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I looked at him. “By doing nothing?” That went against everything inside me.
“By being her husband,” he countered. “Being a father.”
I looked back at Fiona.
Being her husband.
Being a father.
Two things infinitely more difficult than flying across the world to kill a man.
Two things that scared the absolute shit out of me.
* * *
Fiona came home with a cat the next day.
She’d been out with Nora. It was hard as fuck, letting her drive her new car, letting her do it alone. I had the overwhelming urge to demand she not go anywhere unless I was driving. But of course, I knew how that was going to go. So, I tried to swallow my worry. My bone-deep fucking fear.
I tried to remind myself that lightning didn’t strike in the same place twice. That my wife and daughter were not going to be taken from me again.
Yet I only truly breathed again when Fiona came through the door, belly first these days.
Or cat first today.
“This is Boo,” she declared, cradling the cat in her arms, resting it above her stomach.
I peered at it, and the cat peered back at me. It was solid black, big enough to show it wasn’t a kitten, and looked judgmental. “What’s wrong with it?”
She scowled at me. “Nothing. He’s perfect,” she snapped, stroking his fur. “He was just born without eyelids.”
I blinked. I knew that tone. That was a warning tone, one that meant she was either going to burst into tears or yell at me. I didn’t want either of those things to happen. Though I didn’t mind being yelled at because that usually ended with me fucking her. The crying I did not like.
I couldn’t predict which one was going to happen, and therefore I was going to have to tread carefully. “Who does Boo belong to?”
She continued cradling him. “Us,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I adopted him.”
I pursed my lips.
Tread softly,I reminded myself.
“You hate cats,” I said, trying my level best to keep my tone even.
“I do not hate cats,” she retorted, stroking the black creature.
I kept my mouth shut. It would not do well to inform her of the many conversations we had about cats and how she thought they were ‘bitchy.’
“You can’t change the litter box,” I said instead, remembering what I’d read in one of the baby books.
“Of course, I’m not going to change the litter box,” she replied, screwing her nose up. “Gross. We’re not having a litterbox. Boo is going to go outside. Like a dog.”
Again, I thought of the best way through. I stared at the cat. It stared back at me. It was a cat, not a kitten, and therefore likely already trained in using a litterbox. We’d been a dog family growing up, and I had no clue how to work with a cat, let alone how in the fuck to train an adult cat to stop using a litterbox and not shit on the rug.
“Okay,” I said to my wife. “Sounds like a plan.”
She smiled, and fuck if I would move heaven and earth to figure out how to potty train an adult cat.
“Her stuff is in the car,” she said, kissing the cat’s head. “Now let me give you a tour of the house.” Fiona walked in the direction of the living room.
