That’s more than I can say for most humans—in fact, if you’ve got a friend as faithful as a cat, you should thank your lucky stars.
22
When I stepped out of the elevator on the sixth floor, Cora was waiting for me down at the end of the hall in front of her apartment door. She held one freckled arm high over her head and waved excitedly. She’s not much taller than five feet, with a little wisp of cottony silver hair that floats on top of her head like an afterthought, and glittery blue eyes that never fail to put me in a good mood. She was wearing a pale pink housedress with a scooping neckline, and white fluffy house shoes with puffballs on the toes.
The way we came to be friends is a long story—her granddaughter was a client—but except for the very negligible genetic factor, she feels more like a sister to me than anything else, and I like to think she feels the same about me. I always stop by Cora’s whenever I feel my batteries need a little recharging, which these days is at least once a week, sometimes more. Plus there was the little matter of Guidry’s letter, and Cora was the best person on earth to give me advice in that department. She may look like a sweet little old lady, but she’s sharp as a tack and doesn’t pussyfoot around.
As I came down the hallway, she was teetering on her toes and grinning from ear to ear, which she always does, but this time I was particularly happy to see it. Just a few weeks before, I’d gotten a call from Vickie, the concierge in the lobby at Cora’s building. She had called to let me know that they’d taken Cora to the hospital for heart palpitations. I was already racing down the stairs when she said Cora was back home and doing fine. At first I considered driving over to Cora’s building and wringing Vickie’s neck for not having called me sooner, but of course it wasn’t her fault. If anyone needed a good neck-wringing it was Cora. If I get so much as a mosquito bite everybody hears about it, but Cora is a card-holding member of the stoic, suffer-in-silence generation.
She told me later she hadn’t called me because she didn’t want anyone to make a fuss or worry about her, which I couldn’t very well argue with since it sounded exactly like something I’d do myself. Even so, I made her promise that in the future, if she didn’t want my wrath raining down on her like a plague of sand fleas, she’d call me right away if anything like that ever happened again.
Most people would think that given the fifty-year difference in our ages we wouldn’t have much in common, but they’d be wrong. I wouldn’t be the relatively sane person standing before you now if it weren’t for her.
She was practically beaming at me. “Oh my goodness, dear, you look pretty as a picture.”
I said, “Ha. You’re just saying that because you know I have goodies for you.”
She held the apartment door open with one skinny arm. “Well, you’re right about that. I’ve got you nicely trained, don’t I? All I have to do is tell you how pretty you are, and you show up with all kinds of treats.”
On the way over I had stopped by the market and grabbed some of Cora’s favorites—chicken noodle soup, a big fat slice of cornbread, and a fruit salad with fresh sliced kiwi, strawberries, and mango, plus other sundry supplies for the week. While Cora shuffled in behind me, I unpacked everything on the kitchen counter and put the soup in the refrigerator.
Cora’s apartment is bright and cheery, with pale pink tile floors and walls a slightly deeper shade of coral. To the left is a small galley kitchen behind a bar with folding louvered doors to close it off, and to the right through an arched doorway is a modest bedroom. The living room has a marble-topped coffee table, with a sofa covered in fern green linen and two pink chintz armchairs that nobody ever sits in. Instead, there’s a little ice cream table with two chairs in front of the sliding glass doors, which open up to a narrow sun porch overlooking the bay and spilling over with potted plants and cooking herbs.
Cora said, “I’m so glad you’re here. There’s hot tea, and I made a little surprise for you.”
The “surprise” was Cora’s world-famous chocolate bread, which I know for a fact she makes every single day whether I show up or not. When I first met her, she only made it about once a week, but demand was so high now with all her friends in the building that she’d been forced to step up production.
The recipe is top secret. All I know is that she makes it in the bread machine her daughter gave her for Christmas one year, and she could probably make it in her sleep. At some point in the middle of the baking process, she opens up the top of the bread machine and pours in a cup of semisweet chocolate chips. The result is a deliciously crusty bread, with chewy rivers of rich, creamy chocolate running through every slice. It’s scrumptious fresh and it’s scrumptious a week later cold from the refrigerator, but Cora serves it the best way possible: Fresh out of the oven, torn off in steaming chunks and slathered with melting butter.
As she laid the tea tray down on the ice cream table, I took one bite and closed my eyes, drifting off into a state of heavenly bliss. I saw a vision of frolicking kittens flying across a star-filled sky, leaving behind a trail of rainbows and unicorns. It was that good.
Cora sat down across from me and said, “Sometimes I wonder if I stopped making that chocolate bread if I’d ever see you again.”
I nodded, my mouth full of buttery chocolate goodness. “You probably wouldn’t. I’d head right over to the Lido Key Bridge and jump right off. I don’t think I could bear a world without your chocolate bread.”
“So, tell me all about that beau of yours.”
“Cora, don’t say ‘beau.’ It makes you sound like an old lady.”
“Well, I am an old lady. What do you want me to say? How is that dude of yours?”
I pulled Guidry’s letter out and plopped it down on the table between us.
“What’s that?”
“It came in the mail earlier this week.”
“Who’s it from?”
“J. P. Guidry.”
She frowned. “Oh, dear. I thought you were looking a little peaked. What’s it say?”
“You said I looked pretty as a picture!”
She flicked her fingers in the air as if she were drying her nails. “Never mind. What’s it say?”
I sighed. “I have no idea. I’m afraid to open it.”
She nodded solemnly and took a sip of tea. Cora knows everything there is to know about Guidry. When I had first met him, I was like a hermit crab that never came out of her shell. I’d spent so many years mourning the loss of Todd and Christy that I didn’t know how to feel anything even remotely close to love. Cora had helped me see that it didn’t have to be one or the other. I could hold Todd and Christy in my heart and still let somebody else in at the same time; all I had to do was make a little more room. Cora taught me that the heart is expandable.
She said, “Well? What are you waiting for?”
I said, “What if he’s changed his mind? What if he still wants me to come to New Orleans? What if he’s coming back here?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh my goodness! All these what-ifs! What if he’s made of cheese?”
“I know it sounds stupid, but…”
“Sweetheart, what are you so afraid of?”
I thought for a moment. “What if Ethan’s not the one?”
“The one? Oh, Dixie, we’ve already been down this road.”
I groaned. “I know, I know, I know.”
“You actually think God hides our ‘One True Love’ somewhere, and then he plops down on earth and says ‘ready, set, go!’ and then we’re supposed to go running willy-nilly all over the planet trying to find him before we die, like a game show?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, phooey. Love isn’t a game of chance. It’s a feat of strength.” She balled her fist up and tapped it on the table for emphasis. “A tour de force! You find a man that you love, and you make him the one.”