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“You feel safer with a killer?”
“Well,” Seri says softly and then pauses for a moment as she rinses our coffee cups. She slowly and deliberately washes each plate, staring intently at her work. When she speaks again, she sounds half-asleep. “Outside, I have nowhere to go, and I know I can’t survive in this weather. In here, I won’t die of exposure. I think if you intended to kill me, you would have done so already. Knowing that you killed your abusive, sick father doesn’t have me fearing for my own life.”
“Maybe I didn’t tell you everything.” I grit my teeth. Why do I keep saying all the wrong things?
“Have you killed anyone else?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean I’ve told you everything.”
“I assume you have not.” She places the last dish on the drying rack and turns toward me slowly. She’s expressionless as she speaks in that slow, toneless voice. “I know there is more than what you have said, just as there is more about my sister than you know. Maybe in time, we will understand each other.”
I blink a couple of times as she turns back to the sink to let the water out. She walks past me to the bathroom and closes the door.
Solo immediately follows her, stands on his hind legs with his front paws against the door, and howls.
“Silly boy,” Seri says as she comes out, all smiles again. “You have to let me have a little privacy!”
Solo howls again until she picks him up.
“I don’t actually need your help in there!” she says with a laugh. She rubs her face against the kitten’s and then looks over to me. “I’m really glad you have a working toilet here. A few months ago, I couldn’t have imagined going a whole day without my phone, but I’m getting used to not having electricity. I don’t know what I would do if there wasn’t working plumbing!”
“The septic system and the well are the only things I added to this place,” I tell her. “Took a lot of work to get it done, but yeah, it’s worth it. Going outside to a pit toilet would not be comfortable and sometimes impossible. There’s only one other option, and cleaning chamber pots is definitely not my thing.”
“Ha! I bet not!” Seri sits on the floor carefully with the kitten still in her arms. As soon as she’s settled, he wriggles and jumps away from her. He makes a mad dash for the kitchen, jumps straight up into the air, and comes down with an arched back and a hiss.
“What the hell?” I yell at him, trying to contain my laughter.
Solo runs back toward me sideways, still in his arched pose, then runs under the bed.
“He’s crazy!” Seri shakes as she tries to hold in her giggles.
“I’m just glad he has the energy,” I say. “When I first found him, I wasn’t so sure he’d live.”
“You took good care of him.”
I feel heat in my cheeks as I look away from her and busy myself adding wood to the fire. I didn’t do anything special for the cat; I just brought him inside.
“Did you have pets when you were a kid?”
“Two guinea pigs.” S
eri smiles. “Do they count?”
“I guess. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a guinea pig. Do they run around the house like cats and dogs?”
“No. Ours lived in a cage. It was a pretty nice cage though. They’re kind of like rabbits without the big ears. They hop around and like to eat hay.”
“Do you eat them?”
“Eat them? Good lord, no!”
“I eat rabbits,” I say with a shrug. “If I run out of meat in the winter, they’re about the only thing you can track.”
“Ew.”
“You won’t be going ‘ew’ if you’re hungry enough.”
“My sister wouldn’t have been able to stand it. She was a vegetarian when we were growing up. Well, not really—she still ate fish—but she would tell people she was vegetarian.”
