Nine Lives: A Lily Dale Mystery (14 page)

This time, she waited to pick up on purpose.

She’s making me sweat. Terrific.

“Jordan residence, Millicent speaking.”

“Hello, M—” She breaks off. If she calls her Millicent, she’ll be reprimanded. If she calls her Mother, she might gag. She settles on nothing, as usual. “It’s Isabella. How are you?”

There’s a pause. “Quite well. And you?”

“Quite well,” Bella replies, though it isn’t something she’d typically say, and it isn’t the truth.

“And Max?”

“He’s great.” Another lie, followed by another. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened last night.”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.

Then Millicent sighs deeply. “Lashing out at me that way—I just don’t know what got into you, Isabella.”

I do,
she thinks, biting her lip.
Common sense.

Millicent made her feel completely reckless and incompetent, as if it was her own fault the car broke down.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Bella knows that if she’d had the car serviced, that might not have happened. She
couldn’t
have it serviced, though, because she could barely afford gasoline, and the only reason she was driving halfway across the country in it was because she had nowhere else to go . . .

But now you do.

The thought flits into her head, and she pushes it right back out again.

No, she doesn’t. She has Millicent and Chicago. That’s all.

“I don’t know what got into me either. I guess I was just frazzled and a little overwhelmed.”

“All I was trying to explain to you is that a little foresight can go a long way.”

Bella grits her teeth, staring at the gloomy dusk beyond the rain-spattered window.

“People who learn to take care of themselves can take care of others.”

Did Millicent really just say that?

“I do take care of myself,” she says tightly. “And my son.”

“Well of course you’re making an effort, and it isn’t that I mind helping, but I just want you to be aware that if you had just—”

“Mom!” Max shouts from the parlor.

“I have to go!” she blurts into the phone, hanging up and tossing it aside.

“Max?” she calls, hurrying toward the front of the house. “Are you okay?”

“I am, but . . . look.”

Reaching the parlor, she sees him pointing at the open bay windows above the cushioned bench.

Beyond the screen, flooded in porch light, Chance the Cat is looking in, a wee newborn kitten dangling from her mouth.

Max hurries to open the door as Bella grabs a couple of towels from the laundry room. Spying a small wooden crate that holds a stack of tied newspapers waiting to be recycled, she hastily tosses the papers aside. Returning to the front hall, she sets the towel-lined crate on the floor just in time for Chance to drop in the kitten.

It’s a fragile creature, no larger than Max’s hand. It has straggly gray-and-black-ticked fur like its mother, a stub of a tail, and a rosy nose and paw pads. Its eyes are sealed tightly, ears closed and flattened to its head, and still-useless limbs splayed. It shimmies awkwardly on its belly, emitting a faint, high-pitched mew.

“What’s wrong with it?” Max asks.

Bella has to swallow a hot surge of emotion before she can find her voice. “Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just a new baby. It can’t see or hear or walk yet. It can’t do anything without its mommy.”

“But she’s leaving!”

Sure enough, the cat is already marching straight back to the door, where she meows urgently until Bella opens it, then disappears into the night.

“Why did she go?” Max asks in dismay.

“Shh, it’s okay. Just watch.”

Moments later, Chance reappears with another wriggling kitten hanging by its scruff and deposits it into the crate beside its sibling.

This time, Bella and Max follow her outside to watch as she makes a beeline back to the shadows beneath the porch.

“That’s where the babies are,” Max realizes. “There are five more. Maybe six.”

“Maybe. She was probably waiting for the rain to stop before she brought them inside.”

The daylong deluge has finally ebbed. Bordered by dripping boughs and eaves, the narrow, muddy lane beyond the porch lamp is deserted, most of the houses dark. The wind chimes tinkle forlornly, stirred by a wet breeze. Dense fog still hangs over the Dale, drifting in a yellowish cast beneath widely scattered streetlamps.

The scene reminds Bella of a Jack the Ripper movie she’d seen years ago. This may not be nineteenth-century London, but it doesn’t particularly look like twenty-first-century New York, and it isn’t hard to imagine a cloaked man stepping out of the mist.

She hugs Max close to her as they watch Chance emerge from a hole in the porch lattice with another newborn clutched in her mouth. One by one, she transports her litter inside.

There are seven altogether—or so it seems at first.

Seven helpless, hungry, crying kittens, whom Max promptly names in order of appearance: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

“I
told
you the kittens were coming today!” he crows. “And I told you there would be seven!”

“You sure did.”

But how on earth did you know?

“Or maybe eight,” he adds, as Chance makes one last trip outside, almost as an afterthought. But when she reappears a minute later, she’s alone. She paces around the room, stopping below the window that faces the porch, then looks up at them and meows, almost as if she’s asking a question.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Bella says, leaning down to rub her head. “You did great. You can rest now.”

