Chapter 14

After a tedious trek home lugging the cat carrier—Roberto and Lucretia insisted they walk so they could further analyze her decision not to take Emmit’s phone number—the black cat settles himself into the house on Benefit Street with far less fanfare than Saoirse anticipated. She sets up the litter box and dishes of water and cat food she’d ordered—along with a volume of Sarah Whitman’s poetry—from Amazon, smiling as Midnight finds a patch of sunlight in which to curl up.

He’s not completely at ease with her and his new surroundings, but she can tell it won’t take long. Heather had said the reason he’d been surrendered had nothing to do with behavior or temperament; his owners had simply grown tired of the daily tasks associated with managing his diabetes. They’d told the shelter when they dropped him off that Midnight was four years old.

A cat, she thinks, still not quite believing she’d gone from casual mention to full-on pet ownership in less than a week. Writing again. Friends. And at least a cursory attempt at finding a new job. Despite the past continuing to weigh down on her like a suffocating blanket and the fear that Aidan is going to turn up at any moment, she’s doing all right. I guess moving back to Providence was the right idea.

That’s why it’s so irritating when she can’t shake Emmit Powell from her mind. Were Lucretia and Roberto right? Had she been shortsighted in refusing his phone number? Sure, he’d lied about running into her on the sidewalk, claiming it was an accident. And she can’t forget the weirdness he’d displayed at the Ath and Carr Haus, regardless of having spun those interactions so that she came across as the weird one.

But he was also the most captivating person she’d met since ... well, since Jonathan. She hates to admit it, but it’s the truth. Yeah, and look how well that turned out for us both, Jonathan says from her head.

“Shut up,” she says aloud. Midnight lifts his head from the floor and looks at her curiously, ears twitching. “Sorry,” she says in a soothing voice. She paces the kitchen.

“Should I have taken his number?” she asks the cat. “I would have been the one with all the control. Like when I took Mia’s, Lucretia’s, and Roberto’s numbers before inviting them back for the séance. The decision to call them had been in my hands.” Great, she thinks. You’ve gone from arguing with your dead husband to asking for advice from a cat.

The house seems claustrophobic and stuffy. Regardless of whether it was the right decision to refuse Emmit’s number, there’s nothing she can do about it now. Except maybe get out of this house and get some fresh air.

She turns her attention back to Midnight. “What about your name?” she asks. “Midnight? Is that what you’d like me to call you?”

With his coal-black fur and glittering eyes, it’s about as inventive as calling him Cat. Lucretia’s vote had been for Catterina, but Saoirse’s hesitant to encourage additional connections to the past; this house, this city, the sun-dappled alcoves in the library, they’re enough of a portal to Edgar and Sarah. Naming her new housemate Catterina—though she’d seen when perusing articles on Poe and Whitman that Poe’s own cat had been tortoiseshell, not black—might be akin to speaking Bloody Mary three times into a darkened mirror: an explicit invitation to the deceased to come on in.

But ... there is the Poe story Heather referred to. Saoirse grabs her phone and googles “black cat story, Edgar Allan Poe.” And there it is, the black cat of the eponymous tale: Pluto. Poe’s work seems a safer bet than a detail from his actual life. And Pluto is a cleverer moniker than Midnight, taking the endless night sky analogy a step further.

“Pluto?” she asks the cat, watching with amusement the quick, twitchy jerk of his tail. “Do you like that?” She walks over to him and lays a hand on his back. He’s purring, so she takes this as an acquiescence. “All right. Pluto it is. Pluto, I’ve got to get out of here for a bit. Take a walk. Clear my head.” Of Jonathan, she doesn’t add. “You could probably use some alone time anyway. Get used to the lay of the land without me breathing down your neck.”

Pluto stares. His tail twitches again. Saoirse rattles the food in the bowl so he remembers where it is, grabs her jacket, and steps out into the autumn sun. Across the street, on a neighbor’s porch, a resin tombstone warns visitors to B EWARE . From an adjacent porch, cornstalks rustle in the breeze. A quick look around tells her hers is the only house on the block not yet decorated for Halloween, and there’s only one more week until the thirty-first.

“Pumpkin shopping it is,” she says to the empty street.

