Lyddie struggled to read the first line of her certificate.  “Sull—ee… Sool-ee-mann….  What does it say?”

            “Here, I can help you,” Doria offered.  “It says, ‘let it be known that Lyddie Sullivan has no brain and knows nothing about pufferfish.  Her head is full of grape juice.”

            “It does not say that!” Lyddie complained.  “Aunt ‘Lilah, make her stop!”  She shoved Doria, and Doria shoved back harder.

            Melisma snatched Lyddie’s voucher so her sisters wouldn’t crumple it in their skirmish.  “It’s a coupon, Lyddie,” she said.  “We’re here today to trade them in.”

            “Trade them in?”  Doria gave Lyddie’s shoulder a final punch.  “For what?  Are they giving us free stuff?”

            Lyddie’s ears perked up.  “I want free stuff!”

            Melisma shrugged.  She had no idea what the vouchers were for.  Elmer had only said they were to make up for “minor cosmetic damage” to their personalities.

            They didn’t have to wait long to find out.  “Next customer,” the counter clerk wheezed as he flipped open a large, white binder.

            Aunt Delilah stepped forward, dragging Doria and Lyddie behind her.

            “Good morning,” she said.  “I filed a claim yesterday for policy number, uh, 115-W2-3924-ZZ.  Your agents came to my house and did something with my nephew.  I’d like to resolve the situation.”

            Lyddie wrenched herself free of Aunt Delilah and slapped her voucher coupon proudly on the counter.  “And I want my free stuff!”

            The clerk gazed disinterestedly at Aunt Delilah for a moment, then glanced at Lyddie’s voucher.  Doria and Melisma passed him their slips as well.  “Please wait one moment,” he said slowly.  He turned and shifted a pile of boxes to one side, then disappeared into a back room.

            Doria looked at her sister anxiously.  “What’s going on, Melisma?  What does Aunt Delilah mean about them doing something to Cade?”

            “I don’t know what happened to Cade,” Melisma said, with an edge of nervousness in her own voice.  “Hopefully we’ll find out soon.”

            The clerk returned a few minutes later, carrying three oddly shaped packages.  He set them down on the counter, then sighed.

            “Sign here, please,” he mumbled, pushing the white binder in their direction.  “And here, and here.  There we are then.”  Melisma wrote her name in deliberate cursive.  Lyddie filled half the page with hers, spelled all the way out.  She made the ‘x’ extra big and wrote the ‘y’ backwards.

            Doria poked at the three bundles on the counter.  “What are these?” she asked.  Formless, gray plastic covered each package, and each had a large number scribbled in blue marker on the side.  One bundle felt soft and spongey, one was thin and hard, and the third rattled around when Doria poked it.

            “Those are your compensation packages,” the clerk said.  “It is my obligation to inform you that the Suleiman Kruld Financial Services company bears no responsibility for the misuse of these items, which are the exclusive property of the policy holders themselves.”  He flipped the binder shut.  “With the disbursement of these packages, the Suleiman Kruld Financial Services company considers these vouchers to be redeemed in full.  Here are your receipts.”

            Aunt Delilah clucked her tongue.  “Is that all?  There’s nothing else?  What about the other policy number?”

            The clerk gave another long, bored sigh.  He fixed Aunt Delilah with a baleful look as he slowly reopened the binder.  “One moment please,” he said.  “Do you have a claims receipt?”

            “No, they didn’t give me one,” Aunt Delilah said.  Her voice sounded slightly shrill.  “All I have is this.”  She slid Cade’s insurance card across the counter.

            The clerk eyed it for several seconds before picking it up.  “Wait here please.”  He disappeared again.

            Melisma’s throat tightened as she stared anxiously at her aunt.  “They didn’t give you a voucher for Cade?” she demanded.  “What if they won’t help us without one?”  She imagined a life without her brother in it.  School would be completely different, for one thing.  Cade was a loner, but it was nice to know that he was there, one year ahead of her, stumbling headfirst into pitfalls so she didn’t have to.  What would she say to his teachers if he never came back?

            Aunt Delilah ignored her niece’s questions.  While the clerk rummaged in the back, she pursed her lips and paced restlessly around the cramped room.

            Meanwhile, Doria tore the plastic wrapper from one of the packages.  “Hey, I remember this!” she exclaimed.

            “Are you sure you got the right one?” Lyddie asked suspiciously.

            “Oh yeah.  This is definitely mine,” Doria said.  She proudly raised a large, pink blanket.

            Melisma turned to look.  The blanket was Doria’s, alright.  She’d had it when she was a baby.  One corner had worn thin where she’d clutched and sucked on it, and the rest was splotchy from her drool stains.  But that blanket had fallen apart years ago.  How did the company have it now?

            Melisma found the package that matched her own receipt and scooped it off the table.  Maybe it would help them find Cade.  But she knew as soon as she picked it up that it couldn’t actually help anybody.

            “I don’t get it."  She pulled the wrapping open.  Inside lay a tiny, plastic bow, no longer than her forearm, with a string so loose that it could never hope to fire anything.  The bow was pink and white and purple, with a giant, fake, heart-shaped ruby set in the side.  It was hideous now, but it had been the most beautiful thing in existence to her when she was seven.  The world had been a much scarier place back then, and she liked knowing that she could shoot any bad guys that came too close.

            Next to the bow lay a plastic quiver, with a strap that would barely fit over her bicep.  It held six pink and purple arrows, with rubber fletching at their tails and with suction cups where their heads should be.

            “AWESOME!” Lyddie exclaimed.  “I want one of those!”

            “Hey, I remember that bow!” Doria said.  “I always wondered where it went.”

            “Mom and Dad gave it away."  Melisma stared at the thing in confusion.  She wanted to cry.  She had lost her brother and gotten a toy bow and arrow as a consolation prize.

            “My turn!  I want my free stuff!” Lyddie shouted.  Her bundle rattled and clattered as she yanked it from the counter and pulled it onto her chair.  She set it in her lap and ripped the plastic open.  She looked inside, and her face crumpled into an angry pout.

            “What’d you get?” Doria asked.  She’d already wrapped her blanket around her neck and tied it like a cape.

            “It’s a stupid baby toy,” Lyddie said.  She held up a red and blue ball, covered with holes of various sizes.  Inside rattled an assortment of yellow plastic shapes.  The toy was obviously Lyddie’s; it still had the words “ALL THE FARTS” scrawled across one side in Doria’s wobbly four-year-old handwriting.  Lyddie tossed the ball angrily to the floor, narrowly missing Doria’s foot.

            “Pick that up!” Aunt Delilah snapped.  Lyddie dutifully collected the ball from the floor, then held it at arm’s length in front of her.  She scowled at it as if it were the source of all the world’s evil.

            The clerk reentered a moment later, carrying a thick file of papers under one arm.  Something had happened in the back room – his bored expression was gone, and now he stared back and forth between Aunt Delilah and the girls with an anxious, hunted expression.

            Aunt Delilah rushed to him.  “Any luck?”

            He cringed as he set the file down.  “Well, Ma’am,” he said, “I’ve reviewed the case you mentioned.  I’m afraid we have a situation.”

            “A situation?” Delilah barked.  “What do you mean, a situation?”

            The clerk flinched.  “You see, Ma’am, there is a fourth voucher coupon.  It was clipped to the outside of the file.  It’s for a Mr. Cadence Sullivan.”

            “Yes, that’s my nephew!”  Delilah exclaimed.  “And?”

            The clerk slid a red half-sheet of paper across the counter toward her aunt.  This voucher’s text was different: