The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (18 page)

Rufus isn’t a power-walking type of dog. Most schnauzers would rather sniff and hunt
when they’re outside, and Rufus is no exception. He’s always on the lookout for lizards
and squirrels and snakes. I don’t think he’d have the slightest idea what to do with
one if he ever caught it, but he thoroughly enjoys the chase. I brought along my handy
thirty-foot retractable leash so Rufus could skitter here and there while we walked.

I hooked the end of the leash to his collar and snapped a couple of clip weights to
the handle and headed out the door. While Rufus did his business and scampered about,
I did some arm raises and bicep curls. I wanted to keep myself occupied. From now
on I was going to start being a little more disciplined with myself, and that included
getting a good workout every day. I must have looked like a deranged person flapping
my arms up and down at the end of Rufus’s leash, but I didn’t care.

After a perfectly uneventful walk around the block and a good long brushing session,
I gave Rufus a kiss on the nose and a little hug. The Graysons were taking him to
visit their son in North Carolina later in the afternoon, so I knew I wasn’t going
to see him for a few days.

At the Kitty Haven, Marge was on the phone talking to a rescue center in Jacksonville
about two older cats they had brought in but couldn’t afford to keep. If Marge didn’t
take them, they’d have to be put down. She was arranging for Jaz to make the four-hour
drive to pick up the cats and bring them back to the Haven. Marge waved and pointed
me to the back, where I found Charlotte in one of the private cubicles.

She was her usual snarky self. With all the food and love she was getting from Marge
and Jaz, I wasn’t too worried about her, but I knew she’d probably be a lot happier
once she was back in her own home. I didn’t allow myself to think about what her life
was going to be like without Mr. Harwick, or whether she knew that he was gone. It
was too much to bear.

She hissed dismissively at me as I sat down on the floor next to her, but I knew she
didn’t really mean it. Stroking her from head to tail while she arched her back and
pushed herself against my hand, I told her it wouldn’t be much longer before she was
back home, and I did my best to form a mental picture of her curled up among the pillows
in the Harwicks’ big canopy bed. I like to do that just in case cats can read minds.
Of course it’s crazy, but I do it anyway.

Tom Hale was out of town at a convention and had taken Billy Elliot with him, so I
was pretty much done for the morning. I figured by now the news was probably out about
Mr. Harwick, and since one of the reporters had seemed to recognize me, I didn’t feel
like making an appearance at the diner. I knew everyone would be full of questions,
and I was trying my best to forget about yesterday’s events. Also I imagined Judy
would want to know all about my D-word with Ethan, and if she found out I was planning
on canceling it she’d probably want to give me a good beating.

At the intersection of Beach Road and Midnight Pass, I turned left and followed Higel’s
dogleg over the north bridge. Another left and I followed Tamiami Trail around the
bay, where tall-masted ships rode at anchor, their masts sparkling in the bright sunshine.
A quick zag off course, a quick swing through Whole Foods for some soup and some other
goodies and a bouquet of daisies, and then I was back on Tamiami Trail to the Bayfront
Village, a posh retirement condo and one of the worst architectural disasters ever
to blight Sarasota.

Bayfront is home to several hundred well-to-do seniors who either don’t notice the
folly of mixing Ionic, Gothic, Elizabethan, and Colonial architecture all in one building
or are too busy having fun to care. The interior design is as bad as the exterior,
with murals of foxhunting scenes keeping company with paintings of circus clowns,
the Mahabharata, and bucolic fields of sunflowers and bluebonnets. But happy, energetic
seniors bounce past the bizarre decor on their way to tennis or golf or theater, and
not one of them seems to mind living in an interior decorator’s living version of
hell. These are what I call “don’t-give-a-damn” seniors. They’re more active than
most people half their age, they’re having more fun than most people half their age,
and, well, basically they don’t give a damn.

The concierge waved to me from her sleek French Provincial desk and gestured for me
to go on up. As soon as I got in the elevator, the knot I had felt in my chest ever
since I’d discovered Mr. Harwick’s body loosened a bit. Just knowing that Cora Mathers
was waiting for me on the sixth floor made everything feel a little lighter.

