She and Lucinda and Pedric had been home from the Firettis’ for nearly an hour but she couldn’t sleep. She’d started out in the house on the bed between the old couple but she was too restless, too warm, her blood pounding too hard. Slipping down off the quilt to the floor, she’d trotted through the house to the dining room, leaped to the table, across to the sill, and pushed out through her cat door along the twisted oak in the icy night and into her tree house, where she’d burrowed deep beneath the pillows.
She listened in the silence until another owl answered from farther up the hill; she thought about Pan, and that was why she couldn’t sleep and her claws kneaded sharply into the pillows. She thought how the firelight glanced off his red coat, thought about his travels, thought how she and Pan had listened together to Misto’s tales. Pondering the stories and adventures of both tomcats, she grew so restless that at last she left her warm cushions, too, scrambled down out of her oak tree, and raced across the neighbors’ yards until, where the houses rose closer together, she hit the roofs again. Putting the call of the owls behind her, farther and farther behind her, she prowled the roofs above the village shops, scrambled over peaks and dormers feeling bold and wild, looking into second-floor penthouses, trotting, racing, stopping again to peer into the rooms of strangers. She looked into Erik Kraft’s elegant penthouse, slipping under the terrace wall. It still looked neat and unlived in, the bedroom elegantly furnished and totally unused. Quilted black bedspread made up just so, thick black towels folded perfectly on the shelf in the master bath, one black towel perfectly aligned on the rod, as neat as if a decorator had placed it there. Even the white ceramic drinking glass and tray by the basin were placed just so.
It hadn’t been so neat when he was in town; then, looking in, you’d see his clothes dropped here and there, and often a woman’s things, sleek nightgown, satin slippers tossed under the bed, a mess of jars and tubes on the bathroom counter—Alain, she supposed, or maybe some other woman; human men were so fickle.
She prowled until her paws felt like ice cubes and then she spun around and headed for home. She was freezing when at last she clambered up her own oak tree and back under her own soft pillows, just her nose and face sticking out where she could see the street and yards below. From her high vantage she sighed once, purred twice, and was nearly asleep when she saw, down on the street, Emmylou’s old car moving slowly along. What was she doing out at this hour? Looking for a place to park for the night? Somewhere the cops wouldn’t hassle her?
Strange old woman, Kit thought, very independent even with the law. She guessed Emmylou didn’t like the cops or anyone else telling her what to do—didn’t like to be bossed around, any more than a cat did. Maybe in ancient times, Kit thought, letting her imagination run, maybe Emmylou would have been a homeless loner then, too, always at odds with the world, an outcast faring no better, then, out in the cold looking for a place to rest and get warm.
Rambling along in her old Chevy, with the heater turned on full blast, easing along beside the village shops looking in their softly lit windows at wares she couldn’t buy, Emmylou at last turned up into the narrow residential streets, to find a place to park. But she stopped now and then where a living room light burned, sat watching the flicker of firelight against drawn curtains, imagining the cozy room within. Then, moving on, she tried to think what she should do; she had to find a job but she so hated the regimentation. She’d tried, at three groceries, to get on as a bagger, had filled out applications, left her name, but no one needed her. Maybe, like others down on their luck, she should steal just a little, just enough to get by, if she could do it without getting caught.
The cops were right, she had meant to stay at Sammie’s. Until she saw the mess, until she thought someone had been in there—or something. Something she didn’t want to share a bed with. She’d hidden the metal box there earlier, but then had gone back to retrieve it. The trashed house had frightened her so that, even if the cops stopped watching the place, she wouldn’t go back inside.
Earlier in the evening, driving around looking for Sammie’s cats as well as for a place to get warm, she’d stopped outside Dr. John Firetti’s clinic, thinking about her own cats. Wondering if they were still there, if she could get them back when she did find a place, or if he had already found homes for them.
Maybe better homes than she could give them. He’d known when he questioned her that she was lying about their shots, but he’d been willing to help them anyway. She liked him for that. The clinic complex was a hodgepodge affair, the two small cottages joined by the big solarium and then, across a little patch of lawn, the doctor’s own small cottage. Two outdoor lamps burned in the yard, their glow smeared by rain, lighting the way between the house and clinic. Neat flower beds flanked the front door, and through the shuttered windows the undulating light of a hearth fire gave her a sharp jolt of loneliness. Listening through the car’s open window, she caught soft laughter, a happy sound that twisted at her and made her move on, feeling left out, knowing she wouldn’t be wanted there.
Chilled by loneliness as much as by the icy night, she headed up among the winding hillside streets where the cottages were crowded close and the streets didn’t have parking limits, where if she could find an empty spot among the residents’ own cars, she could safely stay the night. She was searching for a parking place, thinking the cops didn’t usually bother a person up here, when a black-and-white approached her from the rear, startling her, coming fast, its tires throwing up sheets of water. Slowing, she pulled over. What did they want? They had no reason to follow her, no reason to hassle her.
But the squad car didn’t slow, it sped on past, and another behind it, and then two civilian cars, all of them heading straight up the hill—in the direction of Sammie’s neighborhood. She looked after them with unease.
But hundreds of people lived up there, in those little pocket neighborhoods separated by ravines or outcroppings of boulders too rugged to build on. Why would she think they were headed for Sammie’s? They had no reason to go to Sammie’s, she was worrying for nothing.
She was just tired, exhaustion always left her edgy and nervous. Turning onto a short dead end, she found a parking place no one else had wanted, really only a swale, a runoff that directed rushing rainwater down into a little ravine, sheltered by a dripping willow so her car would be nearly hidden.
She backed parallel into that portion of curb, her front and back wheels straddling the low dip. She locked her doors, rolled up her windows to just a crack. Crawled over into the backseat, stacked the bags and boxes on the floor as she did every night, to make a flat surface. Shook out her blankets and quilt and pulled them around her. The backseat still smelled of ashes from Hesmerra’s metal box. Hesmerra had called it her safe, and she’d been partially right. It wasn’t insulated like a fire safe, but the metal had been enough to protect the papers from the dampness of the earth where it was buried; and the earth in turn had protected it from the fire.