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“All rise!” the clerk called out. “The Montalban Civil Court is now in session, the honorable Maxine Lex presiding.”
The summons had arrived three days before, just as I was leaving the house to meet Jason for our trip to Ciprias, the day after that terrible, tension-filled breakfast. My feelings about that breakfast still lingered inside me. I now possessed both a deeper understanding of my mother and her struggles, and an unnamed, unidentified sense that my understanding was still incomplete.
After the summons, I'd checked with several law experts to find my best approach. I appeared to have no legal standing for my initial action. What an owner did with his or her labgrown was his or her decision. Neither the government nor the citizen had any jurisdiction or even compelling inter
