by Clea Simon
Becca paused. “Didn’t I tell you? I went to see him. She said something about his lot, and I realized that used car lot over on Putnam had to be his. We pass by it all the time. You know the place I mean—Cross Auto, with that big sign that says, ‘Ask Frank! Make a deal!’”
The sounds from the other line were quieter this time.
“No, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Maybe, ‘Call your wife,’ or something. I just thought I should drop by. Confirm the facts. I may be a witch, but I’ve got to do the basic legwork, right? But it didn’t even come to that. I was waiting in the front room—I don’t know, maybe his receptionist had left already, if he has one—and I could hear him in his office. He must have finally picked up one of Margaret’s calls. He was apologizing like anything. To be honest, it sounded like he could barely get a word in.”
She was smiling and shaking her head even as she listened to Maddy’s reply.
“I don’t know, Maddy. I don’t think I’d want to be either one of them. I was with Margaret, so I know how angry she can get. Not that she didn’t have reason if what she suspected was true. But I figure whatever was going wrong has been put right. I have never heard someone trying to explain himself so fast,” Becca said. “I mean, he didn’t even sound apologetic so much as he sounded scared!”
Becca was small for a human, but as she relaxed, her stride lengthened and Clara had to trot to keep up. Still, she was grateful for this indication that her person was happier. Even the squawking from the other end of the line sounded quieter.
“Yeah, I know.” Becca nodded, as if her friend could see her. “Believe me, I don’t want to get between those two either.”
Becca broke into a grin as her friend responded, much to Clara’s relief. Still, she tilted an ear forward as her person lowered her voice once more.
“I’m going to stay on Gaia’s case, though. It’s not just that I could use the experience, Maddy. Even if she can’t pay me, I signed a contract.”
More noise.
“No, I’m sorry, but I have to, Maddy. Because what if I’m wrong about Margaret just trying to scare the girl? What if someone really did try to poison Gaia? And what if they try again?”
Chapter 8
Clara was exhausted by the time she got home, racing Becca the last few blocks. Not that this stopped her sisters from pestering her for news.
“What happened?” Laurel nudged her with one chocolate-dipped paw. “Did you find out anything about that girl Gaia?”
“Where has Becca been?” Harriet sat back, her flag-like tail flicking back and forth with anxiety. “Doesn’t she know how we worry?”
“She’s on her way.” Clara made sure to answer her oldest sister first and address her unspoken concern. “I’m sure she’ll feed us as soon as she gets in.”
“Humph,” Harriet snorted, pulling her tail around her toes. She wasn’t satisfied, Clara knew. She was, however, a little self-conscious about being so single-minded. “You think that’s all I care about.”
“Well?” Laurel pushed Harriet aside. “Did she meet anyone cute?”
The image of the brown-eyed stranger flitted through Clara’s mind, and Laurel purred in response. “He was just someone on the street,” Clara snapped.
The little calico wanted nothing so much as to bathe. The dust from the used car lot had gotten beneath her fur. Even her whiskers felt gritty. More than that, a good tongue bath would soothe the lingering concerns that had ruffled her fur. Still, Laurel would not be kept waiting.
“You were right about Gaia,” she said. “That girl is trouble.” Quickly, she told them about the visit to the shop. The fact that Gaia seemed lackadaisical, at best, about her job didn’t seem to concern Laurel much. If anything, that seemed quite reasonable to a cat. When Clara got to the storeowner’s accusations, however, both her sisters’ ears pricked up.
“She…collects men?” Laurel interrupted before Clara could get up to the strange interaction with Elizabeth, and the calico flicked her own tail in annoyance. The sealpoint sister had long wanted Becca to be more romantically adventurous, but Clara didn’t think this was the way to do it.
“Other women’s men,” cautioned the calico.
“Oh, that’s not good.” Laurel’s ears lay flat, and she turned toward Harriet.
