The rambling two-story house had once been a decrepit relic, curling shingles, peeling paint, and a garden full of healthy weeds. Cora Lee and her three senior friends had attacked the neglected house with hammer and nails, new Sheetrock, fresh paint, with the help of Ryan and several handymen. They had built low walls to define new planter beds, where now winter flowers painted an excess of bright colors between the pale stonework. The ladies hadn’t known when they moved in that at the back of the deep lot, where it fell away to the canyon below, lay a row of little, hidden graves. Graves undiscovered for years until Jack Reed found his brother standing over an open pit, prepared to bury another murdered child.
It had taken courage for Lori to move here when Jack went to prison. Now she would live nowhere else—until her pa came home. Now the four ladies were her family. She knew the dead children had been exhumed from their anonymous resting places, each sent home for a proper burial, and Lori was okay with that; she could look out at the canyon now and think only that at last those little souls were at rest.
At the back of the house, where the lot sloped down, two small basement apartments looked out to the wild canyon. These were an important part of the senior ladies’ retirement plan. Having pooled their savings to buy the old place, they intended to avoid going into rest homes in their declining years. They would remain here together, and later hire live-in help who would stay in the apartments. Trustees would then see to the management. At present they were all four too healthy and strong to need a caretaker, and their only guest was Lori, who shared the upstairs with Cora Lee in a big, sunny room of her own. The cats were crouched to leap to the roof of the garage just outside her window when they heard a choked little sob, and another, from the room above them.
“Oh,” Kit whispered, tucking her tail under with dismay. What had happened? Listening to Lori weeping, not wanting to think the worst, she scrambled to the roof, the others behind her, and looked in through the decorative metal grille of the open window.
Lori lay on her bed, her face pressed into her pillow, crying as if her heart would break.
With a reaching paw Dulcie slid the screen open and the cats slipped between the curlicues of metal into the bedroom. Both Dulcie and Kit mewled to announce their presence, but not until Joe gave out a loud tomcat meowwrrr did Lori stop crying and look up at them. At once, Kit bounded across the covers and poked her nose at the child’s wet cheek. Lori’s shudders stopped. She took Kit in her arms, pressing her face against her, then reached to stroke Dulcie and Joe Grey. “How did you know I needed someone?” She looked at the open window. “You heard me crying? Cora Lee was here and the dogs, but I sent them away. I wanted to be alone, and then I was sorry.” She looked bleakly at the cats. “I wish you could understand. Pa’s hurt so bad. He might die,” she said in a small voice. “I wish you could understand, I wish I could tell you about Pa, I wish you could talk to me.”
She wiped at her tears. “What will I do if Pa dies? He can’t die. He was so still, so white and still, and his voice was just a whisper.” She looked forlornly at Kit. “He mustn’t die, he can’t die alone in that hospital with no one there but some guard, he can’t die all alone. That damn prison! Why is he in prison!” she said, echoing almost exactly the cats’ own thoughts. “He didn’t do anything wrong; maybe he saved a lot of children’s lives! He saved my life. If that Fenner had got me alone, I’d be dead too, just like the others.” She shoved her face into Kit’s fur, her body shaking with hard sobs. It was as if only now, after she had seen her father near death, that all her grief was coming out after nearly two years with her pa in jail, and the years before that when she hadn’t understood what was happening to him. She wept uncontrollably, soaking Kit with tears. She grew still when Mavity Flowers called from downstairs, her gravelly voice reaching Lori with surprising strength.
“Lori, you want lunch?” The little woman must be standing at the foot of the stairs, but very likely she hadn’t heard Lori crying, her hearing wasn’t that good. Mavity Flowers, one of the four senior ladies, was a small, straightforward woman, her round face prematurely wrinkled from the sun. At well over sixty, she still worked for her living cleaning houses, enjoying a change of pace as she put herself to sleep at night reading her favorite romance novels.
“I made chicken sandwiches,” she called. “Charlie’s coming by, she has some news, she sounds all excited.”
The cats didn’t know what news could cheer Lori today, but Lori sat up and wiped her eyes. Slipping off the bed, looking back at the cats to come with her, she headed downstairs. Lori loved Charlie, as she loved Max and all their close circle of friends, and just now, she surely must need them around her.
At the bottom of the stairs, the two big dogs were waiting, staring up. The cats weren’t afraid of the family Dalmatian, and Susan Brittain’s chocolate poodle, but they descended stiff-legged, their ears back, steeling themselves for the inevitable pummeling and sloppy licks. The minute they hit the bottom step the dogs were all over them, washing and nudging and harrying them until Joe Grey gave them a growl as loud as a tiger, and Kit hissed and raised a paw. Only then did they settle down, their lolling tongues showing doggy laughs as they followed Lori to the kitchen.
The big white and yellow kitchen was bright with sunlight slanting in through its long bank of windows. On the round table sat a platter of quarter-cut sandwiches, a glass of milk for Lori, cups and a pot of tea for the women. Cora Lee and Mavity were already at the table. As Lori pulled out her chair, the cats leaped onto the planning desk tucked beside the refrigerator, out of the way of the dogs. The Dalmatian and poodle stood eyeing the table hungrily—until they heard the front door knocker. Then they raced away with Mavity, only to return the next moment frisking around Charlie Harper.
The tall redhead came striding through, trying not to trip on the dogs as they gamboled around her. She carried a box of books. “For the library sale,” she said. “Three more boxes in the car.”
Cora Lee nodded and took them from her. Charlie’s red hair was twisted into a lopsided knot at the nape of her neck, fiery tendrils framing her freckled face. Lithe and slim in her faded jeans, she wore a faded persimmon T-shirt, and her well-worn boots smelled of horses. She looked more vibrant than the cats had seen her since the Gazette began trashing Max and Molena Point PD, her cheeks rosy, her green eyes laughing.
Mavity pushed back her glasses. “You heard from your editor.”
“She likes it!” Charlie said. “She likes the new book! She tried all morning to get me on the landline, but I was up in the hills, I took a really long ride and didn’t have my phone turned on.” She pulled out a chair as Cora Lee poured a cup of tea for her. “She likes it even more than the last book. She …”
She looked at Kit and went still. She rose at once and moved to the desk, standing in front of Kit, petting her and hiding Kit’s incensed, too revealing expression. She’d hurt Kit’s feelings. The tortoiseshell’s round yellow eyes were wide with hurt, with anger and dismay.
Charlie’s first book had been about Kit herself, about an orphaned tortoiseshell kitten trying to survive in the wild on her own. It had been a great success with readers, and in Kit’s view it was the best book in the whole world. Now, here was Charlie with another book that was not about her, and the editor liked it better. Kit was hot with jealousy. The editor’s enthusiasm, and Charlie’s joy, seemed a terrible betrayal.
“Editors always like the newest book best,” Charlie said, chagrined. “Or they say they do. They think that prods a writer to work harder. But,” she said, picking Kit up and cuddling her, “there’ll never be another book like Tattercoat. I’ll never, ever be able to write another story like that one. Everyone who reads it loves it, I get hundreds and hundreds of letters and emails telling me how much they love it.” Mavity and Cora Lee had read many of the letters; and of course Kit had read them all, each with a terrible thrill and with a deep and purring satisfaction.