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Nora gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Figured you could use some loosening up.”
“Thank you,” I said, catching her eyes. “And you’re okay with this?” I asked Cassie.
Cassie’s apartment was about to get a lot smaller. And smellier. I had never been much of an animal person. Not that I didn’t like dogs. My dad just never got Jake and me any pets because “we were animals enough.” And the stray dogs in Afghanistan were pretty much everyone’s dogs, not to mention they usually had dead rats hanging out of their mouths. I didn’t love the idea of caring for another being outside of myself, either, since caring for myself seemed hard enough.
But I guess that was the point.
Cassie bent down. “Oh, yes, I’m okay wit dis,” she said, rubbing Mittens’s ears. “Admit it—she’s so cute. Look at that cute little face, with the eyes and the nose and the face!”
I had never seen Cassie so affectionate. With anyone, or anything. Not when she was trying to be “wifely,” not on the phone to Toby, not even on the phone to her mother. I couldn’t help but laugh. Mittens leaped around my knees, as if to agree.
“What?” Cassie said, looking up at me, her cheeks pink. “I think she and Dante are going to be friends.”
“She could eat Dante for breakfast.”
The five of us continued up the trail, me taking charge of Mittens, Mittens taking charge of her stick.
“Fingers crossed,” Cassie said.