“What?” Harriet turned toward the front door. “You told me that you wanted to let Becca do this by herself, and now…”
“Harriet, what did you do…?” But it was too late. Even before Clara could finish her thought, her sisters had raced ahead to stand at attention at the door. A moment later, they could hear the familiar footsteps slowly ascending the stairs and then the key in the lock.
“Hi, kitties.” Becca’s good cheer sounded intact, even if her voice was tired. “How nice of you to meet me like this.”
“You!” Harriet mewed plaintively. “Where were you?”
“I bet you want your dinner, don’t you?”
Laurel’s eyes closed in satisfaction. Not that she’d have had to work that hard to suggest the idea to their generous human.
“I’ll get right to it, as soon as I get my coat and hat off.”
“Thank you!” Clara twined around Becca’s legs, grateful to finally be able to express herself physically. Her person seemed to appreciate the contact, even as she almost tripped, laughing, over the plump cat. It was Harriet who put a stop to the fooling around.
“Stop that!” she hissed, cuffing her baby sister on the ear.
Hunger, Clara figured, and accepted the rebuke quietly. But even though her oldest sister made quick work of her can, Clara couldn’t help but wonder at her comparative lack of enthusiasm. For a change, it was Laurel who looked over, licking her chops, to see if Clara was going to leave anything behind. Harriet had already raced ahead to the living room.
“What’s with Harriet?” Clara asked. “Is she feeling all right?”
“Why don’t you go see?” Laurel eyed the crumbs in Clara’s dish, and after a moment’s hesitation, Clara backed off. Harriet might be a pain, but she was her sister. She trotted into the living room after her.
“Maddy? I’m home.” Becca spoke to her phone in much the tone of voice she used with her cats. “Sorry, I should have called you five minutes ago but I had to feed the kitties.”
A smile down at Clara warmed the little calico.
“No, I think I’m in for the night. It’s been a big day, but thank you.” Even as she spoke, Becca shed her shoes and settled on the sofa. “I haven’t had a chance to even look at my own work today. You know.” She reached to rub her foot, and Clara made a mental note to knead it later. “Those documents about my family.”
She was taking up a position near her person’s ankle as Maddy rambled on. Something about a party, Clara gathered. A man—or men—that Maddy wanted Becca to meet, and for a moment she found herself remembering the kind-faced stranger in the square.
“I think I’m just not ready yet.” Becca could have been talking to Clara, and so the calico bent to her task, kneading the stockinged foot. “I do not want a knight in shining armor, Maddy.” The foot withdrew. “I just…well, for tonight, I’m happy with my cats. Have a blast, Maddy. Tell me all about it tomorrow.”
With that, Clara got back to her work, albeit gentler than before. Becca opened her laptop and soon the machine was purring in her lap, as Laurel stretched her tawny length across the sofa’s back. Within minutes Harriet had joined them on the sofa and was lounging on her pillow, one paw flicking its golden tassels. Another perfect evening, as far as the calico was concerned.
But even as Clara focused on Becca’s foot, she picked up that something was off. It couldn’t be her kneading. She was very careful not to use any claw at all. Nor was it the laptop. Although Becca often reacted strangely to the images she’d summoned, tonight she was actually humming as she read, and Laurel, in an ostentatious show of self-restraint, wasn’t even trying to bat at its warm and e
nticing surface. No, it was Harriet. Although to all outward appearances, her oldest sister was as relaxed as usual, her impressive bulk spread out across the pillow, the oldest of the three cats was holding herself back.
She was not only tense, Clara realized, she was concentrating—on the edge of a small baggie peeking out from beneath the coffee table.
“You returned it?” Clara chirped softly. Harriet didn’t usually admit to mistakes. “How wise of you.”
The compliment earned a snort. “I had to dig it out of the litter.” Harriet’s head reared back in disgust. “But you were right. Becca seems to think this is important.”
“Shall I?” Clara didn’t want to interfere if Harriet had a plan.
“Go ahead!”
