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All this time I’d been back in town, getting to know my brother and his almost-fiancée better, it hadn’t fully hit me how they had a wholelifehere. That this was where they lived, and they had jobs and school and shows they watched and... each other.
Meanwhile, I’d be leaving in another month or so, and I didn’t really have a place here. It was nice of them to try to include me, but I didn’t want to intrude.
“Actually, I’ve already reserved a rideshare to get home,” I lied. “But maybe another time.”
I said my goodbyes and then headed down to the entrance to the apartment complex, opening up my rideshare app to see if there were any nearby cars. It wasn’t my preferred way to travel for sure, but if the company’s latest crime reports were to be believed it was relatively safe. I texted Conner a screenshot of my ride confirmation just in case.
Luckily, my driver had the attitude of someone begrudgingly picking up a coworker for a carpool she didn’t want to be a part of in the first place. She barely spoke to me, which meant an automatic five-star review in my book. I had her drop me off a block away from my house, and walked the rest of the way home.
I had to pass Sam’s house on the way, which hadn’t been deliberate, but which did make me slow down. What if I went back, just for a minute? To apologize for leaving so abruptly (again), or to offer to take care of my dirty plate, which might still be sitting in the garage (probably not; I couldn’t help but notice that his sink had been a lot clearer than mine)? But instead I just kept walking, stepping over the cat, who was back in my driveway again. She jumped to her feet as I passed, winding around my legs as I unlocked the front door, making a move as if she was going to dart inside.
“Sorry, little buddy,” I said, blocking the entrance with a foot as I slid inside. “This isn’t your home.”
She gave a single, patheticmeow, and I shut the door.
TWELVE
THE CONVENIENT THINGabout Conner’s broken wrist—for him, anyway—was that it got him out of doing more work around the house for a bit. I told myself that was why I put off writing my dissertation chapter again in order to focus instead on doing a deep clean of the kitchen. Now that most of the furniture and stuff was gone from the main common rooms in the house, it was mostly elbow grease to finish the job—dusting blinds, scrubbing baseboards, scraping at whatever had been stuck to the stovetop since the early 2000s.
I was able to get the audiobook forI’ll Be Gone in the Darkthrough my library app, so I was kind of working. If not working, then growing spiritually at least, which was what always seemed to happen as I followed Michelle McNamara down her obsession with the Golden State Killer. Some people hadEat, Pray, Love. I hadI’ll Be Gone in the Dark.
I was right at the part where she revealed the origin of the titleof the book—a bone-chillingly creepy moment, if ever there was one—and trying to carry two large garbage bags out of the house. I left the door open because my hands were occupied and why not? But then I glanced down right in time to see that fucking cat dart around my feet and into the house.
Shit.
This time I left the door open on purpose, hoping that maybe she’d exit as quickly as she’d entered. But instead she seemed to have already secreted herself somewhere deep in the house, because I went from room to room and didn’t see her.
“Here, kitty,” I said, feeling like an idiot. I made atch-tch-tchsound with my tongue against my teeth, hoping she would respond to that. Those two techniques were the only ones I’d learned from watching TV, so if they didn’t work, I was all out of ideas.
I’d never really had a pet before, other than a couple hamsters and a fish. We hadn’t been allowed to, when we lived in this house as a family, because my dad said he was allergic.Said—I never saw any evidence of the allergy, even on the rare occasions when we were at someone else’s house who had a dog or near someone whose clothes were covered in cat hair. For all I knew hewasallergic, but I had my suspicions.
Once I’d moved out with my mom, I’d asked her to get a cat. The one I was interested in was a beautiful Russian blue who’d landed in a shelter because she had feline immunodeficiency virus, and I’d tried to sell my mom on how the shelter gave you everything you needed to take the cat home.
“Yes, because after that you’ll be paying a fortune in vet bills and medication,” she’d said.
“But doesn’t this cat deserve someone who’ll take care of him?”
“Phoebe,” she’d said, in that voice that meant there would be no more discussion. “You are not going to bring home a dying cat.”
Technically I could’ve pointed out that we were all dying, in an existential sense. That cat did end up finding a good home—it just wasn’t us. And when I’d broached the idea of getting another cat, one whodidn’tcome with a known diagnosis, my mom had shut that down, too.
Later, after I’d already moved out, she met my stepdad, who brought with him two Australian shepherds. Now she had a bumper sticker on her car that proclaimed her a “dog mom,” which I guess meant Istilldidn’t have a pet but rather two canine stepsiblings.
“Nice kitty,” I said, and then, because I didn’t feel comfortable saying something I didn’t mean, “Sneaky kitty. Here, kitty, kitty.”
My dad’s bedroom door was closed and had been since I’d moved in, so I left that room alone. But I finally shut the front door and then did another sweep of the house, making as much noise as possible because I figured I wasn’t going to out-stealth a cat, but maybe I could at least scare her out of a hiding place if she thought Godzilla might be coming.
In my room, I dropped to my knees, tilting my head to look under the bed. And of course, peering through the sliver of darkness were two glowing yellow eyes.
I sat cross-legged on the floor. No way was I reaching my hand in there. I remembered that shot inThe NeverEnding StorywhereGmork comes out of the darkness to fight Atreyu, and this felt like a similar situation. I would wait her out.
“You’ll have to come out of there eventually,” I said, then made a face as a thought occurred to me. “Please don’t go to the bathroom, dude. This is where I sleep.”
I wondered if she’d ever been given a name. I glanced around my room for inspiration, the way a hacker in a movie might look around to discover a person’s password that was always the name of their favorite book, helpfully left on their nightstand. My gaze immediately went to the Rasputin book, which seemed fittingly conniving right about now, but then I saw my huge Edgar Allan Poe collection and the perfect name just came to me.
“Lenore,” I said softly, testing it out. “Come out, Lenore. You don’t want to spend the day under a bed.”
Except obviously that was exactly where she wanted to spend the day. I took out my phone, cursing the cracked screen that made a simple search of what Reddit thought I should do in this situation completely pointless. I could still read text on it, but scrolling through a bunch of repetitive answers and tangents and one helpful comment sounded like too big a headache.
