I drove the plank home.
"She's asleep upstairs, curled up in my sweatshirt on the bedroom floor."
Brody's head snapped my way. "She?"
"Congrats, daddy." I grinned. "It's a girl."
"How do you know?"
"Had to run a sample over to the vet a few days back. Figured I'd get Cat checked out while I was there." I hammered the next plank into place without looking up. "She's healthy as a horse. About twelve weeks old. And ashe."
Brody said nothing.
I glanced over.
He was still crouched on the floor, hands loose between his knees. A dozen different expressions flickered across his face like channels being changed too quick to land on any one of them.
I waited for the joke. The grin. Some version ofwell, I'll be damneddelivered with a wink and a finger-gun.
Instead, he set down the board he'd been holding with a quiet, deliberate click.
Stood up.
Turned for the door.
And left.
I stayed on the flooring with the mallet in my hand and listened to the back door settle shut behind him.
I looked at the door.
Looked back at the plank in front of me.
Looked at the door again.
What the hell just happened?
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
I didn't evenlike cats.
My truck was already headin’ toward the store before I'd made a conscious decision to point it anywhere. My hands just… went. Apparently my hands had feelings about a cat sleepin' on the floor.
"Asweatshirt."
I said it out loud just to hear how stupid it sounded.
It sounded pretty damn stupid.
"She's fine," I told the windshield. "Cats sleep on floors. That's a thing they do. She's a cat."
The windshield had nothin' to say about that.
"She's my—" I stopped. Cleared my throat. "She's a cat that lives in my house. That I own. The house. Not the cat."
Route 89 offered no commentary.
"Calvin took her to the vet." Calvin, who claimed toalsohate cats, who had named the cat before I did, who had apparently made a veterinary appointment and paid a vet bill and not said a single word about it like it was just a thing you did. Like she was just a person who did things like that.