Clara jumped to the floor and with a well-aimed tap sent the plastic baggie spinning on the pivot of the lumpy root inside. Sure enough, a moment later, Becca was on her knees beside the sofa.
“Well, I’ll be…” She grabbed the baggie and examined its odoriferous contents. “I could’ve sworn I looked under here.”
Clara, who was licking her paw, didn’t comment. That musty smell carried even through the baggie.
“How do you feel?” Laurel peeked over the edge of the sofa, blue eyes wide.
“A little dirty,” Clara admitted, even as she dug in between her toes.
“No dizziness? Shortness of breath?”
Clara paused, mouth open. “You don’t think that the poison…”
The feline equivalent of a shrug. “Harriet’s got more mass, shall we say…”
“Hey!” A white mitt slapped Laurel’s chocolate ear. “Watch it!”
“Sorry.” Laurel’s face retreated, but Clara could imagine her sister’s head ducked in submission. Harriet’s largesse only extended so far.
“I think we’re fine,” the calico called up. “Only the smell lingers.”
“Good.” Laurel’s head appeared over the lip of the sofa again, her eyes slightly crossed. “’Cause I’m not so sure about Becca.”
Clara whipped around, alarmed. Sure enough, Becca was sitting on the floor beside her, frowning as she held the baggie up to the light.
“I don’t know about this,” she was saying. Clara looked up at Laurel, but her sister only shrugged. “And I’m glad I didn’t come right out and accuse her. But I do think I owe Margaret Cross an apology.”
Chapter 9
“Now you’ve done it!” Clara was struggling to keep her voice level. Her fur was already standing up along her spine and it was only by holding her tail down with one paw that she managed to keep that from turning into a bottle-brush of fright. “Becca was off that case, and now she’s going to talk to that crazy woman again.”
Her slinky sister eyed her, curious, but Clara turned away. Bad enough Laurel could read human minds. Clara wasn’t ready yet to share what had happened at the Cross apartment. That woman—Elizabeth—had unnerved her, as few human beings could, and the moment when she could have disclosed the odd interaction had passed. This left Clara feeling out of sorts, almost as if she were alone in a shelter. Or a trap.
If Becca ran out to confront that woman again, Clara wasn’t sure what she would do.
For the moment, though, her fear was allayed. After another examination of the bagged root, Becca set it aside and, after carefully washing her hands, prepared her own dinner, which involved too many plants to be of interest to her pets. More satisfying was the speed with which she finished and settled back on the sofa with her laptop.
“Of course she does that after eating. For her, that’s like grooming,” Laurel noted as she pretzeled herself around to lick her haunches. The part-Siamese didn’t quite understand Becca’s research—none of the cats did entirely—but Clara saw enough truth in her observation not to correct her. She might not understand Becca’s work in depth, but she did know that “doing research,” as her person put it, made her happy. Besides, she was too grateful for her person’s continued presence to object. For comfort, she joined Becca on the sofa. Harriet was already nestled by her side, her fluffy form stretched not only over her special velvet pillow but extending nearly to the arm rest. But Clara was still too agitated for a nap. Instead, she perched on the sofa’s upholstered back, from where she could peer over Becca’s shoulder at the screen.
If only Clara could feel as single-minded, or as calm, as her person.
“What is it?” Laurel had jumped up beside her, so silently that she startled her baby sister, whose nerves were already on edge.
“She’s looking at pictures.” Clara knew her sister had difficulty making sense of pixels. Laurel’s sense of smell might be better than hers, but her eyesight left something to be desired. “Pictures of plants.”
“How silly.” Laurel whipped her dark tail around her toes. “Why look at pictures when she could simply go outside.”
“But it’s dark out and we don’t want her to go…” Clara broke off.
With a sigh, Becca had closed the herbalism site and clicked open a news alert. “The accident,” she murmured. “No wonder the bridge was closed.”
