“I don’t know . . . Maybe . . . There’s this guy buried here in New York City and on his gravestone are all these weird markings, some sort of code, right? For, like, a hundred years no one knew what it meant—maybe nothing—so then one day, someone at a newspaper solved the riddle and decoded it.”

“What did it say?”

“‘Memento mori.’ Or maybe it was ‘Remember death,’ I’m not certain. It was one of the two. I just heard about the story one time. We should look it up.”

“I should look it up.”

“Okay, you should, sure, but either you let me do it with you or I’ll go back to my room and do it myself where you can’t supervise my online activity. And I might go to a site that’s not appropriate and you wouldn’t know about it. Let me help you.”

I was about to reply, but she kept going. “Besides, if you say no, I might be tempted to pout, and you’ll eventually get tired of trying to get me to snap out of it and just give up and let me have my way. And don’t even try to argue with me about that ’cause I’m more stubborn than you are.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Oh yes, I am.”

I folded my arms. “I’m thirty-five years old. I have nineteen more years of experience at being stubborn than you do. You’re no match for me.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m so stubborn I’m gonna let you have the last word.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it as she tilted her head and smiled. She waited for me to speak, watching me with wide, expectant eyes.

“Don’t even try that puppy-dog look with me,” I said.

“You know how I feel about dogs. That wasn’t very nice.”

“Nice is not on the menu for today.”

“I like that. For you, that was definitely A-list material.”

“What’s the deal with you and dogs, anyway?”

“Don’t get me started.”

“I thought you loved animals.”

“I do. Dogs don’t count. Any animal that can smell sixty thousand times better than human beings can and spends its time smelling people’s shoes and other animals’ butts is not on my list of most beloved animals.”

“Did you get bitten by a dog once?”

“What are you, a psychologist now?”

“I’m just trying to figure out why you hate them so much.”

“Who ever said that dog-loving should be the default setting for life? No, I wasn’t bitten, but half a million people in North America are, every year. Imagine if that was the same with any other animal. Think about the public outcry. Sharks. Snakes. Raccoons. Armadillos.”

“Armadillos? Really?”