I tapped the brakes and felt the metallic rush of adrenaline surge through my body. The deer, a buck with at least six points on his antlers, stared straight at me.
“Move!” I shouted.
Either he heard me, or far more likely, he had already decided it was time to move, because he suddenly leapt into action. His hooves skittered on the road’s snowy surface but eventually found traction, and he sped off the road and into the same trees from whence he’d come.
“Mrr!”
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Didn’t mean to yell. It’s just that we almost hit a deer and . . . oh, never mind.” Since he hadn’t seen the deer, talking to him about it would make even less sense than our normal conversations.
For the rest of the ride out to Leese’s house, though, my thoughts were a little jangled. Coming so close to hitting the deer had unnerved me; it was the closest I’d ever come. I’d lived Up North more than four years and everyone told me it was only a matter of time before I hit one, but I was planning on being the first resident of Tonedagana County to never ever hit a deer in her entire life.
“Of course, that’s assuming I live here the rest of my life.” The thought was a new one. I shook my head, but the idea stuck. There was no real reason for me to stay. Assistant library director jobs turned up all over the country at regular intervals. I might not be able to work driving a bookmobile into the mix—okay, almost certainly I wouldn’t be able to—but you never knew.
“What’s left for me here?” I murmured. The boardinghouse would soon be no more. Aunt Frances was getting married and wouldn’t need my company. Kristen’s single status was also on the edge of change. Jennifer was settling into place as library director, and she seemed intent on making so many changes that I could easily anticipate a future in which Minnie didn’t play a part. And since Rafe was never going to be more than my friend, maybe it was time for me to think about moving.
I was young and almost debt-free. If I wanted to travel, if I wanted to live in another part of the country, now was the time. After all, I had no real reason to stay.
“Except I don’t want to go,” I said out loud.
Not in the least. Travel was all well and good, and as soon as I finished my last student loan payment, I wanted to plan a trip to Wales, with the primary intent of visiting Hay-on-Wye, a town famous for its plethora of bookstores. “Just imagine,” I told Eddie. “A town of fifteen hundred people that has more than twenty bookstores. How cool is that? Then I want to visit all the horse race courses from the Dick Francis books. And remember when I read 84, Charing Cross Road? I wonder if there really is something at that address. What do you think? Want to come along to find out?”
“Mrr,” said my cat.
I smiled, then felt a wave of sadness. Who would travel with me? Though I had no real problem traveling alone, it would be more fun to go with someone. But who?
“Stop it,” I told myself as I flicked on the turn signal to make a left into Leese’s driveway. This was no time to feel sorry for myself. Leese and Brad and Mia were the ones who mattered at this point. I needed to stop the self-pity and focus on the situation at hand.
“Hey, look,” I said, even though Eddie couldn’t see much more than the car’s console. “Someone’s here.”
“Mrr.”
“How can I tell? There are lights on in the front room and there are some weird-looking footprints angling out of the tire tracks in the driveway and leading to the front door.” Not only did the footprints look strange, but the very existence of footprints was odd because there was no car in the driveway. Maybe it was a neighbor, or—I had it!—an elderly client who had been dropped off by a caretaker or a loving family member. And that was why Leese hadn’t answered the phone; she was busy doing lawyer stuff.
It was about time something good happened to Leese and I was smiling as the car slid to a stop.
“Okay, pal.” I unbuckled my seat belt. “This shouldn’t take long, so—”
“Mrr!”
“You’ll be fine in here. It’s not that cold out. Besides, you have a fur coat and—”
“Mrr!!”
My shoulders went up in a vain effort to cover my ears and protect them from the piercing sound of my cat’s shrieks. “Eddie, geez, will you—”
“MMMMMRRRRRRRR!!!”
“Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll bring you with me, okay?”
He instantly subsided. “Mrr,” he said quietly.
I shook my head as I unbuckled his carrier. “Some days it’s really hard to believe you don’t understand a word that I’m saying. Okay, maybe you understand ‘kitty,’ and your name, and I think you have a good idea what the word ‘no’ means, even if you pay no attention whenever I say it to you. And you know ‘treat’ and ‘outside.’”
We were now out in the actual outside, and inside was clearly a better place to be. A stiff wind was blowing out of the northwest, bringing with it pellets of snow that beat against my face.
“N-not v-very nice out here,” I said, my words coming out in a stuttering shiver. I’d dressed appropriately for a bookmobile day in late October, not for walking into the teeth of the season’s first winter storm. We reached Leese’s back door and I knocked, though if she was with a client in the front office, she might not hear. I hesitated about barging inside, but a thumping buffet of wind convinced me to move before Eddie and I became casualties of the storm.
I opened the door, hurried inside, and closed the door behind us.
“Leese?” I called. “It’s just Minnie.” And Eddie, but I didn’t feel the need to announce that, especially if she was with a client.
There was no answering reply.
Huh.
Well, maybe she and her client were deep in a serious discussion and didn’t want to be interrupted. I stood there, listening, and heard nothing except the hum of Leese’s refrigerator.
“Now what?” I asked.
Eddie, however, had no words of advice.
“That’s a first,” I muttered as I walked up the few steps to the kitchen. I set the cat carrier down and gave my cat a long look. If I left him in the carrier, he was bound to start howling again, and I didn’t want to interrupt Leese’s consultation.
I set the carrier on the floor and unlatched the door. “Be good,” I said, and set him free.
Eddie, being Eddie, continued to stay inside. As I watched, he pushed himself into the back corner and made himself small. Which is a hard thing for a thirteen-pound cat to do, but cats are amazing creatures.
I went to the cupboard for a bowl, added water, and put it in front of Eddie, who didn’t even sniff at it. I rolled my eyes at my contrary cat, returned to the cupboard, and got myself a glass of water.
Still, I didn’t hear a sound from the front room.
Was it possible that Leese had gone somewhere and left the lights on? It didn’t seem likely, but the complete silence was getting on my nerves. I tried to remember what the tire tracks in the snow had looked like, how filled they’d been with snow, but I’d been so busy with my thoughts that I hadn’t paid much attention.
I stood at the sink, peering out through the window at the driveway, but couldn’t tell. A tire track expert I was not. Besides, the afternoon was already growing dark.
“Well.”
Leese was gone. She had to be.
Feeling a little like a creepy burglar, waltzing into someone’s home when it was empty, I washed my cup, dried it, and put it away. I did the same with Eddie’s untouched water bowl and was about to head out when I decided to poke my head into the front office, just to make sure everything was okay.
I crossed the kitchen and the formal dining room, which was functioning more as a library than anything else, and went into the front hallway, where there was a door to her office. It stood slightly open. By this time I was ninety-nine point nine percent sure that Eddie and I were the only ones in the house, so I pushed at the door with little concern.