Chapter 9

I watched the woman’s mouth move, but her words were drowned out by the hissing and yowling that emanated from the nondescript plastic carrier. It sounded as if a demon was in there but I’d finally recognized what was making those noises. It was acting just as it did every other time I’d gotten close—which was why I’d kept my distance from Briggs’ cat.

I could see rather than hear that the visitor was getting annoyed, and finally she stepped away from the carrier and gestured impatiently at me to follow as she stomped into the parking lot. I blinked but did as she’d requested, trailing behind her until she wheeled around and pointed back toward my building. “That is what he bequeathed to you,” she said, her voice still raised. “It’s yours.”

It was five-thirty in the morning and I wasn’t fully awake yet. I’d had another bad night but had finally dozed off when one of my neighbors, Mr. Mathieu, had started pounding on my door. “Addie! Miss Curran!” he’d yelled in the hallway. “There’s someone here for you and she won’t leave until you come down.”

“What?” I’d asked into the dimness of the early morning, and he’d repeated his words even more angrily when I opened my door: there was someone on the steps outside and she wouldn’t leave, and I had to get my butt downstairs to make her. I’d blinked, stumbled into flip-flops, and tottered toward the elevator.

“It’s broken again!” he’d barked at me angrily. “Nothing works in this shithole except for my bell!” Then he’d slammed his apartment door and that had brought out more neighbors who were as confused as I was and as cranky as he had been. Some of them had been up already, though, because my visitor had been pounding on the front door of the building for quite a while and indiscriminately ringing buzzers to gain admittance. Mine was still broken like the elevator, but unfortunately for them, theirs weren’t. As I’d flip-flopped my descent to the lobby, other residents had stuck their heads into the central staircase to voice their extreme displeasure at being woken up so early.

I apologized to them and I was unhappy too, until I saw the person who’d been pounding, pressing buttons, and yelling for me. Then my mind had temporarily blanked with shock and terror instead, because I’d been looking at Briggs—except then I’d noticed that this person looked older, and then I’d seen that she was a woman. The visitor had short hair like his and had been wearing large sunglasses, which made their resemblance seem greater, but really? It was their personalities that were most aligned.

I noticed this when she ordered, “Open this door im-med-iate-ly. You re-side in a hell-hole and I have ab-so-lute-ly no de-sire to re-main here long-er than nec-ess-ary. Come. Now.”

Her name was Patricia Skurwysyn, and she was Briggs’ aunt and not his reincarnation. She had introduced herself after I opened the door and walked outside; we had spoken on the phone when she’d notified me of the deaths and several more times after that because she’d had questions about Briggs’ home and other assets. It had been difficult to hear what she was saying this morning because we were next to that noisy crate with the slits in the sides. At first, I’d only vaguely recognized the creature shrieking into the chilly darkness, since nothing had been clicking in my mind yet. Then Aunt Patricia had repeated herself several times, but I still hadn’t understood the words or why she was pointing so vehemently at the crate.

“What?” I’d asked, and that was when she’d turned and stomped away, and I’d flip-flopped after her.

“I came to bring you your inheritance,” she slowly pronounced when she stopped walking. She’d spoken in the same way on the phone. “An inheritance is something you receive as a gift in remembrance after someone’s death.”

“I know that.”

“Briggs’ wish was to grant you an important personal item. That’s it.” She pointed toward the box, but I shook my head.

“There hasn’t even been a funeral,” I said. Maybe I really was as stupid as she seemed to think but I just wasn’t understanding this at all. “How could I have already inherited something?”

“There won’t be a funeral. With all the hubbub, I thought a private service and internment of the remnants would be best.” She spoke briskly and unemotionally as she discussed her sister-in-law and nephew, but my eyes filled with tears again.

“The rem…” My stomach twisted, too, and I pressed my fist into it. “Wait a minute, why didn’t you tell me about the burial? I would have liked to attend.” My family had been prepared to go as well (except for my brother), and they had been waiting for me to give them the information about time and place. They all now knew what had happened because once the police had released the names and had verified the rumors about the accident, the news had gone viral again, just as Granger had prophesied.

