Grieving and ill-prepared for the life of a single parent, after Steph’s death he’d returned to Chicago with his infant daughter. His family had become their main-stay. They’d shared meals, vacations, Sunday afternoons, and Friday nights. His family had loved Steph, and they transferred all that love to Chloe, wanting only the best for her. But over the past year, Jim had found himself questioning whether their indulgent, doting care was, well, healthy for Chloe.
Chloe’s calculated remark to Edie about her mother’s being dead had been becoming typical of her recent behavior. The tantrums were more frequent, her assumption of entitlement more obvious. He’d broached his concerns to his family, but as one they dismissed them, reminding him that they had raised children and whatever behavioral problems he imagined Chloe had were normal. Then they promised to be stricter with her. But within a week they’d all slid back into the old patterns—including Jim. He wasn’t proud of it, but there it was.
So last spring he’d moved them closer to the magnet school Chloe would be attending in the fall. The transition hadn’t been easy. Chloe had resisted, his sisters had resisted, and his brothers-in-law had resisted. There had been more temperamental behavior, disturbed sleep, and obvious anxiety.
And Chloe hadn’t been too happy, either, he thought with a self-effacing grin. So he was delighted to hear Chloe opt for home over sleepover.
“I’d like you to stay, too, Chloe,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “But your cousins are looking forward to seeing you and Aunt Melissa is already on her way to pick you up. But next Wednesday you and I can stay home and rent a DVD and watch a movie.” Movies were a special treat. In the new regime of Chloe-raising, television viewing was limited to a few hours a week.
“Can Edie come over and watch with us?”
“We can sure ask her.”
“Yeah!”
Edie. The reminder of her brought back a surge of longing that turned his smile wry. Their weeks at Cupid Cats had been good for Chloe. Since Edie didn’t know any five-year-olds, she didn’t have any preconceived ideas of Chloe’s limitations. She expected her to behave in a certain way and treated her accordingly. And Chloe responded. The few times she’d actually lit into a tantrum on the shelter’s premises—and there had unfortunately been a few—Edie’s shocked expression had done more to mitigate the scene than anything Jim or his sisters had done. Instead of arguing, fretting, or cajoling his daughter, Edie simply removed herself from the area.
Chloe was not stupid. A temper tantrum without an audience was a wasted effort. For the most part, the temper tantrums had ended.
They reached the steps leading up from the sidewalk to their front lawn. It was overgrown. Since Chloe would be gone tonight, he should mow it, and while he was at it, he should take out the old metal clothesline pole in the backyard.
A horn beeped from behind them. They turned around to see Melissa getting out of her sedan. “Hey, baby brother. Hi there, princess,” she said, coming up the steps. “Ready to roll?”
“Hi, Aunt ’Lissa.” Chloe gave her aunt a big hug, then hopped back. “I gotta get my Dora the Explorer backpack.”
“You’re not ready?” Melissa asked in surprise. Usually Chloe was sitting on the top step of the porch when Melissa arrived, her backpack on.
“No. We were at Edie’s,” Chloe explained as she disappeared into the house.
Melissa gave Jim a look. “Honestly, Jim, I don’t know why you insist on dragging Chloe over to that shelter. There are plenty of others around where the directors aren’t opinionated control freaks.”
“We go because it’s really close and a nice walk, plus Chloe thinks that old ginger cat is Pixie, and, well . . . she likes Edie.” He almost added, “and so do I,” but figured why fan the fires.
“Huh. And I’m sure Edie likes Chloe, too. Free labor. Why, the poor lamb told me that woman had her filling water and food bowls.”
At the thought of Edie as a sort of nonprofit Fagin, cynically using kittens to lure kiddies in to fill water bowls for her, Jim burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny,” Melissa said with a disgruntled snort. Melissa had not forgiven Edie for insisting that cats belonged indoors. More to the point, she’d not forgiven her for having the science with which to back that position up and, worst of all, for doing it in front of Chloe. Melissa took her role as queen of Chloe’s heart seriously. In Edie, she sensed a challenger to the throne.
