“For the last time, he was not a cult leader—” Dawn protested, but Sophie had cut her off.

“I’m a fully functioning adult human being whose bill of health has been clear for years,” she’d stated, simply and with a stern look that would have made Harrison quake. “Unless you’d like to hold me hostage in the basement, you have no choice but to bid me a cheerful farewell.”

And it had worked.

Well, mostly. Her mom hadn’t been cheerful about her goodbye, but that went without saying.

“We’re going to have so much fun this weekend, aren’t we, Bubbles?” she asked the puppy now, her enthusiasm overflowing to the animal seated next to her. “All those tents and fishing poles and marshmallows…”

Harrison grunted again. “Can you name one other thing associated with camping?”

“Um.” She scanned her vast childhood reading list for any and all mentions of the great outdoors. Most of what she’d read involved children hiding in train boxcars and rafts barreling down the Mississippi, so there wasn’t much to go on. “Cans of beans?”

This time, his grunt was closer to a laugh. “You weren’t kidding when you said you don’t get out much, were you?”

“Alas, no.” She heaved a mock sigh. “My life has been much smaller than you realize. Although, to be fair, I did go to Disneyland once with my parents and sisters.”

She didn’t add that it had been part of the Make-A-Wish program, and that the trip had been overshadowed by the deep but unspoken fear that it might be Sophie’s only chance to see the Magic Kingdom. There was something altogether depressing about riding through the Haunted Mansion when you had more in common with the ghosts than the passengers.

“You’ve got one over me, then,” Harrison said. “I’ve never been to a theme park of any kind. My dad wasn’t big on family vacations.”

“But you camped?” she asked, a determined note of optimism in her voice. “Together, I mean? You had no pets and you had no trips to Disney, but you did that much, right?”

He cast her a sideways glance. “Yes, we camped. It’s one of the only things I can remember doing with my dad. One of the only good things at least.”

That was one of the saddest things Sophie had ever heard, but she knew Harrison well enough to realize that showing him pity would only shut him down. “Well, now you have a pet—kind of—so that’s something. I know you think I’m being silly, insisting on this trip when Bubbles is still so new, but if you spend half your life outside, she needs to get used to it. The tents, the people, the atmosphere—all of it. And the timing is perfect. We can introduce the pouch.”