dog she’d never wanted.

JADA

Time doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it means to some of us.

I couldn’t shake Dancer’s words from my mind. They’d seemed fairly innocuous when he flung them at me.

They didn’t anymore. No wonder he hated it every time I disappeared.

Caoimhe told me his diagnosis but had refused to discuss it further. She’d said I needed to ask him about it. When she walked away, she glanced back with a look of pity and said softly, I really did think you knew. I’d not have disliked you so much otherwise.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

I knew what it was—the disease that killed young athletes on the basketball court or football field, without warning, cutting them down in their prime.

The symptoms: fatigue, shortness of breath, inability to exercise, fainting, a sensation of pounding heartbeats, heart murmur. At times it might be manageable, other times it could be severe. I was pretty sure all those times he’d disappeared for a few days he’d been having a bad spell and gone off alone, so I wouldn’t know.

The cause: usually gene mutation. An abnormal arrangement of heart muscle cells called “myofiber disarray.” I’d watched a TV show about it, years ago when all I’d had to do with my time was watch TV. The severity of the disease varied widely. Most people had a form where the septum between the two bottom chambers of the organ became enlarged and impeded blood flow out of the heart. It was usually inherited. The thickened heart muscle could eventually become too stiff to effectively fill with blood, resulting in heart failure. Sudden cardiac death was rare, but when it happened—it was to young people under the age of thirty. Young athletic people just like Dancer.