Unknown - Cat_shining_bright_Merfi_630007

Why would the ferals have any interest in Lena or Voletta—except to stay clear of the cranky old woman and the motley animals she tried to keep corralled within her rickety fence? Kate wondered if the ferals, in the storm, had heard Voletta’s window shatter and had come down from their new hiding place, curious, as Scotty took Voletta away in his car. Wondered if they had watched them return this morning, Scotty helping her inside in a walker. Ever since Ryan’s engineers had begun tramping the ruins, photographing and measuring, and then when the construction work started, the cats had stayed away. They had chosen for their new lair a northerly hillside above the estate, dense with boulders and cypress trees—one of their favorite early-morning hunting grounds and now a new temporary home.

“We don’t mind moving up there,” Willow had told Kate. “The carpenters are noisy, and when the machines are here we don’t want to be anywhere near them. When we do come down, to see what the men are doing, we stay here in the back away from the machinery.”

“It won’t be for long,” Kate told Willow, “and you’ll have your favorite places in the mansion back, only better.”

Cotton said, “We used to watch Voletta Nestor take her morning walks up among the ruins. Now she’s been hurt, I guess she won’t be doing that for a while.”

“Wandering,” Willow said, “as if she’s searching for something.”

“And other times,” Cotton said, “going right to where she keeps her special box.”

“Safe,” Willow said. “It’s a safe. When she goes there she puts in packages wrapped in brown paper. She keeps it locked—in a niche under the back kitchen stairs, and boards pulled over. But now, since you bought the property, she’s been taking packages out instead of putting them in.”

“How often did she do that, put packages in?”

“Every few weeks,” Willow said. “You weren’t around much then, we never thought to tell you. She’d go to town, bring home groceries. Later she’d walk up there, the little packages in her pockets.”

The ferals had watched Kate, earlier, as she went down to tend to the elderly lady. She had looked up at them and smiled, and they had switched their tails in greeting. It had surprised her that they would return to the mansion when Scotty, Manuel, and Fernando were working there; but this morning it was quiet work, no tractor or heavy equipment, just shovels and hand tools.

Ryan’s crew would make this part of the house whole again. It, like some of the other added-on wings, had not been as solidly constructed as the core interior—that main, old house was a ruggedly sturdy, four-bedroom retreat that even now needed only cleaning up, minor repairs, and new wiring and plumbing. None of the later additions, the front rooms and outbuildings, had been so strongly built, and these would be replaced. The basements and cellars were solid enough, Ryan had had an engineer examine them. “A fine foundation,” he had told her. Some of those underground spaces would be used for storage, but many would be left for the feral band, just as, outdoors, Ryan and Kate would leave the piles of old stone and rubble, and a number of strengthened storage sheds to afford shelter and hiding places.

Kate wasn’t sure what she would do with the renovated mansion. She had in mind a cat museum like the one she so loved in San Francisco. Paintings, sculpture, tapestries; that museum had originals by many famous artists. And she wanted rooms for art classes, too. The cellars and tunnels left for the ferals would be blocked from the public. Parking could be a problem, which was why she had wanted Voletta’s land. As dusk gathered, at the back of Voletta’s cottage the trees turned bright when the kitchen lights blazed on. Then lights in the living room, too, shining out on the rear yard. At the front of the house, the windows in the right corner bedroom were now dark.

She watched Scotty and their two carpenters, higher up the hill, putting their tools away, wrapping it up for the night. Scotty’s red hair and beard caught a last streak of vanishing sun. His big square hands were quick and capable as he loaded the tools in his truck. Watching him, a warmth touched her, a sense of his arms around her. The memory of her head on his shoulder; Scotty holding her as she’d cried against him, the day the old yellow tomcat died.

But a shiver chilled her, too. As much as she knew she loved him, this could never be permanent.

She wanted to stay with Scotty, she wanted them to be married, and she was certain that he did, too. But that could never happen. Not when she must lie to him, when she could never share her knowledge about the speaking cats. That confidence was ironclad among the few humans who did know the cats’ secret. And, with Kate, there was even more to keep hidden.

In the Harper marriage, Charlie knew the cats could speak, but Max didn’t. Charlie had to swallow back every accidental hint, every incriminating remark that might want to slip out. And Kate would have to do the same. She would have, too often, to lie to Scotty, and she would hate each deception. A solid marriage wasn’t meant to harbor secrets, marriage was meant for openness, the only secrets being those shared by both.

But, she thought, the lies have worked for Charlie, she has made them work. Though it was never easy. Too many times she had seen Charlie turn away from Max’s observing look, cross the room to refill their coffee cups, straighten the kitchen chairs, hunt in her pocket for a tissue, anything to distract from what might have been a misstep. Kate wondered if she could live like that with Scott Flannery, who seemed to conceal nothing, who held back no secret.

But thinking of living without Scotty was even more painful. Now, as Manuel and Fernando climbed in their truck and took off down the hill, and Scotty’s truck headed for the shelter, Kate turned away and went to start dinner in the kitchen of the little apartment. Two small filets, scalloped potatoes in the microwave, a salad. While she set the table, hearing Scotty’s truck pull up, her heart was pounding with conflicted thoughts, with the sight of him, tall and muscled, his flaming hair and neatly trimmed red beard. She could feel his hand in hers as they walked through the woods, or as he helped her install walkways and bridges in the big enclosures for the shelter cats.

These cats were not meant to be confined for long, they were meant to have homes. Or, if they were feral and had roamed wild and free, they would be returned to their own territory and looked after, from a polite distance, by the CatFriends volunteers. They would have had shots and been spayed, they would have water, and food besides the rats and mice they hunted, and would have secure outdoor shelters. Scotty understood that these wild cats that CatFriends had trapped were wary and frightened, and he was gentle with them.

She had watched Scotty around the ruins, how he would glance at the ferals, knowing they were wild. She could see his smile when they peered out at him, could see his interest in their shy ways. He always paid attention, as the men got to work with loud equipment, to how the cats would disappear, avoiding the very places the men meant to break and dig.

Now, as she watched Scotty come up the steps, moving on into the bathroom to wash up, she put the potatoes in the microwave, the steaks on the hot skillet, and the salads on the little apartment table.

“Those feral cats,” Scotty said, sitting down, “that band around the ruins. Will they stay at all, when we bring in more heavy equipment, bigger tractors and backhoes? Or will they leave for good, frightened and displaced? Where will they go?”

“There’s a lot of land,” she said. “Rocky places up in those trees, caves to hide and to den in. Places so far back in the woods, you can hardly see the mansion. I’m guessing they hunt there, in the early hours.”