“I need to speak to the Cat.”

She stared at him incredulously. “Trees can’t own anything. They’re trees.”

She was alone. Abbie was often alone (if you don’t count her parents), but she didn’t mind. She had friends among the other kids in the neighborhood, but she tended toward flights of fancy, playing with her dog, and scribbling stories in a battered notebook in her large, childish handwriting.