As the cat settles into her makeshift nest to nurse her fuzzy little family, Max and Bella watch from a respectful distance, perched on the bottom stair.

“She keeps looking at the door, Mom. Do you think there’s another baby out there?”

“No, she wouldn’t leave any behind.”

“How do you know?”

“The same way I knew she needed a box for them.”

“Is it called psychic?”

“No. It’s called maternal instinct.”

“So that means moms just know stuff?”

“Exactly.”

“Isn’t that the same as psychic?”

“No, not at all,” she says firmly. Psychics—so-called psychics—claim to rely on a sixth sense, while moms rely on . . .

Instinct.

Which is completely different. Of course it is.

One is supposedly supernatural, the other is . . . well, natural.

Don’t all mothers, human and animal, possess the acute need to find a cozy place in which to protect their offspring from the big, bad world?

For now, this is ours,
she thinks, looking around at the tawny wallpaper and rich woodwork swaddled in the golden glow of the etched glass ceiling pendant. The room is hushed, other than the ticking clock and the occasional peep of a wayward kitten momentarily losing its latch.

In this moment, the house belongs only to her, Max, Chance, and her babies. Unless you count Leona’s nephew-who’s-not-really-a-nephew, still presumably asleep upstairs.

Thinking of poor Grant, abandoned as a newborn, Bella acknowledges that not all females are natural mothers. She finds herself wondering about the story behind his tragic past—and then, for some reason, wondering if it’s even true.

She’s met men like him before. Smooth, self-assured, and, yes, seductive. Men who aren’t above embellishing or even fabricating details to suit their needs.

To be fair, she doesn’t know Grant well enough to assume that he fits that bill. But there’s no denying that he’s smooth and self-assured. Besides, Odelia has no use for him, and she—

Okay, she doesn’t like
everybody.

She has no use for Pandora Feeney. Nor for her ex-husband Orville.

But considering that she’s psychic—or so she claims—she may have a sound basis for her . . . dislike? Mistrust?

A possibility occurs to Bella, so disturbing and frightening that she pushes it away.

No, that would be as preposterous as . . . as Jack the Ripper lurking in the mist that shrouds the Dale.

Still, she can’t help but look over her shoulder, up the staircase. She half-expects to see someone looming there, but the hall above is dark and still.

“I have boy instinct,” Max is saying.

“Hmm?”

“You have mom instinct, and I have boy instinct,” Max tells her. “I told you the kittens would be born today, and I told you how many there would be.”

Yes, he did.

Boy instinct . . . or prophecy?

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,” Max counts, as if to make absolutely sure, and then he casts a fretful glance at the door. “I really think she forgot one.”

“She didn’t, Max,” Bella assures him again. “Why do you keep saying that?”

“I don’t know. I just do.”

“What made you say the kittens were coming today?”

“
I
made me say it.”

“Yes, but how did you know?”

He shrugs. “I just knew.”

It could have been a lucky guess. Thinking back to their conversation at the animal hospital, she remembers that Doctor Bailey had said the kittens were due within the week and that there would be quite a few of them.

Maybe seven was another lucky guess. Anything between two and ten would have been sensible—though how would Max know that?

Then again, she reasons, he did say seven or possibly eight, giving him even greater odds of getting it right.

Good. See? All you have to do is take a step back from this mystical Lily Dale mentality and apply logical thinking.

She can probably come up with a rational explanation for most of the so-called psychic phenomena around here if she just—

“Mom! What is she doing?”

She looks up to see that Chance has left the crate and is staring at the door. Her ears standing straight up, twitching as if she’s listening intently.

“I don’t know. Maybe she heard something outside. An animal or something.”

“It’s her other kitten! She got lost and Chance the Cat couldn’t find her in the dark, and now she’s crying out there all alone.”

“Did you hear her crying?”

“No, but her mommy did, because she has instinct and great hearing.”

He may be right. Chance emits a sudden, agitated chirping sound and practically throws herself at the door.

Max hurries to open it. The cat scoots past him and is swallowed by the darkness, leaving seven crying kittens behind.

“It’s okay, guys. Your mommy will be right back.”

Bella certainly hopes Max is right. She peers outside, wondering what it was that lured the cat from the nest. Did she really drop one of her kittens?

Maybe she heard a bird out there, or a rodent, or . . .

What if she heard someone prowling around the house?

Oh, come on, Bella. She’s a cat, not a guard dog.

“Hurry up, Chance the Cat!” Max calls. “Your babies are crying!”

After a brief rustling in the bushes near the porch, the cat springs up onto the porch, another kitten clasped in her mouth.

“It’s Spider!” Max hollers.

Dumbfounded, Bella watches Chance trot calmly into the house and drop a wee black speck of a kitten into the nest with the others.

“Number eight! My boy instinct was right, Mommy, see?”

