Eddie’s white paw darted under the bottom of the newspaper and pulled. The print ripped cleanly from south to north. I jumped to my feet.
“Cut that out! This is not, I repeat not, a cat toy.”
Eddie gave me a sour look, obviously thinking that if I balled up a sheet and tossed it down to the bedroom, it would be.
“No,” I said. “This is headed for the outside recycle bin. We live on a houseboat, a small one, and organized tidiness is key.” I gathered up the paper, an empty glass jar, and the flattened can that last night had held chicken broth. “Tidiness, from here on out,” I said, slipping into the sandals I’d kicked off near the door.
“Mrr,” Eddie said.
I opened the door and pointed at him with a librarian’s index finger. “Tidiness,” I told him, and shut the door before he could get in the last word.
• • •
That was a bookmobile day, which was happily free of any unpleasant incidents or medical emergencies, and the next day was a library day that was crowded from open to close with a multitude of patrons needing assistance, a children’s author reading, a Friends of the Library meeting, and a delivery of brand-new books.
I slept like a rock that night. The next morning, my morning off from the library, I pulled on dress pants and a dressy T-shirt and drove up to the Charlevoix Hospital.
When I explained to the receptionist that I’d been the one to bring Mr. McCade in, she said he’d been asking about me and let me straight through.
“Hello?” I knocked on the doorframe of Russell McCade’s hospital room. In my hand were flowers from Oleson’s, a local grocery store. “Mr. McCade? Mrs. McCade?”
The man sitting up in the hospital bed and the woman in the chair next to him looked up at me. I remembered the woman’s just-shy-of-heavyset build and shoulder-length graying brown hair, but it was the first time I’d had a chance to really look at Russell McCade.
Despite the stroke-induced sagging of his left side, I could see that he had those craggy features that many women found attractive: bushy eyebrows, wide forehead and mouth, and a cleft chin. Sitting, he had a small belly, but that might disappear if he stood and sucked in. His hair was similar to his wife’s, half brown and half gray, and though their features didn’t look that similar, they gave off a sense of fitting together like a right hand in a left.
“Yes?” Mrs. McCade looked at me with a polite, yet distant smile. “May I help you?”
Rats. They didn’t recognize me. Not a huge surprise, but how exactly do you introduce yourself in a case like this without embarrassing everyone involved? “Um…” I proffered the flowers. “I brought these for—”
She let out a half squeal, half shout. “It’s Minnie!” She leapt to her feet and ran to me. The momentum of her hug sent me staggering a step backward. “Oh, my dear, I’m so glad you stopped by, so very glad.” She squeezed me hard enough that my eyes popped a little. “Cade, this is your bookmobile angel.” She grabbed my hand and tugged me to the bedside.
“There is nothing that I can possibly do,” Mr. McCade said, the words slow and slurred but clear enough, “to repay you for what you did. Barb and I are in your debt forever.”
I wanted to squirm. Did, just a little. “Anybody would have done the same thing.”
“What most people would have done,” he said, “is call nine-one-one and keep driving. You went far and above the call of kindness. Thank you, my dear. Thank you very much.”
He reached out for my hand and patted it. I could feel a slight heat on my cheeks and knew I was blushing. “You’re welcome,” I said. “Glad I was there at the right time.”
His wife relieved me of my small burden (“Let me take care of those flowers”) and put it on the windowsill while she extracted a promise from me to call them Barb and Cade. “Minnie, can you stay for a few minutes?” she asked. “Please do.”
“For a little while,” I said. “But I can’t stay too long. I have to work this afternoon.”
“Is that why you don’t have your furry friend with you?” She smiled. “What fun to have a bookmobile cat.”
“Is this afternoon another bookmobile trip?” Cade asked.
I pulled up a chair and perched on its edge, explaining my split roles of assistant library director and bookmobile driver. Halfway through the explanation I stumbled a little, because I suddenly realized why I was taking such a fast liking to this man I barely knew. He looked like and had a personality similar to my first-ever boss, the library director in Dearborn, the town where I’d grown up. Mr. Herrington had given me a summer job and he’d even kept me on part-time my senior year of high school.
Then I stumbled over my words a little more, because Mr. Herrington had passed away when my parents and I were in Florida over Christmas break, visiting my older brother. Mr. Herrington had died of a sudden heart attack in the library, during the hours I would have been there working, and I’d never quite forgiven myself for not being there to help him.
I blinked a time or two and stumbled back to my current narrative. If either McCade had noticed my falterings, they were both too polite to say so.
“Well,” Barb said, “I’m glad the Chilson Library has a bookmobile. If it didn’t, Cade here might not be making such a fast recovery.”
“Long way to go.” Cade looked down at his left side. “Pity I’m left-handed.”
“You’re… left-handed?” My mouth went dry. “But…”
“Don’t worry about his painting,” Barb said. “He’s such a nut to paint that he’ll learn how to do it right-handed if he has to.”
Cade lifted his right hand and flexed it. “Learning new techniques is what keeps me young. Well, that and learning how to use Facebook.”
Barb snorted. “Waste of time,” she said. “I know, I know, your agent thinks it’s giving you a better connection to your legions of fans, but it’s so artificial. How can typing two sentences to a stranger mean anything?”
“Better to use social media than have to tour,” her husband said. “Pick your poison, my dear.”
“Scotch,” she said promptly. “On the rocks.”
“Gin and tonic for me.” He chuckled. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we, Mrs. McCade?”
She held his hand, the hand closest to her, his left hand, his weak hand, and kissed it. “Indeed we are, Mr. McCade.”
Cade’s eyes faded shut. “Indeed.”
The moment was rich with love and comfort and security. With all my heart, I hoped that my marriage would be as strong as this one. When I got married, that is. Not that I was thinking about weddings or anything.
“Minnie,” Barb said, watching her husband. “Is that your full name?”
“Nope.” I didn’t say anything else, and she chuckled.
“When I get out of here,” Cade said, opening his eyes, “when I’m better, Barb and I are going to treat you to a night on the town. Dinner, drinks, dessert.” A smile curved up one side of his face. “All the best D’s possible. Dancing, if you want it.”
I grinned. “Disco?”
“Done.”
“Do-si-do?”
“Indubitably.”
Barb looked at him askance. “That’s not a D word.”
“No, but it feels like one. Say it out loud and you’ll see.”
So there we were, saying the word “indubitably” over and over again and getting a serious case of the giggles. Since it was a hospital, we tried to keep the noise down, but that made my stomach start to cramp. “Don’t,” I panted, “it hurts. Don’t.”
“D word,” Barb managed to get out, and we were off again.
A male voice intruded. “As I thought. It’s Minnie Hamilton, out and about and making trouble.”
“Tucker!” I jumped to my feet and went to him for a quick hug. Not a big one, because he was in doctor mode, but even a little one felt good.