The fate of the vultures had become a major concern of environmentalists and birders until all the animals been tracked down and safely captured. There were several fan pages devoted to them, in fact, and they were beautiful birds and I definitely understood that they had only been acting according to their natures…but the fan pages didn’t mention, and no one had seemed to care very much either, that two people were dead. All that was left of them were the remnants that Briggs’ aunt had just talked about, some memories, and a lot of morbid online jokes. I thought it was terrible and no, I hadn’t yet started to feel better as I’d told Granger that I would. I felt worse than—

The pet carrier exploded with hissing and howls on the steps of my building as a man emerged from the front door and he jumped at least five feet into the air. “What the hell!” I heard him yelp, but it was hard to catch it over the rattling of the crate’s metal door and the fury within it.

“That’s your inheritance,” Aunt Patricia reiterated, and pointed to the spectacle. “That’s all. The cat.”

“No. No,” I repeated to her. “No, I don’t want Briggs’ cat. It hates me.”

“You’re free to dispose of it as you wish.”

“No one will ever want to adopt it because it’s so mean,” I told her and she seemed surprised.

“Oh, I suppose that an animal shelter would be another option. At any rate, it’s no longer my problem. Goodbye.” Even as she said the word, she was already walking briskly through the lot, past more cars and away from the building.

“Wait! Wait a minute, you can’t leave me here with that animal,” I said, but she didn’t even slow down. “I’m not allowed to have a cat. There are no pets allowed in the building!” I hurried after her as she started to trot, and it had been a minute since I’d exercised but I caught up.

Unfortunately, that only happened when she got into her car. I heard the doors lock.

“Hey!” I said. “You can’t leave his cat…wait, what did you do with his mom’s dogs?” No, I didn’t want those, either, but I didn’t want them hurt and this lady seemed a little heartless.

“I’m keeping the dogs,” she said through the glass. “They’re adorable.”

She wouldn’t think that when they started having their stomach problems on her rugs. “Wait,” I tried again. “If you’re keeping the dogs, then the cat—”

“No. They hate each other,” she informed me, and she pushed the big sunglasses up onto her head. The sun hadn’t risen very high so it was too dark to drive with them over her eyes, but there was enough light for me to spot what that the oversized frames had hidden: deep, inflamed scratches under her eyebrow, on her temple, and across her cheekbone.

My mouth dropped open. “Holy Mary! Did the cat try to take out your eye? Are you all right?”

She frowned in a way that looked exactly like her deceased nephew. “This will be our final communication,” she announced, and put the car into reverse.

“Wait,” I said, and then jumped out of the way as she backed up fast. “Wait! You can’t leave—”

“What the fuck is this, a racoon in a box? I’m calling the police,” I heard another voice say from my building entrance.

“No, it’s a cat,” I called, and then said, “Wait! Ms. Skurwysyn—Aunt Patricia—”

But she had peeled out of the parking lot and was gone.

“Don’t call the police, call Animal Control. I think it’s a wolverine,” someone else announced, and now I hurried back to the front door. It was lucky that I was up early because it would give me more time to figure out what to do about this terrible cat.

One thing I couldn’t do: leave it in my apartment. By the time that I was out of the shower, the neighbor on my left was pounding on the wall and the neighbor on the right was knocking on the door and yelling in the hallway, both of them incensed due to the incessant caterwauling. I’d opened the plastic kennel to try to comfort it, but it had reached out a paw and scratched my hand pretty badly. So I left a small bowl of water in front of the opening but it hadn’t emerged to drink, as far as I knew. I’d showered with the curtain open, though, because my bathroom door didn’t close properly. It left at least a few inches of space that a cat would have been able to squeeze through, and I’d been so afraid that it would sneak in, prepare for combat on the other side of the curtain, and then attack me while I was unaware. I also kept my eyes open the entire time, even when shampoo went in them.

