It made sense when she thought about it. Clarissa was exactly the kind of woman who’d go to Rent-A-Dog and get a designer second for fake warmth in her faux Post-impressionist wall painting. Spot looked up at her now, shaking, almost as pathetic as he was ugly.

I am not going to rescue you, Tilda thought, capping her inhaler. I can’t save everybody, I’m asthmatic, and I don’t want a dog, especially not one who acts like he snorts coke and looks like he rolls in it.

“Sign it again up here,” Clarissa said. “I’ll get you a Sharpie.”

“No,” Tilda said. “I signed it. It’s done. And I’ll take the completion check now, thank you.”

“Well, I don’t know, that signature-” Clarissa began, and Tilda pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and turned steely eyes on her. Clarissa nodded. “I’ll go get that check, then.”

Left alone with Spot -a hell of a name for a dog that had none- Tilda tried to think of something besides the pound. There was the mural, another success, another chunk of money off the family debt, another two weeks painted from her life by ripping off art history-

Her cell phone rang and cut short her stab at optimism. Tilda flipped open the cover. “Hell-o.”

“Tilda,” her mother said, “we have a problem.”

“Really,” Tilda said, staring at the sunflowers. “Who’d have guessed?”

“It’s bad,” Gwen said, and Tilda stopped, taken aback by the seriousness in her mother’s voice. Gwennie did muffins and Double-Crostics, not serious.

“Okay, so whatever it is, we’ll fix it.” She looked down at the dog again, and he gazed back at her, desperation in his eyes. “What is it?”

“Nadine sold a Scarlet.”

Tilda jerked her head up as her stomach cramped. In the background on the phone, she heard her sixteen-year-old niece say, “I still don’t get what I did wrong,” and she went cold all over.

“There aren’t any Scarlets.” Tilda tried to draw a deep breath while not throwing up. “Dad sold them all.”