It was better when you were talking to the cat, Jonathan taunts.

Ignoring him, Saoirse looks in the opposite direction of Brown’s campus and the Athen?um, but she’s loath to seek out a new grocery store when she’s already familiar with the Main Street Trader Joe’s. She heads south on Benefit Street, telling herself she will not, under any circumstances, let her unease—or is it her excitement?—about running into a certain Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist dictate her actions.

By the time she reaches Trader Joe’s, she’s forgotten all about Emmit Powell and is calculating the logistics of carrying a planter of maroon mums the mile-walk home. It’s only when she hears a deep but lilting voice, friendly and thoughtful in equal measure, that she puts the palm-size pumpkin she is clutching down and turns toward the registers.

Twenty feet away, at the self-checkout, a man is inserting a credit card into the reader. A prepackaged salad and a bottle of iced tea are on the ledge by his elbow, waiting to be placed into the reusable shopping bag slung over his arm.

“No major calamities today, Janice,” the man says to the fiftysomething woman charged with keeping an eye on the area. “I’ll master these self-checkout registers yet.”

The woman throws her head back in laughter. “I don’t doubt it, Mr. Powell. In fact, it’s been a few weeks since you’ve needed me to bail you out with my magic key card.”

No. Saoirse’s hands are cold and her muscles frozen. No way. I fell asleep in the living room and am dreaming. Saoirse spins around, her purse knocking into the pumpkins on the table. She manages to catch the two that go rolling before they drop to the floor. A thought intervenes before she can sprint for the frozen foods section: This is insanity. He’s buying a salad. He isn’t stalking you.

Maybe not. But this has gone far beyond coincidence and into the realm of statistical impossibility.

Maybe it’s time to accept Emmit’s theory that you two are predestined to have some sort of relationship, Jonathan says mockingly from inside her head. She resists the urge to respond and slowly turns back toward the registers.

Emmit has bagged his tea and salad and is giving Janice a salute as he makes his way toward the door. Saoirse follows at a walk until he gets to the exit, then jogs after him as he disappears through the door.

Outside, Emmit turns in the direction Saoirse came from a mere ten minutes before. She considers calling out, but she’s only a few strides away. In another moment, she’s caught up to him and reaches out to grab the sleeve of his soft wool jacket. He stops. Turns. Saoirse can’t help it. At the sight of his wide, smooth forehead and bushy eyebrows, she smiles and says, “I thought about barreling into you on the sidewalk like you did to me, but I didn’t want you to drop your expensive salad.”

Emmit gawks. He looks down at his shopping bag then back up at her.

“Don’t you dare ask if I’m following you,” Saoirse says. “The only reason I came up to you is because of your goddamn premonition. I’m still not sure I believe in it, but it’s getting harder and harder to explain why we keep running into each other.”

Emmit studies her face, still not saying a word, then drops his gaze to her empty hands.

“I came for a pumpkin,” Saoirse says. “I saw you before I could finish picking one out.”

Emmit nods, and when he smiles, any lingering doubt over whether it was prudent to approach him melts away. Don’t turn into an idiotic, lust-sick puppy, she thinks. Even Jonathan was considerate and charming when he was courting you. But then Emmit is angling himself toward her so that she can link her arm with his, and they are walking away from the supermarket.

“Where are we going?” Saoirse asks.

“I was supposed to be leaving for the airport,” Emmit says. “Like every Sunday afternoon, I come to Trader Joe’s and get a—sometimes healthy, sometimes not—dinner, drive to T. F. Green, and take the hour-and-a-half flight back to Baltimore, where I crash into bed before the start of another week.”

Saoirse looks at the cars lining the street, though, of course, she has no idea what Emmit drives. “So, you’re going to the airport?”

“Not anymore,” he says and pulls her closer to him. “Now I’m going to the Farmer’s Daughter to get you a proper pumpkin.”

Saoirse tries to think of an excuse, a reason why she cannot get into a car with this man she does not know and go to some farm she’s never heard of. But nothing comes. So she allows herself to be led, to enjoy the sunshine on her face and the company of a man who thinks it’s worth missing a flight to spend the afternoon with her.