When I was dressed and ready to go, it hissed viciously as I closed the door to the kennel again, and it yowled so loudly as I walked with it through the hallway and down the stairs that I started to run. I heard my neighbors emerging behind us to ask what that noise was and what was happening, if there was a hyena loose in the building.

I left it in the car at my next destination but I could still hear it even with the doors and windows closed. It wasn’t warm today but I worried that it wouldn’t get enough oxygen—it was just a poor animal, even if it did wish me dead.

I wasn’t the only one who heard it because the front door of the house opened next. “Addie?” Granger asked. “What are you doing here?” He walked down the two steps onto his front path, next to where I stood with the hose. He wore shorts and nothing else, even though it really wasn’t warm out here, and his cheeks and chin were covered in a light blonde haze of stubble. I thought he looked…sugar, he was so…

“I told you that you didn’t have to come over and water these plants,” he said, and then looked at where I’d parked. “What is that noise coming from your car? Are you having more engine trouble?”

I let go of the trigger of the hose nozzle. “Good morning,” I greeted him. “I said that I don’t mind watering. I really do find it relaxing.”

“Have you still been coming every…what in the hell is that noise?” He walked across his lawn barefoot and bent to peer into the side window of my vehicle. “Is it a cat?”

“Yes, and that’s good guess. The people at my apartment building thought I had a barn owl or a Tasmanian devil.”

“A Tasmanian devil in Detroit? That seems unlikely,” he said. “Although, after the vulture story…” He stopped and rubbed his palm over the stubble on his jaw. “Why do you have it? And what’s wrong with it?”

“It was Briggs’ cat,” I said. “His aunt dropped it off for me this morning. It’s my inheritance.”

He bent again and cupped his hands around his eyes as he looked through my rear window. “I wouldn’t have pictured him as an animal lover.”

“His former girlfriend gave the cat to him when it was just a tiny kitten,” I explained. “They broke up but he had really loved her so he kept it as a reminder.”

Granger stood up. The morning sun glowed golden on the muscular groves in his abs, arms, and chest and I blinked, not really hearing his words at first. “…you that?” he said, and waited for my answer.

“Excuse me?” I asked. “I didn’t catch your question.”

“I said, he told you that? He said that he kept a cat because it reminded him of another woman he’d been in love with?”

“He was only being honest.” I shrugged. “I don’t think you need to hide past relationships from your current partner.” Granger didn’t seem convinced and I put down the hose. I was almost done here, except I wasn’t sure what to do next. “I need to get over to Mr. Campbell’s house and I have no idea what to do with that animal,” I admitted aloud. “It hates me and wants to kill me.” As I said those words, the cage rattled ominously.

“What’s its name?”

I hesitated. “It started out as Cuddles,” I began, and he smiled and then started to laugh. He did that just as quietly as he spoke due to his vocal cords, but I could still hear it even with the continued yowls. “Briggs never called it much of anything. Sometimes he said it was a…you know, a B. A bitch,” I said, mouthing the word. One thing Nicola had never allowed was swearing, and that lesson had stuck with me to this day. Also, that insult was one that I’d particularly hated ever since it had started coming out of Briggs’ mouth in my direction.

“So it’s a girl?”

I shrugged again. “I’m really not sure. When I first started dating him and went over to his house, I tried to make friends with it, but it slashed my arm with its claws and then it bit me. Deeply. Nicola made me get antibiotic ointment and pills because I was bleeding a lot and after that, I didn’t want to mess with it too much.”

“What are you going to do with it if you can’t go near it?”

“Maybe we can make friends now,” I said, but as I spoke I put my hand over my arm where I still had the light streaks of scars from my earlier injuries. “I hope so,” I added, but there wasn’t a lot of hope in my voice.

“What about today? It can’t stay in your car like this,” he pointed out. His neighbor was peeking out of her front door as he spoke but disappeared when he only stared at her. He looked a lot like some kind of Viking god with that physique and his blonde hair, so I understood why she might have been intimidated. Or hugely attracted, either way.

