11 Happy Birthday!
When I wake the next morning, I ignore my hunger pains. There’s no way that I’m going to go down to the breakfast buffet and risk running into Preston after yesterday’s debacle.
After my fake stumble into Professor Ratcliffe the day before, I managed to convince him to go along with my story that his wife had been a regular customer at my fictitious nail salon. I told Preston and Matteo that she and I had become friendly, bonding over a shared love of acrylic nails. That had led me to inviting her and the professor to a barbecue at my house one weekend, which was where they met my father.
Over a couple of beers, the professor and his wife told my father about the problems they had been having getting their cat, Esmerelda, to stop sharpening her claws on their furnit
