“How’s my hand?” I sputtered. “Roma! You? Eddie? How?”
She grinned like a teenager. “The rumor about Eddie and me hit the Internet. He happened to see it. He e-mailed me. I e-mailed back. We e-mailed maybe two dozen times. Then we had coffee.”
Her smile got bigger. “We talked for two hours.”
“Some of those sightings of you and Eddie were—”
“Real,” she finished. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you two. It’s just that I told myself I was crazy. He’s younger than I am. We’re so different. Then one day I just decided, Why the heck not? And here we are.”
Eddie was on his way back with the hot chocolate. Maggie was saying something about playing matchmaker.
I could feel Marcus looking at me before I turned my head to lock eyes with him. I remembered how I’d felt when I’d seen him coming through the trees toward me, how he’d been there to catch me. I remembered how he couldn’t stop smiling at me in the ambulance. He kept looking at me, and then he started across the room, and I couldn’t help thinking, Why the heck not?
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I’d never heard a cat laugh before—I didn’t think they could—but that’s what Owen was clearly doing. He was behind the big chair in the living room, laughing. It sounded a little like hacking up a fur ball, if you could somehow add merriment to the sound.
I leaned over the back of the chair. “Okay, cut it out,” I said. “You’re being mean.”
He looked up at me, and it seemed as though the expression in his golden eyes was a mix of faux-innocence and mirth. “It’s not funny,” I hissed.
Okay, so it was kind of funny. Owen’s brother, Hercules, was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, wearing boots. Specifically, black and white boots, to match his black and white fur, in a kitty-paw-print design with fleece lining and antislip soles. They were a gift from my friend Maggie.
“Stick a paw in it,” I said to Owen. “You’re not helping.”
I went back into the kitchen. Hercules gave me a look that was part acute embarrassment and part annoyance.
“They are kind of cute,” I said. “You have to admit it was a very nice gesture on Maggie’s part.” That got me a glare that was all venom.
“I’ll take them off.” I crouched down in front of him. He held up one booted paw and I undid the strap. “You’re just not a clothes cat,” I told him. “You’re more of an au naturel cat.”
I heard a noise behind me in the doorway. “And Owen is very sorry he laughed at you. Aren’t you, Owen?” I added a little extra emphasis to the last words. After a moment’s silence there was a soft meow from the other side of the room.
I took the second boot off, and Hercules shook one paw and then the other. I stroked the fur on the top of his head. “Maggie was just trying to help,” I said. “She knows you don’t like getting your feet wet.”
Hercules was a total wuss about wet feet. He didn’t like going out in the rain. He didn’t like going out in the snow. He didn’t like walking across the grass in heavy dew. Maggie had seen the cat boots online and ordered them. I didn’t know how I was going to explain to her that boots just weren’t his thing.
I stood up, went over to the cupboard to get a handful of kitty crackers and made a little pile on the floor in front of Herc. “Here,” I said. “These’ll help.” Then I scooped up Owen. I could tell from the way his tail was twitching that he’d been thinking of swiping a cracker.
“Leave your brother alone,” I warned, carrying him upstairs with me. “Or I’ll put those boots on you and I’ll tell Maggie you like them.”
He made grumbling noises in his throat. I set him on the floor, and he disappeared into my closet to sulk. I pulled on an extra pair of heavy socks, brushed my hair back into a low ponytail and stuffed my wallet in my pocket.
Hercules had eaten the crackers and was carefully grooming his front paws. “I’m going to meet Maggie,” I told him, pulling my sweatshirt over my head. “I’ll figure out something to tell her.”
I locked the kitchen door behind me and walked around the side of the house to the truck—my truck. Sometimes I still got the urge to clap my hands and squeal when I saw it. It had started out as a loaner from Harry Taylor, Sr., and when I’d manage to retrieve some papers about Harry’s daughter’s adoption, he’d insisted on giving me the truck.
When I’d moved to Mayville Heights about a year ago to become head librarian and to oversee the renovations to the library building, I’d sold my car. The town was small enough that I could walk everywhere I wanted to go. But it was nice not to have to carry two bags of groceries up the hill. And with all the rain we’d had in the past week and all the flooding, I never would have been able to get to the library—or a lot of other places—without the old truck.
The morning sky was dull and the air was damp. We’d had a week of off-and-on rain—mostly on—and the downtown was at serious risk of major flooding. The retaining wall between Old Main Street and the river was strong, but it had been reinforced with sandbags just in case. We’d spent hours two nights ago moving those bags into place along a human chain of volunteers.
This was the second day the library was closed. The building was on relatively high ground, a rise where the street turned, and the pump Oren Kenyon had installed in the basement was handling what little water had come in, but both the parking lot and the street were flooded.
Maggie was waiting for me on the sidewalk in front of the artists’ co-op building. The old stone basement had several feet of water in it, and we’d spent most of the previous day moving things from the first-floor store into the second-floor tai chi studio, in case the water got any higher. There were still a couple of her large collage panels that needed to be carried upstairs.
“Hi,” I said. “How late did you stay here last night?”
“Not that late,” she said as she unlocked the front door.
I followed her inside. Mags and I had met at her tai chi class and bonded over our love of the cheesy reality show Gotta Dance. She was an artist, a tai chi instructor, and she ran the co-op store.
Her two collage panels were up on a table, carefully wrapped and padded. We carried them up the steps without any problems.
I was about to suggest that we walk over to Eric’s Place for coffee and one of his blueberry muffins, when we heard someone banging on the front door.
“Please tell me that isn’t who I think it is,” Maggie said. Before I could ask who she meant, she was on her way downstairs.
Jaeger Merrill was outside, his back to the door. Maggie let out a soft sigh and went to unlock it. He turned at the sound.
“Good morning,” she said.
Jaeger stepped inside. “The window in my studio is leaking,” he said. There were two deep frown lines between his eyebrows. Jaeger was a mask maker. He sold both his masks and some of the elaborate preliminary sketches he made for them in the store.
“Ruby told me,” Maggie said. “Someone’s coming to take a look at it this morning.”
“I wanted to get some work done and instead I had to waste a lot of time sticking my stuff in boxes. Again.” He dragged his fingers back through his blond hair. A couple of weeks ago he’d cut off a good six inches. It made him look more serious, less bohemian. “The building needs a manager.”
“River Arts does have a manager,” I said. “The town owns the building.”
“Too much bureaucracy and too little money,” Jaeger said derisively. “The center should have a corporate sponsor. So should the store.”