“Chloe likes helping Edie,” he said in answer to Melissa’s disgruntled snort. “She likes the responsibility, and more important, it’s good for her.”
“I wish you’d just pick a kitten and be done with this nonsense. It’s not fair to keep letting Chloe think that old bag of cat bones is going to come live with you. Even if you could get that feline head case out the front door, it wouldn’t be right to adopt a cat that old for a little girl.”
“She might come someday,” said a small voice from the front door.
Melissa spun around, her expression melting into self-reproach. “Oh, honey. I didn’t mean she wouldn’t want to come with you. I just wish you’d fallen in love with a kitty. Someone you can grow up with.”
Chloe opened the screen door and slipped out, dragging her Dora the Explorer backpack by the strap. Her little face was sober. “Ishy-Pixie’s going to come home with us someday, isn’t she?” she asked Jim.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
She was trying very hard to be brave. He could see it, but her lower lip did shiver just a second.
“She was someone’s cat, Chloe,” he said gently. “Someone took good care of her and loved her, and maybe she’s waiting for that person.”
“She’s Mommy’s cat,” Chloe insisted. “And Mommy can’t come and get her.”
“Well, Ishy-Pixie doesn’t know that,” Jim said, then added, “But maybe she’s not Mommy’s cat. Maybe she just really, really looks like Pixie.”
Chloe sighed, her narrow little shoulders sagging. “Maybe.” She looked up at him. “Daddy, I don’t wanna stop going to see her. Even if she’s not Pixie. I don’t want another kitty.” She hesitated a second. “Not yet. I love Cupid Cats. I love Edie.”
“We don’t have to stop going, Chlo-Schmo,” Jim said, catching Melissa’s eye. “There’s no hurry. Now, you’d better take off.”
He put her in the front seat, watched as she buckled herself tightly in, and waved as they drove away. Melissa’s face was taut with disapproval.
Chloe’s words had struck him hard. “I love Edie,” she had said.
Of course, Chloe loved Polly Pockets, Lite-Brites, and corn dogs, too. Her love was widespread and undiscriminating. But his wasn’t, and damn—that made two Currans under the good doctor’s spell.
Chapter 6
Edith locked the door behind Jim and Chloe and sagged against it, his gentle touch branded like fiery kisses along her collarbone and the nape of her neck. Why had he looked so strange, and why had he left so abruptly? She was having a hard time maintaining objectivity. He’d touched her and she’d shivered. But . . . she thought he’d shivered, too. So why had he left?
If only she could be more like Chloe, who acted without doubt or hesitation. Tonight, when Chloe had asked her for a hug and squeezed her so tightly, the world felt as if it had dropped away from beneath Edie’s feet while at the same time something swelled in her chest until it ached. Edie closed her eyes, savoring the memory of the small body squeezing into her. It had felt so good, so perfectly natural, so easy. And emotional things had never been easy for Edie.
“Maybe I should just forget it—all of it,” she said. “Grand, Edith; now you’re talking to yourself. There ought to at least be a cat around.”
Her mouth twisted in a self-mocking smile. Strange or not, too many cats or not, she loved running the shelter. The knowledge that she was needed by something living, that she could benefit another creature, produce happiness, or contentment, or just a feeling of security—somehow it fulfilled a part of her
as nothing else had.
She loved her cats, each one of them. Initially she’d abjured herself for using a term like “love” in reference to her relationship with these stray and lost animals, but she’d long ago gotten over it. Love existed. One could not quantify it or examine it; the proof of its existence relied solely on anecdotal material. And yet she did not doubt for an instant that it existed. She loved her parents, her friends, Chloe, and . . .
She pushed herself upright and as she did so, she thought she heard a soft voice coming from the back of the shelter, where the Meet and Greet room was located. Had Carol come back and entered through the alley?
She went to investigate, her tennis shoes padding softly on the linoleum as she headed down the corridor and stopped, her hand on the doorknob. The voice was gone now, the only sound the soft sibilation of the antique air conditioner struggling to keep the facility cool. She cracked open the door and peered inside. Ishy-Pixie was moving in a tight little circle in the middle of the room, her back arched as though she were rubbing against something, purring loudly.
