The Cats Came Back

by Sofie Kelly

  I nodded. “My mother took a term of French at Boston College. She had two lines in a play that were in French, and she wanted them to sound right.”

  Emme nodded as though that made perfect sense to her. Ruby had told me how hard Emme had worked to have a successful music career. Her mother had died when she was small, and her father when she was just a teenager. All she had for family was her older sister, Nora.

  “She has a lot more talent than I do,” Ruby had said. “But somehow when I sing with her she makes me sound better.”

  Emme and I watched as Ruby took a few more shots. Finally, she straightened up again, rolling her neck from one shoulder to the other.

  “We should get going,” Emme said. “It was good to see you, Kathleen.”

  “You too,” I said, bending to pick up the carrier bag that I’d set at my feet. “I’m looking forward to hearing you sing with Ruby and Ami.”

  She moved over to Miranda and touched her on the shoulder. Miranda turned, nodded at whatever her friend had said and with a wave to Ruby and a smile for me cut across the grass and headed down the sidewalk.

  I walked over and scooped up Hercules, giving him one of the cat crackers I’d palmed earlier. He settled in the bag, crunching happily. I held out the other cracker to Owen, who sniffed it suspiciously before taking it in his mouth. I picked him up before he decided to go explore somewhere.

  “Did you get everything you need?” I asked Ruby.

  She was checking out the photos on the camera’s screen. “I did. These are great,” she said. She smiled at both cats. “Thanks, guys.”

  Hercules murped at her, which may have been “thank you,” or may have meant “more crackers.”

  Owen bobbed his head, which pretty much translated the same way.

  Ruby turned her attention to me. “Thank you, Kathleen,” she said.

  “Hey, I’m just chauffeur for the talent,” I said.

  Owen picked that moment to meow loudly.

  Ruby laughed. “Well, I appreciate you driving them around. I really think this project is going to bring more visitors to town.”

  Owen was sniffing the pocket of my T-shirt, probably looking for more crackers.

  “I hope so,” I said. “Mayville Heights is my home, too.”

  “I’m so glad you decided to stay.” She threw her arms around me, careful not to touch Owen, and I gave her a one-armed hug in return. “I’ll text you with some times for the next shoot.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. I hiked the carrier bag a little higher on my shoulder and headed for the truck.

  I settled Owen and Hercules on the seat, and once I’d fastened my seat belt I turned to see both cats staring at me. I knew what the look meant.

  “You did an excellent job, as usual,” I said. “There’s a sardine waiting at home for both of you.”

  Owen’s gaze immediately went to the glove compartment.

  I slid the key in the ignition. “There are no crackers in there. You ate them all the last time Ruby took your picture. Remember?”

  He made a noise that sounded a lot like a sigh.

  When we got home I set Owen on the kitchen floor and put the carrier bag beside him. Hercules climbed out as I kicked off my sandals. I got each cat the promised sardine, got out the peanut butter and stuck a piece of bread in to toast and then padded to the fridge in my bare feet for a glass of lemonade.

  I sat at the kitchen table with my lemonade and toast, propping my feet on an empty chair.

  Hercules finished eating first, crossed under the table and leapt onto my lap. He walked his way up my chest and looked from me to my plate. “Roma says you have too much people food,” I said.

  He wrinkled his nose at me.

  I reached over and scratched behind his left ear, and he stretched out across my body. I glanced over at the refrigerator, where the cats’ food dishes were. Owen had disappeared.

  My computer was on the table. “Want to see if we can find any videos of Emme singing?” I asked Hercules.

  I remembered the production of Mamma Mia! that Emme had been in with my mother, although I didn’t remember her specifically. And at that performance I’d just attended, she’d been singing as part of a group. Now I was curious about her voice, especially since Ruby had told me how good she was.

  The cat lifted his head and licked my chin. That was a yes. I reached for the laptop.

  When the song ended I looked at Hercules. “Wow,” I said. My toast was cold and forgotten, and the lemonade was sweating droplets of water onto the table. The cat was sitting up, one paw on the edge of the table, green eyes fixed on the computer screen.

  “Good” wasn’t a good enough word for Emme Finley’s voice. It was incredible, a husky contralto that pulled every bit of emotion out of the song “The River” by Bruce Springsteen. I’d seen Springsteen perform the song live. It seemed like sacrilege to say Emme’s version was even better.

  But it was.

  * * *

  I got to the library earlier than usual on Friday. Michel was giving a lecture on the music of Leonard Cohen, and I wanted to make sure everything was set up. There had been a lot more interest in the talks than even I’d expected. Tickets had run out for every one of them.

  The Mayville Heights Free Public Library was over a hundred years old, built back in 1912. It sat just about at the midpoint of a smooth curve of shoreline, protected from the water by a rock wall. Like many others of its vintage, it was a Carnegie library and had been built with funds donated by Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Everett Henderson had funded the restoration of the building—everything from the mosaic tile floors to the plaster ceiling medallion—as a gift to the town for the library’s centennial. The two-story brick building had an original stained-glass window at one end and a restored copper-roofed cupola, complete with the original wrought-iron weather vane that had been placed on the roof when the library had originally been built. Every time I walked into the building, I felt a tiny surge of pride at how well it had all turned out.

