Dewey blinks her blue and brown eyes at me, then slowly turns toward Catniss. Catniss touches her nose to Dewey’s, reaches out with her paw, and boops her on the head. Dewey flinches but leans in for a sniff. Catniss boops her again and gently grabs Dewey’s face between her paws and licks her cheek. Dewey’s stiff expression loosens into a big doggy smile with her signature look: tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth. Catniss jumps down and immediately starts rolling around on the floor, belly up.

Dewey slowly squirms off my lap and lies down next to her.

“They like each other!” Macy squeals, clasping her hands together.

“See?” I say out loud. “Friends.”

Sisters, Dewey tells me. She says we’re sisters!

“Sisters!” I agree. “She’s right.”

Once the newness of Catniss wears off, Dewey can’t keep her eyes open, and soon both Dewey and Catniss are curled up around each other, asleep on the carpet.

“They have the right idea,” Gramps says. “You girls will be all right if I go lie down for a little catnap of my own?” he asks.

“Sure, Gramps,” I answer. As he stands up, he has to steady himself with one hand on the coffee table and the other on the arm of the couch. I remember how Mama had said that some things might change with Gramps, like he might get tired more easily than he used to.

I stand up and hold my hand out.

Gramps looks at my hand like it smells bad. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“It’s just that, I thought, maybe”—you need help, but I don’t say that—“I mean, do you not feel well?”

“Sass, you’re starting to sound like your mother. I feel fine, just tired.” He shoos his hand in my direction.

I watch as Gramps makes his way down the hall to his room. I definitely don’t want to start sounding like my mother, especially when she and Gramps haven’t been getting along too great lately.

Dewey sighs and opens her eyes. Where’d he go?

“It’s okay, he’s just taking a nap,” I say.

“My grandma takes naps too,” Macy responds, even though I wasn’t exactly talking to her. “She says naps are good for you.”

Macy and I are careful to be quiet, with all the napping going on. We decide to make some decorations for Gramps’s room, now that it looks like he’s staying for good. She shows me how to make the same kind of paper garland she has hanging in her bedroom. We get a big stack of old newspapers from the recycling bin and sit on the floor and fold what seem like hundreds of origami flowers and cranes and stars.