Cora is eighty-something years old, and I am lucky to know her, although the way we
met is not the prettiest story in history. Her granddaughter, Marilee, had been a
friend and a client, and to make a long story short, Marilee was murdered by a crazed
neighbor. Marilee had already set her grandmother up in Bayfront Village with enough
money to live comfortably for the rest of her life. The remainder of her estate, which
was sizable to put it mildly, was willed to her cat, a blue Abysinnian named Ghost.
She made me the executor of Ghost’s estate.

Once I found a good home for Ghost, I put the estate in Tom Hale’s hands and have
pretty much avoided thinking about it ever since. After Marilee’s funeral, I continued
to stop in now and then to make sure that Ghost was being well cared for, and I also
visited Cora at least once a week. At first I’d done it out of a feeling of misplaced
guilt and responsibility, but that had changed, and Cora and I had become genuine
friends. I don’t think there’s any topic that we haven’t thoroughly discussed, some
of which would be a surprise to most people. Women my age and women Cora’s age aren’t
assumed to have much in common, especially when it comes to romance and sex and love,
but that’s a lot of hooey. The only difference between Cora and me is that she has
more wrinkles and more experience. Otherwise, inside our skins we’re both the same.

I smelled Cora’s apartment as soon as the elevator doors opened. About once a week,
she makes bread in an ancient bread-making machine. At some point in the kneading
process, which Cora keeps a secret, she throws in a cup of frozen semisweet chocolate
chips. The result is a chewy bread with a crunchy crust filled with little lakes of
oozy chocolate. Cora insists that the bread be torn into hunks rather than sliced,
and when those hunks are slathered with butter, I guarantee that strong women will
swoon and muscled men will whimper with weak-kneed delight.

The concierge had alerted Cora that I was on the way up, so she was outside her door
waiting for me when I stepped out of the elevator and went down the hall towards her
apartment. Cora is the size of a malnourished sixth grader, with knobby little knees
and freckled arms. Her hair is thin and fine as goose down and floats above her scalp
in a cottony cloud. She whooped when she saw me, rising up and down on her toes in
a semblance of jumping for joy.

I said, “Do I smell chocolate bread?”

“It’s still cooling! What’s that you’ve got?” As greedy as a child, she grabbed the
Whole Foods bag and peered inside. “Oh, goody goody! I just love their soup!”

“There’s some beautiful blood oranges, too, and a slice of apple pie.”

“I’ll have the pie for supper and the soup for dessert.”

I followed her into the apartment, practically stepping in place at times because
she moved so slowly. Her condo was lovely, with glass doors opening to a long sun
porch facing the Gulf. I knew that if Marilee were alive today, she’d be happy to
see how Cora has turned her little apartment into such a lovely and comfortable place
to live. It was all pink marble and turquoise linen and shafts of sunlight.

She stopped at a bar separating a minuscule kitchen from the rest of the room. While
she lifted the sweating container of frozen soup from the bag, I went around her to
the kitchen, where a fresh round loaf of chocolate bread was steaming on a wooden
board on the counter. Cora always keeps her kettle warm, just in case company comes,
so it only took a minute to put tea bags in a Brown Betty pot and pour hot water on
them. While I got down cups and saucers, Cora took a chair at a skirted ice cream
table by the windows.

She said, “Now, don’t slice that bread. It’s better if you tear off pieces.”

She always says that.

I rummaged in the refrigerator for butter to add to the tea tray. “I know.”

I always say that.

I put the daisies in a little pink vase by the sink and brought the bread and the
tea tray out to the table.

Cora cleared her throat, carefully sliding her saucer and cup closer. “Was it you
that found that drowned man?”

I sighed. “How did you know about that?”

In the sunlight from the glass doors, her face seemed to fracture into millions of
tiny, fine lines. “Well, Dixie, the news said the man was found by his pet sitter,
and it was on Siesta Key. Who else could it be?”

I sat down and poured the tea. “It was awful.”

“I imagine so.” She pushed the bread toward me with a smile. “This should help.”

I broke off a small chunk and buttered it. It was so warm there were little curls
of steam rising up and the butter melted right into it. I put it in my mouth and allowed
myself a tiny moment of sheer bliss.