“I have no idea what to do.” I almost started to cry, too, which I really, really wanted to prevent, especially in front of this person, especially after I’d moaned and wailed all over him the last time we’d seen each other. I swallowed hard. “His aunt told me to drop it off at a shelter but it will never get adopted, not with how it hates people and mauls them. I would be killing it if I did that, and I can’t. But I also can’t bring it with me to work because Mr. Campbell thinks that keeping pets is a sign of a maladaptive personality so he would probably fire me, and he won’t allow them in his house because of all the tapestries and the delicate upholstery, anyway. It was a big deal when his sister-in-law was alive because she always carried a parrot on her shoulder, but I think she might have had a maladaptive personality for real.”

Granger was still eyeing the car. “If it’s this loud all the time, your apartment isn’t going to work.”

“Someone will call the landlord or the police, or both,” I agreed. My inheritance was more like a curse than a gift in remembrance, as Aunt Patricia had called it. “I can’t believe he left this cat for me, unless his aunt was lying to get rid of it and took me for a patsy…” I sniffled like a baby. “I was a patsy to take it. I should have thrown it at her and run.”

“I don’t think you would do that,” he said, and he was right. “Unlock the car,” he directed next. “Let me see what I can do.”

I didn’t reach for the key fob in my pocket. “You can’t touch that animal,” I said. “Cat bites are no joke. Nicola told me all about the bacteria they have in their mouths.”

“I’ll be careful,” he said, and hesitantly, I beeped it open. Granger leaned in and I heard him saying something in his husky voice. His words became clearer because gradually, the cat got quieter.

And then it was silent. I stared in shock, because my ears were still ringing from the constant noise of the day.

“Ok, I think she’s feeling better,” he announced, and took the kennel from my back seat. “Unfortunately, I also think that she pissed all over your car.”

“Oh, the poor thing. I don’t know how much time it spent in that cage,” I said.

He glanced at my back seat. “It’s a mess in there. I can give her a bath.”

“Granger, you can’t put it in water!” I exclaimed, horrified. “You live by yourself! What if you need a tourniquet and there’s no one around to help tie it?”

He patted my shoulder even though the cat hissed and spat when he brought the crate closer to me. “I’m pretty good with field medicine. Here, I’ll take her out.”

“Not without a shirt on!” I burst out again. “Your poor, muscular chest—” But then his hands had emerged from the kennel with the cat, and it didn’t attack him.

“You’re disgusting right now but you’ll clean up,” he told it, and the cat didn’t object to that either. It was fine until I took a step closer, and then it started to hiss. “You’re right,” he said to me. “She’s skittish in your presence.”

Skittish? It looked like it wanted to kill me and I moved away so that it relaxed again.

“I’ll take her in the shower with me,” he said. “We’ll hang out before I go into Amunì.”

My thoughts were in disarray with my sudden acquisition of a mean pet, his subsequent control of the animal, and then his casual mention of nudity. “Ok,” I said, but then shook my head. “I meant, no. No, no.”

“Let me do this,” he said. “Come by the restaurant after work.”

What choice did I have? Briggs had only found one kennel in southeastern lower Michigan that would board this animal when he went out of town, and they only did it because he paid them triple and because he also said that they didn’t have to actually touch it. That place was all the way in Fenton—it would take forever to drive there. Granger kept telling me to leave, that I was going to be late and also that I needed to use vinegar and baking soda in my car. I argued more but in the end, I did head to Mr. Campbell’s mansion and I did take a while to clean my back seat, because it was disgusting.

It was setting up to be another difficult day. Mina had been sporadically crying about Briggs, although she’d only met him once, and Mr. Campbell himself had found out the details of the car accident and its aftermath. He had been so gleefully interested that I had a hard time sitting in the same room with him without telling him to shut it. It was an unpleasant working environment, I explained to JuJu when we met for coffee that day while my employer met with his analyst.

“Maybe Mr. Campbell can use this session to figure out why he feels the compulsion to keep asking if they had actually passed when the birds escaped,” I told her. “His questions make me so upset.”

