Софи Келли - Paws Аnd Effect

I hadn’t argued with Mary’s reasoning—but I knew that Harrison Taylor had had a fairly heated conversation on the subject with her. Harrison and Mary had been friends for years and I felt sure their friendship would withstand this disagreement, but I still hated seeing them squabble instead of blatantly flirting with each other the way they usually did.

When Maggie arrived I took her in to meet John and promised I’d bring her back lunch from Eric’s.

“I’m going home to change,” I told Mary. “I shouldn’t be long.” Generally I didn’t start until lunchtime on Fridays.

Mary nodded. “The young man who came in with you, he’s looking for something to stop the plans for the resort, isn’t he?”

I turned back around to face her. “Yes, he is,” I said. “Will that be a problem for you?”

The moment the words were out I regretted saying them. I held up my hand. “I’m sorry, Mary. I shouldn’t have asked that. I know that you don’t let personal feeling interfere with your work.”

She gave a snort of laughter. “Yes, I do. All the time. But I promise you I won’t go into the meeting room where he’s working loaded for bear.”

I smiled. “I appreciate that.”

When I got home I found Hercules in the backyard sitting on the wide arm of my favorite Adirondack chair. “What are you doing out here?” I asked. He looked in the direction of the gazebo in Rebecca’s backyard. Rebecca and Everett’s backyard , I mentally corrected myself. Rebecca had been my neighbor since I’d moved to Mayville Heights. She’d been the first person to welcome me. Then I’d met Maggie and Roma when Rebecca invited me to try her tai chi class. She was one of my favorite people. Both Owen and Hercules adored her and not just because she spoiled them with kitty treats.

Now that Rebecca and Everett were married Hercules had taken to joining Everett for coffee—and the occasional (I hoped) slice of bacon in the gazebo a couple of times a week.

“So have you solved all the town’s problems?” I asked, scooping up the little black-and-white cat and heading for the back door. Hercules pretty much came and went as he pleased. That was because he had a very unique ability. He could walk through the door—walls, too. The first time I’d seen him do it—at the library while it was under construction—I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or having a stroke. I wasn’t sure what it said about me that seeing my cat walk through an otherwise solid wooden door or an equally solid brick wall was pretty much commonplace for me now.

I unlocked the back door and set Hercules on the porch floor. At least Owen didn’t walk though walls. I opened the kitchen door, letting Hercules go ahead of me. “Owen,” I called. “Where are you?”

Hercules cocked his black-and-white head to one side and looked toward the cats’ food bowls next to the refrigerator. Owen winked into view, materializing like Captain Kirk getting beamed onto the bridge of the starship Enterprise .

No, Owen couldn’t walk through walls and doors the way his brother could. His superpower, as it were, was the ability to make himself invisible. Which he generally did at the worst times for me.

He made his way across the kitchen floor toward me, making disgruntled little murps.

I crouched down and stroked his fur. “I’m sorry it took so long. I took Marcus out to breakfast.” That got me a louder dissatisfied murp.

“I need to change and head back down to the library.” My regular workday would be starting soon anyway and I wanted to see how John was doing in the herbarium. “And I need to call Rebecca,” I said aloud.

Owen immediately headed for the back door. “No,” I said. “She’s not coming over for tea.” Owen stopped in his tracks and looked over at his brother. They exchanged a glance and then Herc nudged his food dish with his head, pushing it several inches across the floor. He looked over at me, his green eyes wide and unblinking. I didn’t need to turn toward Owen to know his golden eyes were also fixed on me.

“Neither one of you knows the meaning of the word ‘subtle,’” I said as I got the container of sardine crackers out of the cupboard.

“Merow!” Hercules said, which may have meant he did in fact know what the word meant, but in reality was probably his way of saying “Hurry up.”

I gave each cat a small stack of the homemade crackers and a fresh drink of water and then went upstairs to change.

When I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth I found Hercules in the hallway. Because Owen could be kind of finicky I knew it would take him a lot longer to finish his snack.

Hercules followed me into the bedroom and poked his head in the closet. I sometimes got the feeling he’d been some sort of fashionista in a past life. He eyed every item while I was picking out my clothes as though he had an opinion on everything—which it sometimes seemed to me that he did.

“Marcus has friends from college,” I said as I pulled the elastic from my hair and ran my fingers through it.

“Mrrr,” Hercules said.

“They’re here, three of them. In town, I mean.”

I talked to the cats. A lot. For a long time I’d rationalized it by telling myself it helped me to work out things out loud—to hear what I was thinking. And that was true, but I also believed they understood most if not all of what I was saying. Given their other “skills,” it wasn’t that far-fetched.

I told Hercules all about meeting Travis, John and Danielle. At one point in the conversation I looked over to see Owen in the doorway, carefully washing his face. He looked up at me when I stopped talking and meowed—cat for “Keep going,” perhaps?

“It’s not like Marcus,” I said. Hercules leaned against my leg and I reached down and picked him up. If he shed any fur on my charcoal sweater it wouldn’t show. “He slept with his best friend’s girlfriend. Does that sound like Marcus to you?”

The cat wrinkled his nose as though he was actually considering my question. “I know it was a long time ago, but . . .” I let the end of the sentence trail off because I didn’t know what else to say. Marcus hadn’t told me anything about these friends that he’d been very close to at one point in his life—in the case of Dani, extremely close. He was a very private person but this felt wrong, even for him.

It had been hard for Marcus, who was accustomed to keeping things to himself, to share his life with me. And it had been hard for me, used to my let-it-all-hang-out family, to give him time to let me in. “I really do love him,” I said to Hercules.

“Mrr,” Hercules said. It may have seemed silly, but I was glad both cats liked Marcus. I remembered the first time he had told me he loved me. He’d had a furry Greek chorus urging him on.

“There’s some reason he didn’t tell me about them,” I said. “Something more than he slept with his friend’s girlfriend.”

“Merow!” Owen chimed in from the doorway, one paw in the air as he paused in his fur care routine.

“Owen agrees with me.” Hercules made a sound a lot like a sigh and nuzzled my chin. It seemed he was going to take more convincing.

Before I left I called Rebecca. She readily agreed to come by the library and share what she knew about the area’s plant life with John. I called Marcus but the call went to voice mail. “I just wanted to check in,” I said after the beep. “I’ll be at the library if you need me.”

Down in the kitchen I put a container of chicken soup and one of Rebecca’s rhubarb muffins in my insulated lunch bag. I grabbed my purse and the messenger bag that had been doubling as a briefcase and looked around for the boys. There was no sign of either furry face. “I’m gone. See you tonight,” I called. I waited but there was no answering meow from either one of them.