“Oh my God,” I moaned. “I needed that.”

Cora took a piece herself, and we sat in silence for a while, luxuriating in the simple
joy of it. Occasionally Cora hummed a little tune to herself. I loved that we could
sit in perfect silence and feel completely comfortable doing it. That’s a sign of
real friendship.

After a while she said, “So what do you hear from that fellow of yours?”

She meant Guidry. “He’s not my fellow anymore, remember? He ran away to New Orleans.”

She nodded. I could tell she was disappointed, but Cora wasn’t one to cry over spilt
milk, and I think she understood why I couldn’t follow Guidry to New Orleans, even
if she didn’t completely approve of it.

I smiled coyly. “But I am having dinner with someone tonight.”

Her eyes brightened. “Oh? Do tell!”

“Don’t get too excited. It’s not that big a deal.”

“It’s with that Ethan Crane fellow, I can tell by the look in your eyes.”

“Oh, stop it, no you can’t.”

“Really? So who’s your date with tonight?”

I laughed. “It’s not a date.”

She clapped her hands. “I knew it! You’ve had your eye on him for a long time. I knew
his grandfather, you know. He was a lovely man, too.”

“Well, don’t have a cow, it’s just dinner. It’s not like we’re going to live happily
ever after. In fact, I’m seriously thinking about canceling it completely. I’m not
ready for anything serious, and it’s not right to lead him on.”

Cora’s smile fell away, and she set her cup down with a little clinking sound against
the saucer. “Dixie, you think those people chose to leave you?”

“Huh?”

She reached out and laid her hand on top of mine. “You think love can’t last, is that
what it is? That anybody that loves you will eventually leave?”

“Cora…” I couldn’t finish. Tears instantly sprang to my eyes. I knew exactly what
she was getting at.

“Dixie, sometimes our minds believe things our hearts know aren’t true. You’ve had
a rough go of it, so I can’t blame you, but it’s time to put all that behind you.”

I dabbed at my eyes with my napkin and tried to compose myself while she tore off
another piece of bread and smoothed some butter on it. She was right. I think there
was a part of me that was beginning to wonder if I would ever be able to hang on to
anything that I loved. First my father, then my mother, then my daughter and my husband,
and then Guidry …

“You can’t go on being mad at everyone that’s ever hurt you. At some point you just
have to forgive them.”

I said, “I’m not mad at anyone.”

“Oh, sweetheart, of course you are. For years I was mad at my own granddaughter for
leaving me. And she was murdered! Certainly wasn’t her fault. But that doesn’t make
any difference. It’s just natural human feelings, but you can’t live the rest of your
life all swaddled up and protected. Sooner or later you have to forgive. You have
to let that anger go or your heart will just dry right up.”

I nodded silently. I knew she was right, but I wasn’t sure how I could just let all
of it go. We watched the boats out on the ocean sail by, and after a little while
I said, “I think maybe I’m just a little scared, too.”

“Well, let’s talk about that. What are you scared of?”

“You know, you have to make such big sacrifices to be in love, and I like my life
the way it is. I have all my friends and my family and my pets to take care of. But
when you’re with someone, you have to do all kinds of things to make it work. You
have to compromise and share and change.”

Cora fixed me with her clear blue eyes. “Dixie, those are all
good
things.” She smiled mischievously. “And as I recall, that Ethan Crane fellow is about
as delicious as…” She waved a piece of chocolate bread in the air and popped it in
her mouth.

17

It was exactly two minutes after eight. I was wearing my purple dress and standing
next to Ethan, or to be exact, I was wearing my purple dress and teetering next to
Ethan on my three-inch high-heel shoes.

We were watching the waiters set our table. It was next to the window, but with a
perfect view of the entire candlelit dining room. There were sparkling wineglasses
and silverware on all the tables, which were covered in crisp white linen. As we followed
the hostess in, I noticed more than a few people watching us with knowing looks. I
wasn’t sure exactly what it was they were all knowing, but I felt happy and proud
to be seen in public with a man as stunning as Ethan.

His fingertips were on the small of my back, and I suddenly had the strongest feeling
of déjà vu I’ve ever had in my life.