She seemed intrigued. “I didn’t think about that. Were they totally dead when the vultures started—”

“Juliet!”

“Ok, ok,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I don’t like to agree with that mean old man and it makes me sick, anyway.” She did look slightly ill.

“Then stop talking about it! Focus on the other issue, and help me figure out what I’m going to do about the cat.”

“You could give it to Mom,” she suggested, because our mother had often talked about wanting a pet. Our dad had always been firmly opposed, but if she wanted to, she could get him to do anything.

“Do you think she would take care of it?” my sister asked doubtfully.

We both considered and then shook our heads.

“What about Nicola?” JuJu offered next. Our oldest sister had always taken care of everything and everyone, which had never seemed exactly fair to me. I certainly wasn’t going to foist this cat on her now, not when she was so happy with her new husband and their new life.

“I’ll come up with something. Or someone,” I answered. I checked my phone again, but there was no answer to the text I’d sent to Granger asking if he was ok after trying to bathe it. I hoped he’d come out of the shower alive and wondered if I needed to stop by his house. Maybe he’d passed out when he saw his wounds, like Juliet always did when she came across bodily fluids. Or maybe he’d passed out from the loss of blood.

My sister’s phone rang and she looked at the number and then quickly turned it over, face down on the sticky table. “It’s nothing,” she told me. “Nothing.”

I looked at her for a moment, wondering what “nothing” really was, because she’d also gotten color in her cheeks. Not red and obnoxious, but definite color. “Ok,” I said slowly.

“Nothing at all. Did I tell you that we decided to go to Barcelona, too? It’s a train ride away from Madrid and I was thinking that I probably won’t be back in Spain for a while. I should see what I can while I’m there, right?” She listed other places she planned to visit with her friends on their big European getaway, and there were a lot of them. “Pretty soon, I won’t be able to travel due to the baby,” she concluded, “so I want to see as much as I can.”

“Do you mean that you’ll need to be here for Patrick’s baby?” I asked, a little confused. Juliet was his twin, yes, but I hadn’t heard anything from my mom or my other sisters—or from Patrick himself—that had indicated to me that any of us would have much to do with our future niece/nephew. “Have you talked to him about that? Is he trying to get custody or something? Because the last I knew, the baby’s mother wanted nothing to do with us. Even when Mom offered her money, she still said to leave her alone.”

“I know that he’ll be a hands-on father,” she said, and briefly checked her phone again. Her cheeks flamed up once more—still not red, but there was a definite flush.

I thought she was wrong, very wrong, about our brother taking up parenting. As much as I wanted that to be true, I didn’t believe that he was interested in the baby except about the money he would have to pay, and my sister Nicola agreed. She knew us all best and she’d already commented how she was worried that we’d never even meet Patrick’s child. But Juliet continued, “I already made plans to be in San Francisco around when the baby is supposed to be born.”

“It sounds like you’re planning a lot of time off, going to Spain and California. How much vacation do you get at your job?” I asked, and she said that she had a bunch of days available, which sounded great to me. Mr. Campbell, the guy with six-plus vacation homes, didn’t actually believe in time off. His employees all took some anyway, but it was an argument on every occasion.

“I need to go,” she announced after she checked her phone for a third time. “I’ll talk to you later.” But then she paused. “Are you doing ok?”

I tried hard but those stupid tears did well up again. “I really am,” I assured her, and then we hugged and had to rush to get over to our jobs, hers at the glamorous, high-paying real estate firm and mine in the waiting room of the analyst/psychiatrist’s office to welcome Mr. Campbell out of his session.

“Your name entered our conversation,” he informed me as he grasped my arm and we made our way to the elevator. The one in this building worked.

“Oh? What did you have to say about me?” I asked. Maybe he really was trying to stop poking at the distressing details of Briggs’ death.

“I mentioned that I believed that you were wallowing in unhealthy grief,” he answered. “I spent much less time mourning my wife, and she and I were married for more than fifty years.”

“Mr. Campbell, the car accident happened less than two weeks ago!”