There was no one else in the room.
“What are you doing in here?” Edie asked. She could have sworn Ishy-Pixie was still in the front lobby where Chloe had left her. And how did she get in here when the door was closed?
The cat opened her milky green eyes and came toward her, her gait a little uneven, her tail high. Edie lifted her gently. She weighed no more than a paperback book. The old darling would not live much longer. She spent more and more time sleeping the days and nights away. Food held little interest for her. Only she and Chloe and Jim awoke what was left of her desire to be with people.
Edie lowered her head, rubbing her cheek gently across the small head. “Oh, darling. You never are going to leave the shelter, are you?” The idea filled her with melancholy. The cat wriggled a little in her arms, and Edie took her over to the old beat-up sofa, setting her gingerly on the cushion. It was her favorite place nowadays. At once, she tucked her little paws underneath her and closed her eyes.
With a final scratch behind Ishy’s ear, Edie left her and headed toward the Cat Room. She might as well do her final rounds and leave. She did a head count of the five resident cats in two banks of stacked stainless steel kennels, making sure everyone was safe for the night: Rasputin . . . Morgan Le Fay . . . Dido . . . Caravaggio . . . Nemo. . . .
Her eye caught sight of something lurking in the back of the bottom lower-right kennel. She frowned. No animal had been assigned to that kennel. She bent down to peer in.
“Geez!” She jumped back.
Catching her hand to her chest, she cautiously leaned back over again. Chloe’s deformed pouty-lipped, giant-headed doll’s abnormally bulging eyes stared back at her. She reached in and grabbed it, feeling a thrill of distaste. Chloe must have been playing some sort of game with it—prison doll?—and in her father’s haste to leave left it behind.
Whatever she did or did not do about Jim Curran and the uncomfortable, exciting, frightening, physical yearning he engendered in her had no bearing on her relationship with Chloe. In so many ways, Chloe was direct and trusting and took things at face value. It made her vulnerable. She could not stand to have Chloe thinking she didn’t care about her. Her life would be a great deal emptier without Chloe.
Of course, they couldn’t all go on like this indefinitely. As Jim had said in the beginning, it wouldn’t be long before Chloe realized Ishy-Pixie wasn’t her mother’s and gave up trying to take her out of the shelter. It had already gone on longer than anyone, save perhaps Chloe, expected. The last few visits, Chloe hadn’t spent as much time with Ishy-Pixie, occupied as she was with her “job” of filling water bowls and “exercising” the kittens and cats. Before long, she’d give up, and even if she didn’t, Ishy-Pixie . . . Well, she had only a few weeks left, maybe a month. Then what? How could she tell Chloe that the old cat—
A tear welled up in her eye, and she dashed it away angrily with the back of her hand.
She didn’t know what to do, and it scared the hell out of her. She hated not knowing. She hated being ignorant. She’d spent her life collecting information as a way of making sense of things, of being able to anticipate things, of controlling things. But this she couldn’t control.
Damn, damn, damn. She thought too much! She always had. But rather than free her from making mistakes and giving her an advantage in her dealings with people, it had only backed her into this tight little corner from which she was afraid to move—except with the cats. Her shoulders sagged. She’d become a weird old cat lady, and she wasn’t even thirty.
She didn’t want to be a strange cat lady. She wanted Jim—and Chloe.
Chloe . . .
Her gaze fell on the Big Head doll.
Chloe would either miss the doll terribly or not realize it was gone. Edith could not assume the latter. She would take the doll back to Chloe. She didn’t see she had a choice. She stuck the Big Head into her oversized tote, checked the shelter’s voice mailbox to see if any cats needed immediate rescuing, and then stepped out into the Chicago summer night, locking the door behind her.
It had been close to ninety degrees earlier in the day, and the evening didn’t promise much relief. She set off at a brisk pace, rehearsing what she would say if Jim asked her in. And he would ask her in, because he was a very polite man. Over the course of the last few weeks, he’d talked her into going out to lunch several times, but she drew the line at dinner. That would have made it too much like a date.