  Emme and Miranda came in at about one thirty. There were already some tourists wandering around waiting for the lecture to start.

  “Hi,” I said, walking over to meet them. “You’re about half an hour early for Michel’s talk, but you’re welcome to wander around. And there will be cookies later.” In the almost four years I’d been in Mayville Heights I’d learned everything went better with cookies.

  Emme was wearing a green flowered sundress with a lacy white cotton sweater. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. Miranda had on a similar dress with a pale yellow sweater, and her hair was also in a ponytail. The gold bracelet I’d noticed before was on her arm. Once again I thought how alike they looked.

  “I can’t stay for the lecture,” Emme said. “Although Miranda is going to. I just came to give you this.” She handed over a small pink envelope.

  Inside there was a photograph of my mother in a white T-shirt, denim cut-offs and those silver platform boots she had let me wear for Halloween.

  “It was a picture someone took at rehearsal,” Emme said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I could have a copy made.”

  Emme shook her head. “No. It’s yours.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I glanced down at the photo again. “I could barely walk in those boots. How did she dance in them?”

  “I have no idea,” Emme said. “I wear heels when I perform, but I spend most of my time sitting down.” She stuck out her leg. She was wearing a pair of flat red sandals. “These are more my speed. Miranda’s the one who can glide around in heels.” She gestured at her friend, who was wearing a pair of lime-green retro wedge lace-up espadrilles. I realized that without the heels Miranda was a couple of inches shorter than her friend.

  Emme had her cell phone in her hand, and she glanced down at the screen.
“I’m sorry. I have to go. I have a practice to get to,” she said. “I’m really glad you like the photo.” She glanced at Miranda. “Have fun. I’ll see you later.” She headed for the door.

  I turned to Miranda. “Please feel free to look around or use one of the computers.” I gestured at the desk where Mary Lowe was checking out a stack of picture books for a slightly frazzled mom with a squirming toddler on her hip. “Mary can answer any questions you have.”

  “Could I help you with anything?” Miranda asked. She gestured at the stack of festival brochures in my hand. “I could put one of those on every chair if you’d like.”

  I smiled at her. “Well, that would be a help,” I said.

  She held out her hand and I gave her the brochures. “It’s not that I don’t like your library, but I’m really bad at waiting. I’d rather be doing something.”

  “Don’t say that too loudly or Mary will have you shelving books,” I teased as we headed for the meeting room.

  Miranda smiled back at me. “I worked in the school library when I was in high school. I know the Dewey decimal system. The nine hundreds are history and geography. Four hundreds are language and the two hundreds are religion.” She ticked off each one on a finger. “Am I right?”

  “Yes, yes and yes,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

  “I just have a head for random pieces of information. I can quote poetry I learned back in the eighth grade.” She played with a button on the front of her sweater with one hand. “When you are old and gray and full of sleep,” she recited, her voice low and quiet.

  “And nodding by the fire, take down this book,” I continued. “William Butler Yeats. Again, impressive.”

  A grin stretched across her face. “You too,” she said.

  I nodded, feeling my cheeks get warm. “Knowing a bunch of random information can actually be useful when you’re a librarian.”

  “It’s also a pretty good way to avoid ever having to pay for your own coffee,” Miranda said. She started moving along the first row of chairs, setting a brochure on each seat.

  I made a face at her as I moved the coffee table a little to the right. “I’m not following.”

  Miranda looked up at me. “Emme said your parents are actors.”

  “They are.”

  “So you know that there’s usually some kind of card game or trivia game going on backstage at a production. It’s the same at a club.”

  I laughed, nodding knowingly. “Okay, I get it now.” Not only was there often some kind of game going on backstage, there was often some kind of wager involved as well.

  Miranda made short work of putting out the festival brochures. Then she helped me set up a large poster that featured information about what the library offered aside from books, with details on the programs planned for the fall. We talked about the festival in particular and music in general. I was impressed by how much she knew about the latter, especially old rock and roll. Miranda was smart and funny, and it struck me that when Emme was around she seemed to just fade into the background, letting her friend take center stage to shine.

  “I love your cats,” Miranda said as we headed up to the lunchroom on the second floor to bring down the coffee cups. “Ruby showed us all the photos she’s taken so far. They’re both so photogenic.”

  “They’re both little hams,” I said.

  “How did you end up with them?” she asked. “You said they were feral.”

  “I lived in Boston before I came here,” I said as we reached the top of the stairs. “I sold most of my things, including my car, before I left. So when I first got here, I explored the town on foot.” We started down the hall. “I was exploring out at Wisteria Hill—it’s the old Henderson estate just outside of town. Owen and Hercules were just kittens then. Two little balls of fur, really. When I headed home they followed me. Twice I took them back. The third time I brought them home with me.”

  Miranda brushed a stray strand of hair off her face. “So it’s kind of like they picked you.”