She read a moment longer, then clicked and another page appeared, one Clara had seen before. Along with the writing, which might as well be sparrow tracks to the cats, it featured pictures, reproductions of old engravings. This was the genealogy project Becca had been telling Maddy about, Clara realized. The research she longed to resume. Although she had seen her person looking through these pages—what Becca called an “online historical database”—before, something about Becca’s silence, or maybe it was her own unsettled mood, showed the word in a new light. Becca was searching for her family. For the small cat, whose only memories of her own mother were few and fading, the search seemed impossibly sad. Yes, Becca spoke to her mother weekly, using one or another of her devices, but she was alone in this city. Alone, except for her cats, Clara reminded herself.
Besides, mused Clara, looking over at her snoozing siblings, blood relations weren’t necessarily a requirement for domestic happiness.
Silently vowing to be a better helpmate to her person, Clara pushed her own sibling issues aside and focused in on Becca. As she watched, Becca scrolled down through the database’s images until she settled on one that the calico had seen before. In it, a woman sat with a cat on her lap. Something about her face—the bright eyes, perhaps—looked like Becca, only with longer hair and any trace of Becca’s curls squashed under a cap. With one outstretched finger, Becca traced the outline of the woman’s round face. Did this strange, flat representation bring back memories of Becca’s mother? Of herself? Clara couldn’t tell. Besides, to the calico it was the feline on the woman’s lap who was the real focus of the picture. That cat, who even in the scratchy black-and-white image bore a striking resemblance to Clara, occupied the center of the composition, drawing the eye even as she stared out at the viewer.
Despite the centuries between them, Clara felt the connection—and felt reassured, as if the calico in the picture was somehow reaching out. An older generation keeping watch over Clara and her person. Maybe, Clara thought, there was something to Laurel’s gift—a psychic connection that went back generations. Or maybe she was just too tired to worry anymore, and what she took as comfort was simply gratitude that Becca had remained on the couch rather than run out into the night.
It had been a full day, even without that strange confrontation. Brief as it was—only three words—Clara knew that encounter with Elizabeth was at the root of her desire to keep Becca away from those women. Knew as well that she was hiding the truth from her own siblings. She told herself this was her sisters’ fault. Harriet and Laurel complained whenever their person did anything involving other humans or the outside world, or, truly, whenever she left them alone. To give them any more reason to grumble could only lead to further unpleasantness if not outright trouble.
“Why trouble?” Clara turned to see Laurel’s blue eyes staring into hers.
“Did you just read my thoughts?” Clara reared up, nearly falling off the sofa. Her sister had startled her—and invaded her privacy. “Please don’t do that!”
“Oh, please!” The Siamese licked at one dark paw. “It’s almost the same as suggesting thoughts, only, more like inhaling…”
Clara eyed her sister with curiosity, even as she tried to keep her own mind blank.
“And I did smell something off about that plant, you know. Something that Becca isn’t aware of. My nose is very good. I think you did too, only you never focus…”
Before Clara could respond, the woman seated in front of them jerked back and began to type. “Why didn’t I think of this before?” The two cats seated behind her exchanged a weighted glance.
“Dear Aunt Tabitha,” she murmured as she typed. “I’m not sure if you know, but I’m living in Cambridge now, and being in New England, I’ve started to research our family history…”
“Our family?” Laurel’s soft mew dripped with scorn. In her distinctive Siamese yowl, that first word dragged out into a wail.
“She means hers.” Clara translated as quickly and politely as she could. She didn’t want Becca to be disturbed, certainly not by the idea that one of her cats was in pain. But Becca had grown used to her cats’ strange sounds. With barely a glimpse at the felines behind her, she continued typing. And so, after a moment’s pause, Clara carried on, too. “She thinks that it was her ancestor who got them in trouble with the witch trials,” she said. Thanks to her particular gifts, Clara had accompanied Becca to both the library and the city’s archives, and considered herself well versed in that aspect of her work.
“Well, it was their fault.” Another sniff of that neat black velvet nose. Laurel claimed their family history as her own area of expertise. “Great Grandmama would never have been so careless.”