Bella nods as if she does. But she doesn’t see anything at all, while her son somehow sees . . .

The future? Really?

What, exactly, did Odelia say about . . . wow. Was that only yesterday?

Entire seasons seem to have passed since Bella sat lounging in the sun-splashed yard, so new to all this, so naïve. Everything Odelia told her seemed farfetched.

And now . . . what? Now you believe it? You’re an overnight convert to Spiritualism?

No. Of course not. It’s just that things have happened since yesterday that she can’t quite explain, including this latest experience with Max and the kittens.

So what was it Odelia had said about children and psychic experiences?

Unlike adults, they haven’t yet fully learned what they’re supposed to see and feel—and what they aren’t.

She was talking about Jiffy
, Bella reminds herself. His mother is a medium, and it runs in families. That’s what Odelia claimed, and yet . . .

She also said anyone is capable, didn’t she?

If anyone can do it, and if kids are more susceptible, then maybe Max is . . . one of
them.

Bella abruptly closes the front door, as if that might somehow keep Lily Dale from seeping in.

“He’s so tiny, Mommy.”

“What?”

“Spider. He’s really, really, really small. Like this big.” Max presses his thumb and forefinger together.

“Let’s see.” Bella settles on the floor beside the crate to get her first good look at the brood. Most of the kittens are still prone and nursing, kneading their mama’s soft fur with their tiny pink paws as they suckle. It’s impossible to discern the tiny black latecomer from the wriggling, mewing heap of fur babies.

“I love them!” Max declares. “I want to keep them all.”

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” she murmurs, mulling the latest twist in their Lily Dale stay as her son talks on about all the fun he can have with “his” cat and kittens.

She’s grateful when a key turns in the lock and Helen and Karl Adabner, in the midst of animated conversation, step into the house.

“I know you did, but I don’t care. I just didn’t think—” Karl breaks off, spotting Max. “Well, hello, young man. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“No.”

“Yes,” Bella corrects her son, looking up at the clock. “Is the evening message service over already?”

“Not quite, but it’s past our bedtime, too.” Catching sight of the crate as she follows her husband toward the stairs, Helen stops short. “Oh, my! What do we have here?”

“We have here Chance the Cat and her eight babies,” Max reports.

“What a neat surprise!”

“Don’t get too close. Mom says we have to stay back here because they need privacy right now.”

“Your mom is right. I just want to take a quick peek.” Helen leans over the crate. “Oh! They’re precious! Look, Karl. Oh, I want one!”

“I want them all,” Max says.

“We can’t have five cats, Helen.”

And we can’t have any at all,
Bella thinks.

“You said we couldn’t have three cats, either,” Helen tells Karl. “Or four. And now look.”

“Yes, now look,” he says flatly, shaking his balding head.

“You have four cats?” Max is impressed. “Are they here?”

“No, our neighbor is taking care of them this week, which means I don’t have to sleep with a cat on my head for a change.” Karl yawns and walks toward the stairs.

“Mom and I are going to sleep with Chance the Cat and all her babies. Mom promised. Right, Mom?”

“What a nice mom. But what happened to your leg, Mom?” Karl asks, and she looks down to see her scraped knee and bruised thigh.

“Oh, that? I . . . I kind of fell up the stairs,” she says with a laugh.

“
Up
the stairs? That’s a twist.”

“Yes, well . . . I like to shake things up a bit.”

Karl grins again, yawns again, and looks at his wife. “Are you coming up to bed?”

“In a minute.”

“I thought you were exhausted.”

“I am.” She kneels on the floor beside the crate. “I just want to see them for a second.”

“Don’t fall in love, Helen.”

“Too late, Karl,” she returns lightly.

Smiling, Bella moves aside to let him pass her on his way up the steps.

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full, there, Mom,” he says, and winks at her. “Good night.”

He seems sweet and harmless, though the wink gives her pause, and her good-night isn’t as warm as it might have been if Pandora hadn’t warned her about his friskiness.

Oh, come on. He’s just being friendly, not flirtatious. Plenty of older men wink. Maybe not in New York, but Iowa . . .

Besides, look at you.

Checking her reflection in the mirror earlier, after Grant had retreated to his room, she’d noticed a purple grape juice stain on her T-shirt to match the circles under her eyes, the lovely scrape where she’d hurt her knee earlier on the stairway, and a fresh bruise where she’d bumped her thigh.

“Aren’t you the sweetest little things?” Helen coos, and Bella turns to see her stroking the nursing kittens with a gentle fingertip.

Max is crouched beside her, boldly daring to get a better look now that Helen has breached Bella’s safety perimeter.

“I love their markings. I see four gray tabbies like mama and a couple of black-and-white tuxedo kitties . . .”

“There’s one that’s only black, too, but he’s getting smushed in there, see?”