

I guess I’d pictured my dad and me making pancakes together on Sunday morning, or playing hearts, or taking walks in the woods.

I thought this alternative beat living with my mom and Joe and the miracle twins, but it hadn’t been the smooth transition I’d hoped for. Since that was where my father spent 99 percent of his time, it was expected that I follow. That’s where my father’s captive wolf packs were housed, along with gibbons, falcons, an overweight lion, and the animatronic T. Or, more accurately, my clothes were once again hanging in my former bedroom, but I was living out of a backpack in a trailer on the north end of Redmond’s Trading Post & Dinosaur World. I was thirteen, and I’d just moved back in with my father. Seconds before our truck slams into the tree, I remember the first time I tried to save a life.