“Stop hurrying me so much! Is there a fire?” His fingers dug into my muscle. “You weren’t even affianced,” he remarked. “I imagine that he made no provision for you in his final, end-of-life documents. I also imagine that his assets were meager to the point of nonexistence.”

“He had plenty of assets,” I countered. “He owned his own home. He had a car and savings.” I knew that only by mistake, because he’d let me see the balance on the ATM screen once before covering it with his hand. “I’m sure that his mom had assets, too, so there.”

Mr. Campbell made a noise that sounded like “pshaw,” something I’d only encountered before in books and not in speech from real people. “I saw his car when you allowed him to trespass at my home,” he mentioned. “It was a dime-store piece of plastic, and I’m certain that his house was of the same quality. I imagine decrepitude and indigence.”

I imagined that Briggs’ aunt was going to clear a tidy sum selling all that plastic and decrepitude, and she’d probably get a lot more in her lawsuit. And I didn’t want a penny of it to come within a mile of me. “Not everyone is waiting around for an inheritance,” I answered, “but in fact, he did leave me something important.” Either that or the cat had been foisted on me by Aunt Patricia, but I wouldn’t share the possibility with my boss.

He ignored the statement about what Briggs had left to me, and focused on himself instead. “Are you referring to my family salivating over my impending demise? They do resemble a pack of coyotes,” he mused. “A mercenary, malcontent bunch, aren’t they?” He didn’t sound upset or displeased, though. His tone was thoughtful and that made my eyes narrow.

“Are you going to start poking at them again, emailing and calling with veiled threats that they’re going to be cut out of your will?” I knew that we were out of the special bread he liked to use for the tea sandwiches for visitors, so I would have to let Mina know if they’d be running over to kiss his butt.

“That’s none of your business!” he snapped, but once I’d assisted him into the car (as badly as always, so that he got mad and had to correct me), he told me to make an appointment with his solicitor—meaning that he wanted to go harass the lawyers about his own end-of-life documents.

“Again?” I asked. “We were just at that office last week.” He was definitely going to stir the pot with his younger family members, I could see it in his calculating expression.

“ I was there, not you ,” he said. I had been there too, of course, and had waited for him outside the conference room, but that statement was his way of enforcing the lord of the manor/serf relationship between us.

It made me get a bit huffy, and he was naturally that way, so we were silent as we drove back to Grosse Pointe except when he yapped at Wayne, his chauffeur. I stayed quiet even when we passed Granger’s restaurant where I would be going after work. I hardly even let my eyes rest on it but when I looked across the car, I saw Mr. Campbell watching me, anyway.

At least Granger hadn’t bled out because of the cat. He finally answered my text and I’d been able to read it later when I went to the bathroom, an area away from any prying eyes. “Good,” he’d written, which I interpreted as meaning that he was good—or at least, he had enough strength left to type. I did go to the restaurant after work and parked in the lot in the back, where there were many new, bright lights installed that made it feel a lot safer and freer of rats. I walked right in, just as he’d also said to do, and found him seated behind the desk in his office.

The cat was at his throat.

“Oh, holy Mary!” I gasped, and then realized that it wasn’t trying to kill him. It had actually draped itself around his neck and was rubbing its head against the stubble on his chin. It didn’t seem like he’d gotten a chance to shave today, which really was a good look. And the cat, instead of biting an important artery, was instead living up to its original name of “Cuddles” and loving all over him.

“Hi, Addie,” Granger greeted me. “Damn, you really show your emotions on your face. Did you think that the cat was trying to murder me?”

“Hi,” I said, and took a breath. “Yes, I did. I guess…you made friends?”

“We did,” he agreed. “I’m not bad with animals.”

Learning languages, throwing knives, building pontoon bridges, incapacitating robbers, and befriending feral cats? “I’m amazed,” I said, because I was.

“She’s a good girl,” he told me, and scratched the animal’s head with one long finger. I heard I sound I didn’t recognize.

“Is it purring?” I asked in astonishment.

