Jane pushed her plate toward the side of the table and sighed. When Shelley got the bit in her teeth, there was no stopping her.

Shelley took a sip of her soup. "Ugh. It's awful and it's cold already. Let's go home and maybe we can get together this evening after you've read through this carefully."

Jane was happy to abandon her choices of food as well. The macaroni and cheese must have been made from dried skim milk and the cheapest artificial cheese it was possible to purchase.

After she had fixed Todd, Katie, and herself a good dinner, Jane told the kids to load up the dishwasher and put away the leftovers. Then she went to her bedroom to study the contract. She was as disappointed as Shelley had been. The terms weren't good. What was more, it wasn't even written properly. There were words spelled wrong. Some of the conditions weren't even stated in full sentences. Bitsy had apparently pieced this up herself with no guide at all. And she didn't even know the difference between it's and its. All of the pronouns were feminine gender.

Jane wasn't normally a fanatic grammar cop, but the contract made her wonder if Bitsy wasn't

downright stupid. Or simply too stingy to consult an attorney to draw up a contract.

Either choice was scary.

As she reached for the phone to call Shelley, it rang.

"Have you read it yet?" Shelley asked.

"It's awful. There are sentence fragments about important things that don't even make sense," Jane said.

"That's not all that's wrong," Shelley said. "May I come over and show you something else I've discovered?"

Shelley turned up minutes later with wads and rolls of paperwork. She had fire in her eyes. Even her hair was in disarray, as if she'd been trying to tear bits of it out.