Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

“Not that you have to be the same age to fall in love with each other,” I told Eddie. “There are lots of couples out there who are years and years apart in age.”

I started counting on my fingers. Donna’s husband hadn’t retired since he was holding out for maximum social security benefits, so he had to be at least five years younger. And I was pretty sure Uncle Everett, Aunt Frances’s first husband, had been significantly older.

“Okay, that’s only two couples, but I’m sure I could come up with more if—” I stopped, frowning. Underneath me there were sounds of a cat getting into something he shouldn’t. “Eddie, what are you doing?”

The unexplained noise continued unabated.

I slid over the edge of the bench seat and oozed onto the floor. “Please don’t tell me you’ve crawled into Kate’s luggage again,” I said, peering underneath the lowered table. “You know she hates it when you get your white hairs on her black T-shirts and your black hairs on her white T-shirts.”

A single piece of popcorn rolled out and came to a rest next to my right knee.

“Nice.” I wondered how long it had been there and decided not to think about it. “You could have eaten that and saved—”

A second piece of popcorn rolled out and stopped by my left knee. “Double nice. Thanks for your commentary on my housekeeping—”

“Mrr!”

“I said thank you. What more do you want?”

“MRR!” Eddie crawled out from the darkness, gave me a Look, and stalked off.

“Some days,” I said, watching his tail end, “it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.”

“Mrr.”

* * *

When Kate eventually returned, I was sitting on a front deck chaise, reading, with Eddie flopped across my legs. She stepped aboard, muttered an apology for leaving without telling me where she was going, and slunk inside.

“Not sure that counts as talking,” I said to Eddie. “What do you think?”

He purred, which was the exact response I’d hoped for.

I’d been texting Louisa on and off since Kate had fled for the Axfords’ greener pastures and the fun of playing with a toddler, and when Louisa had asked if I wanted Kate to apologize, I’d responded: In a perfect world, sure. But though Chilson may be paradise, it’s not perfect.

Louisa: Shouldn’t we be trying to make the world more perfect?

I’d returned with: But who gets to decide the definition of perfection? Not sure I want that job and an emoji of a yellow face sticking its tongue out.

After sitting a few minutes longer, I picked up Eddie and my book—because it was way too dark to read, even for me—and headed inside. As I passed Kate, who’d already brushed her teeth, changed into pajamas, slid into her sleeping bag, and started up a video game on her tablet, I said, “See you in the morning.”

She made a grunt-like noise in return, and I went to bed with a calm heart. She might not be talking-talking to me, but I wasn’t getting the silent treatment.

“What do you think about that?” I whispered to Eddie, who was curled up between my right hip and the outer wall.

Once again, his only answer was a purr.

* * *

The next morning, Rafe and I had arranged to meet for breakfast at the Round Table. We hadn’t shared our Friday night because he and some buddies had tickets to a concert at the flat-out gorgeous Great Lakes Center for the Arts, and I wasn’t invited.

He looked at me over the coffee Sabrina had just poured. “You could have gone, you know.”

I hesitated, then reached out for the cream. It was definitely a cream kind of day. Then again, if I could justify the calories, most days were cream kinds of days. “Really? Me and all of your stinky guy friends, hanging out before at Knot Just a Bar, going to hear some band whose music I’ve never cared for, and then going back to Knot Just a Bar afterward to talk about how great the music was?”

“You’d have fit right in,” he said, toasting me with his mug.

It probably would have been fun, if I’d brought along earplugs. His friends were good guys, and they were always willing to expand their circle to include anyone who laughed at their jokes. Still, I liked that the two of us had slightly different sets of friends. I figured it was probably good for our relationship. That is, if the article I’d read in the women’s magazine at the beauty salon last time I was getting my hair cut had any truth behind it.

“How did it go with Kate last night?” he asked.

Grimacing, I said, “Not now, please. I don’t want to ruin my breakfast.”

“That bad?”

“It wasn’t good.”

We sat there, sipping coffee while we waited for our food, and as the caffeine started to work its happy way into my body, my outlook started to improve. “But it ended up okay. And on my way out this morning, I said, ‘Have a good day,’ and she said, ‘You too,’ so I’m going to count that as a win.”

“Speaking of wins . . .”

Rafe let the sentence trail off, and I took the bait. “What did you win?” I asked, looking around. “Don’t see any big stuffed animals.” I craned my head and neck around to see out the window. “A car? Did you win that Lamborghini I see sitting out there?” Not that I could recognize a Lamborghini from any kind of ghini, but that wasn’t the point.

“Better. And just so you know, I was very clever about this.” He beamed.

“Given,” I said, nodding.

“It’s about Dominic Price.”

My coffee cup stopped halfway up. “Nicole’s husband?”

“The very one.”

“What did you learn?” I put the cup down. “Is it something I should tell the sheriff’s office? Who did you learn it from?”

Rafe crossed his arms and glared at me. “Are you going to let me tell the story or not?”

“Is there time?” I flipped my phone over and thumbed the Home button to wake it up. Rafe Stories were rated by his friends by the number of beers they consumed while he talked. Amounts ranged from one short draft beer for the shortest tale to three tall beers for the stupendously long but immensely entertaining Appendix Story. “Okay, I don’t have anything going until tonight. I should be good.”

He frowned. “I could have sworn it was my turn to be the funny one.”

“Not until noon.”

“Oh. Well, okay then.” He looked around, and started. “Late yesterday morning, just before lunch, I ran out of finishing nails.”

This I could believe, because I’d watched him install trim, and I was pretty sure the house would end up with more weight in nails than in any other item.

“So I went up to the hardware store.” He walked his fingers across the table top. “It only took me a second to get the box of nails”—also easy to believe, since he’d practically worn a groove in the concrete sidewalk making nail trips—“so I got in line. The guy in line ahead of me looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him until someone called him Father.”

That seemed overly formal. “Not Dad?”

“Nope. Father as in Father David, the Catholic priest at that little stone church, you know, the one near Dooley, over on the other side of the county.”

I did indeed know that church. The bookmobile and crew drove past it once a week. Made of fieldstone, with a beautiful bell tower and oak double front doors, it recently celebrated its hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary.

“Anyway,” he went on, “some guy I didn’t know asked Father David how Don was doing.” Rafe paused and gave me a meaningful look. “At least that’s what I thought he said.”

I rolled my hand in a move-along gesture.

“You are the worst audience ever. Father David said he was suffering, but would make it through with faith and God’s grace. And then . . .” Rafe drew the word out long. “The guy asked Father David how the congregation was dealing with the murder of one of its members.”