“She got a lot happier after she ate and we got the litter box situation figured out. She didn’t mind getting clean, either.”

“Oh,” I said, understanding what he’d said. “I owe you for all those supplies.”

“No, you don’t.” The cat gently touched his face with a paw to signal that it wanted more attention, which he provided. “She did really well in the car.”

“Oh?”

“She shouldn’t be back here with me right now,” he continued. “I can’t have animals in the restaurant.” But he kept on petting her. “She would be all right in my house, I think. Cats can be alone a lot more than dogs can.”

“Granger, are you talking about keeping this cat? Yourself?”

“I was working out how often I’m actually home,” he said, which was a non-answer if I ever heard one. My dad was the king of those, so I recognized it very well.

“You don’t want the obligations of pet ownership, do you?” I asked. “And it’s my responsibility, not yours.”

“She’s definitely a girl,” he mentioned and then continued, “We used to have a restaurant cat when I was a kid.”

“Really? It lived in your parents’ business?”

“No, they couldn’t let him come inside, but I used to feed him. He had an old box in the alley in the back, but it got so damn cold in the winter. I used to zip him up in my coat and carry him around with me, smuggling him. My first taste of that activity, I guess.”

“What were the other tastes you had of that activity?”

“Maybe we could both keep this cat,” he suggested.

I shook my head. “It hates me.”

“She,” he corrected. “She’s a girl. Come here.”

I stepped cautiously around the desk and he took my hand, talking quietly to the animal wrapped around his neck in a language I kind of recognized. “Is that Portuguese?” I asked, amazed.

“I’m still learning,” he told me, but everything coming out of his mouth was fluently flowing with an accent that sounded just like my language app, the one that apparently wasn’t working for me at all. And maybe this particular animal was originally Brazilian or something, because she had started to purr again and to rub her head, which now seemed like nodding in agreement.

“How do you say ‘cat?’” I asked, and her yellow eyes shot over to me.

“She’s a gata . Same as in Spanish and almost the same as Italian. Close to Sicilian, too. Here,” he said, as he put my hand on the cat’s back. I felt her muscles tense and mine did as well as I waited for her to strike.

“She’s not going to bite you,” he told me, and told her something else in Portuguese. “She’s going to end up liking you a lot.”

I forced my hand to relax and, with his still over mine, I petted her. After a moment, I wasn’t even thinking about my skin ripping open again. “Do you really want to share a cat with me?” I asked.

“She’ll need both of us.” He kept up the petting and the cat kept up the purring. “We can share her, but she can live at my house so you don’t get evicted from that palace you rent.”

“It’s not so bad.” Now that she wasn’t hissing, clawing, or trying to escape, I could see that she was pretty, brown all over with little white paws. “She’s gotten a lot nicer over the last couple of hours.”

“She only had to relax. What a good cat.” He looked down at our hands. “You and I appear to be shaking on the deal.”

We were actually holding hands, which I didn’t mind in the least. “I can’t believe that I ended up with her. All I could think today was that it was a curse on me, a punishment from beyond the realm of the living.”

“Why would you need to be punished by a dead guy?”

“I don’t know,” I said, although it was pretty clear to me. “I guess that he wasn’t so happy with me over the last few months. He was very angry, actually.”

“Because you talked about breaking up with him? Maybe this is a way of saying he’s sorry.”

“You mean a dead person is trying to communicate with me?” I asked doubtfully.

“More likely, his aunt wanted to get rid of his pet and figured you’d take her and then wouldn’t argue anymore about an inheritance.”

That was probably closer to the truth. “Well, since you seem to have worked some kind of animal miracle, and since I feel responsible already, maybe we can try to share her,” I said after another minute of pets and purrs. “We could try. She’s had a lot of upheaval and adjustments lately, so it would be good for her to have steady people in her life.”

“That would be good,” Granger agreed. We stayed like that, holding hands for long enough that it probably got weird for him, but I was fine with it. After a while, someone knocked asking for him to solve a problem and the moment was over. But I had liked it a lot while it lasted, and I had the cat to thank for that.