At first, she’d thought he did so out of gratitude for letting Chloe come to the shelter, and she didn’t want to be thanked for something she did as much for herself as for the child, so she’d refused. But then he’d explained that he wanted her to get more involved with the clients and wished to “brief” her on how they ought to approach possible investors. That she could agree to.
But if he invited her into his house when she brought the doll tonight, she would decline, of course. One didn’t appear on the doorstep and expect to be welcomed in. She was simply returning his daughter’s toy—of course.
She turned the corner, admiring the neighborhood. She’d always liked Parkwood Knolls. It was a typical turn-of-the-century enclave, each house set amidst small, neat front yards with their respective detached garages lining back alleys. Every house had steps leading up from well-maintained sidewalks to the flower-bordered front walks of a nice mixture of bungalows, arts and crafts, and prairie-style homes.
A block and a half up the street she found Jim’s address, an olive drab-colored stucco bungalow with deep eaves overhanging a front porch painted white. An empty swing hung from the horizontal limb of a giant basswood tree. The grass needed mowing.
She pulled the doll from her purse and climbed onto the porch. The front door was open behind the screen door, the hushed stillness of an empty house waiting beyond. She peered through a short vestibule that opened into a living room. Books, magazines, and toys were haphazardly piled on a hammered-brass coffee table while a variety of stuffed toys had been heaped on a cherry-colored sofa and a matching pair of brown and red patterned armchairs. A floor lamp improbably fringed in copper-colored silk cast a warm amber pool of light on a threadbare Persian rug. In the far wall, an arched doorway opened into what looked like a hall, also cluttered with toys. No one was in sight.
Edith took a deep breath and knocked. She waited. Nothing. She knocked again, louder this time, and strained to hear. Obviously someone was home; the door was open. Maybe they were eating dinner in some back kitchen area.
“Hello?” she called. “Anyone here?”
No answer. She supposed she could put the doll just inside the door and leave. . . . She opened the screen door, then bent the creepy Big Head doll’s stick legs out at a forty-five degree angle and set it on the floor. She straightened and studied the doll. It looked somehow sinister sitting in the center of the tiny vestibule, pouty lips curved in an empty smile, its disturbingly big eyes fixed on nothing. Sh
e frowned. She sure wouldn’t want to walk into her house and find that doll staring at her. Maybe . . . maybe she should just stick it on the coffee table with the other toys where it wouldn’t look so ominous.
She’d be in and out in a matter of seconds.
She slipped into the house and made her way light-footed across the old carpet, floorboards creaking loudly beneath her feet. She grimaced and hurriedly tossed the doll on the table.
“You know, breaking and entering is illegal.”
She wheeled around.
Jim Curran stood in the archway, wearing nothing but a lopsided smile and a pair of jeans that molded to his long thighs like velvet to antlers. He was idly rubbing his hair with a towel, the black ringlets shimmering with water droplets. He looked like one of the male underwear models she’d seen in some of the magazines at the dentist’s office, only better because he wasn’t a smooth boy but a hard, muscular man with a thick furring of dark hair across his chest that thinned as it narrowed over corrugated abdominal muscles and then thickened again as it disappeared under his jeans’ low-hanging waistband. Her mouth went dry.
“Hey! I’m sorry,” he said, flipping the towel over a broad shoulder and coming toward her, his smile turning into a look of concern. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Geez. You look scared to death. Come on in.”
She’d frozen in place, riveted by the sight of his arm and chest muscles flexing with the smallest movement. She’d had no idea that all that was going on under his crisp white dress shirts. Oh my.
“No, n-no,” she stuttered. “I, ah, I just came to return Chloe’s doll. I knocked, but no one answered, so I just . . . It looked weird sitting in the entry,” she finished lamely.
“It looks weird sitting anywhere,” Jim said, stopping a few feet away. He was still smiling, seemingly delighted that she was there. He’d probably look just as pleased if she were the cable installation guy, because she couldn’t imagine he’d developed a . . . partiality for her. It would be akin to the high school quarterback falling for the math team captain. Not that she knew any of this firsthand—she’d skipped high school—but she’d picked up the reference from college students.
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