  “It’s exactly like that,” I said. As far-fetched as it sounded, I did believe it. Given everything else I’d learned about Owen and Hercules, them choosing me, not the other way around, really wasn’t that far-fetched after all.

  We’d just gotten to the bottom of the stairs with our trays of cups when Michel walked in. There were easily a couple dozen people hovering near the meeting room.

  “I’ll go put these out,” Miranda said.

  I smiled. “Thanks,” I said.

  She headed across the mosaic tile floor, and I set my own tray down on the circulation desk and went over to say hello to Michel, aka Uncle Mickey.

  He caught my hand in both of his. “Kathleen, it’s good to see you,” he said.

  “You too,” I said. He only seemed to get more handsome with age.

  He looked over my shoulder at the people gathered outside the meeting room. “Are they all waiting to hear me talk?”

  “Well, we do have cookies,” I teased. “But I think they’re here for you.”

  One eyebrow went up and he smiled. “I supposed it would be a bit disingenuous of me to say I didn’t expect all these people.”

  He was wearing jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back, and I could see why women threw themselves at him. He was a very attractive, charismatic man, but to me Michel Demarque was always going to be Uncle Mickey, who taught me to sing “Frère Jacques” as a round and bought me mugs of hot chocolate with whipped cream and shavings of bittersweet chocolate.

  The talk went even better than I’d hoped. Every chair was filled, and Michel was his usual funny, self-deprecating self. Across the room Ruby gave me a thumbs-up. We had several events planned with the artists’ co-op, and given how well this collaboration with the festival had gone, I felt good about them.

  I grabbed one of the two coffee carafes. It was just about empty. As I moved around the clusters of people so I could take it upstairs for a refill, I glanced out the window. The meeting room overlooked part of the parking lot.

  Two people caught my eye. One was a bearded man in a faded black ball cap. The other was a woman. Was that Emme? I stopped and took a step backward for a better look. It definitely was Emme out there. I recognized her dress and her red sandals. What was she doing in our parking lot, other than arguing with a man I’d never seen before?

  chapter 2

  When I came back downstairs with a full pot of coffee, Emme and the man she’d been arguing with were gone. I knew from Ruby that the pressures of the festival and some strong-willed “artistes” sometimes made for a volatile combination, although up until now the artistic disagreements had stayed at the Stratton Theatre. This was the first time, as far as I knew, that one had spilled over to my library parking lot.

  Michel answered questions for close to forty-five minutes. “I had no idea there’d be this kind of turnout,” he said, giving me a satisfied smile. “Thank you for organizing everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “You made it easy. There are lots of people who want to hear what the esteemed Michel Demarque has to say about the late Leonard Cohen.” I gave him a teasing smile.

  “I am full of information.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or some people would just say I’m full of it, period.”

  I laughed and he put an arm around my shoulder, giving me a quick hug. “Let me take you to lunch tomorrow,” he said. “We haven’t had a chance to catch up since I got here.”

  I knew that part of “catching up” would be a conversation about my mother. He still had a soft spot for her, and while she didn’t encourage his feelings, she didn’t exactly discourage them, either. Mom mostly seemed amused by the idea that Dad was jealous of the conductor when it hadn’t bothered him at all when she’d shamelessly flirted—in a movie—with Denzel Washington.

  Mom and Dad had married, divorced and then secret
ly rekindled their relationship before marrying for the second time. The presence of my younger brother and sister at the ceremony, so to speak, Mom glowing Madonna-like with her hands resting on her round belly, was proof that she and Dad just couldn’t stay away from each other.

  “I’d love to have lunch with you,” I said.

  The library closed early on Saturdays. Michel and I agreed to meet at Eric’s Place the next afternoon at quarter after one, and he said good-bye.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to find Miranda standing there. “Wow,” she said. “I had no idea Michel was such a wonderful storyteller.”

  I smiled. “His father is French but his mother is Irish. I think Michel inherited his way with words, so to speak, from his Irish side.”

  “I’m looking forward to the next talk,” she said.

  I nodded. “So am I.”

  “I have somewhere I have to be,” she said. “It was good to see you, Kathleen.”

  “You too,” I said.

  Mia Janes, my part-time student, had arrived for her shift, and the two of us put the chairs away and cleaned up the meeting room. Mia was leaving for college soon and I was dreading the idea of replacing her. We’d gotten closer when her grandfather was killed, and it wouldn’t be the same when I didn’t see her almost every day.

  She set the large poster about the library’s upcoming events against the wall and folded the easel. Maggie had made it for me out of some reclaimed wood we’d found in the old carriage house out at Wisteria Hill. Mia caught me watching her and smiled. “I’m going to miss you, too,” she said, grabbing the easel with one hand and reaching down for the poster with the other.

  * * *

  The rest of the day was busy, especially for a Friday in August. I was tired by the time I got home. Owen and Hercules were waiting in the kitchen. Marcus had stopped in to check on them and, knowing him, had probably given them some kind of treat. But that didn’t mean they weren’t going to try to wheedle another out of me.