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“She fit?”
“It was half-empty. It made a great bed.”
“If it fits, she sits.” The streetlights whiz by as we head onto the highway. “What made you adopt her when you don’t usually do that?”
“I don’t think I did. She adopted me.”
“Well, I’m glad. You two are perfect for each other.”
I can barely make out his face in the low light of the car, but I know when he glances over at me. “Same as you and the clinic. I consider it a stroke of luck that you showed up when you did.”
Oh, that.
Maybe I should hold on to the truth. It could be that I stay and it never matters that I originally never intended to take the job. I certainly don’t want to disrupt this happy feeling. “You seemed to be in such a pinch.”
“Did you up and leave your old job? No notice?”
I can tell from his tone that this concerns him.
“We have rotating tellers, so I’m easily replaced.” This isn’t a lie.
“I see why you wanted something with more meaning,” Drew says. “You would be very hard to replace from where I stand.”
I know he means at the clinic and not personally, but my silly heart feels hope anyway. I’ve talked with Tillie about this a million times. Am I confusing my girlhood crush for the man I see now? She thinks so.
But she isn’t inside my skin. And that pure, naive love I felt for him when I was twelve rushed right back today after he pulled me down from the tree.
“I told you,” I say before I realize it’s slipped out.
“Told me what?”
Might as well barrel forward. “That you’d save me.”
“From your mundane job in Alabama?” In the low glow of his dashboard lights, his eyebrows move together.
“From the tree.”
“I think you would have come down, eventually. The cat would have insisted.”
I fiddle with the hem of my skirt. “I suppose.” It didn’t feel that way at the time. The cat had been howling, clearly as upset as me. Her life was out of control, too. Knocked up, half-starved, babies born in a pipe. Finally in a warm, quiet place, then two barky wild things get up in her business.
“I guess the kittens are at the clinic?” I ask.
“A rescue came for them after you left.”
“Oh.” Already gone.
“They’ll be back. I’m doing their shots and spaying the mother. I’ll let you know when they show up, although you’ll probably be the one to check them in.”
“Good. Did they get names?”
“You can look up the rescue. They’ll name them before putting them up for adoption, but that will be weeks yet. If you want a say, I can give you their number.”
“That’s okay. I just want to know how to refer to them in my mind.”
He shakes his head. “You’re a sentimental one.”
“Says the grumpy vet who insisted he’d never own a cat.”
