Page 61 of Catalyst


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I tried rebooting again and heard the beep of it switching on. Sitting back down, I ran my hand through my hair and sighed as I answered. “It’s for kids that don’t have parents or have bad ones. They get taken out of their homes and placed with foster families that look after them until their parents can take them again or until they are old enough to look after themselves or get adopted.”

“That is an … interesting concept. You have bad parents?”

I sighed, knowing I would have to explain. “No. They adopted me when I was a baby, but then they died in a car accident, so I went into foster care. I was naughty and grieving, so I didn’t get adopted again. I just traveled from family to family every few years.”

Zaide looked horrified. “Charlie, I am sorry you experienced that.”

I gave him a smile. “Don’t be sorry. Nothing you could do about it.”

“It does not sound like an enjoyable way to grow up.”

That coming from someone who was a slave made me feel like shit, but I shrugged. “Eh, other people had it worse. It was what it was.”

“So, you are used to change and are therefore dealing with this situation calmly,” he summarized.

“It seems so.” I logged on for the third time. And the third time was the charm, because using the pictures on my phone of Deb’s passwords, I could log into her bank account.

I looked through her recent purchases, but since it had only been a day since she left, nothing was showing yet. There was a huge drop in the available funds that she had, so I knew she was spending the money. I just had to wait until an alert let me know where and what she was doing in real time. I opened Winnie’s laptop, and since her passwords were all autosaved, I did the same in half the time.

I mentally high-fived myself and took another swig of my drink, the gassy bubbles celebrating my genius on my tongue.

I’d forgotten Zaide was in the room until he spoke again. “You aren’t upset your cat is gone?”

“What?” His question jolted me out of my thoughts and back into the room to see the earnestness of his big purple eyes. “She wasn’t my cat. She was Winnie’s. I might have shared her, but I rarely commit to anything,” I told him honestly but still avoided the truth of my feelings about her. Telling him that would only get me killed via big gold hands.

“Because you don’t want to make attachments?”

I half expected him to don a pair of glasses and pull out a notebook with all these questions. I replied, “No, I make attachments. I just know that they are short-term ones.”

“You don’t want long-term attachments?”

I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. “Nothing lasts forever, Zaide. Life, emotion, situations, they are all temporary. Why get attached and lose it all?”

“Is that not part of life?”

“Only if you let it be.” I shrugged.

“Perhaps you lost too much as a child to want attachments as an adult.”

“All right, Dr. Phil. Thanks for the diagnosis.” I coughed out a laugh. I knew he meant well, but I didn’t want the unsolicited advice. I didn’t need it.

Zaide picked up on my “fuck off” vibes. “I do not want to upset you, Charlie. I want to help you.”

I gave him a pointed look. “This isn’t helping. It’s making me wish I had alcohol in the house.”

He sighed. “Clawdia was yours first. I am not giving her up, but I acknowledge that you also have a bond with her.”

“Yeah, maybe that was true when she was a cat, but she’s human now. She’s someone I don’t know. And I don’t feel anything for her other than my interest in her life in the 1900s,” I lied.

“She likes you. You were one of her favorite things about being a cat.”

Elation lit me up from the inside.

She liked me. She loved being with me as a cat.

Come to think of it, she knew me. She knew all my secrets. Had seen my highs and lows. She was probably the only soul close to me. But I didn’t know her. Not at all. And I wouldn’t get to know her. Because she wanted to be a cat again, and that was going to mess with my head.

I feigned my indifference, however, and shrugged. “I liked her too. As a cat.”

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