Cat Trick

A lot of the relationships in Mayville Heights were, I’d come to learn. So was my own background, for that matter. My mother and father had married each other twice, with my brother and sister, Sara and Ethan, front and center with my mother, so to speak, at the second ceremony.

“Go talk to her,” I said. “Take half an hour. It’s not busy. Susan and I will be fine.”

“Thank you, Kathleen,” Mary said. She patted my arm as she squeezed past me. “You have a good heart.”

I followed Mary as far as the children’s reading area and watched her fold Wren Magnusson into her arms. Mary was the one with the good heart.

She pulled out of the hug, keeping her hands on Wren’s shoulders as she studied the young woman’s face. After a moment Mary hooked her arm through Wren’s and they headed for the library entrance.

I walked over to Susan. She looked up at me. “That poor kid.”

“She knew Mike,” I said.

She nodded. “She was almost part of that family.”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean ‘almost’?”

Susan pushed the seafood fork a little more tightly into her topknot. “You know that older brother of Mike’s Mary was telling you about?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Wren’s mother was going to marry him.”

I blew out a breath. “So Gavin Glazer was going to be Wren’s stepfather,” I said.

Susan traced a finger around the outside edge of the heavy hardcover book she was holding. “The Glazers already treated them as though they were family. Wren’s mother never really got over what happened. She cut off all contact with the family even before they moved away. I think it was just too painful for her.” She sighed. “But it had to be hell for Wren. She didn’t just lose Gavin. She lost that entire family.” She set the book on the counter.

“Sometimes life isn’t very fair,” I said.

“You got that right,” Susan agreed.

“I’m going to finish shelving that cart Mary was working on,” I said. “Yell if you need me.”

I was putting back issues of Scientific American into their cubby when Mary returned about twenty minutes later. She walked over to me, and I got to my feet, brushing my hands on my black pants.

“How’s Wren?” I asked.

“A little shaky, but all right, considering,” Mary said. “If her brother wasn’t up in Alaska until the end of the month, I would have suggested she go back to Minneapolis.”

“Susan told me about Wren’s connection to the Glazers.”

“She was so happy to get the chance to reconnect with Mike. She’d been going to see him today. She was even talking about getting to see his mother.” She tucked her hands into the pockets of her peach-colored cardigan. “Kathleen, do you have any idea how Mike died?”

I hesitated, unsure how to answer.

Before I could say anything, Mary held up a hand and gave her head a little shake. “I’m sorry. How could you know that?” She sighed softly. “It doesn’t make any difference how he died,” she said. “It doesn’t make him any less dead. I just thought maybe it would help Wren if I could tell her that he didn’t suffer.” She shook her head again as if to clear it. “Not a very nice way to go, alone in that big old tent of Burtis’s.”

“Is there a good way to die?” I asked, picking up another book from the cart.

“Well, I darn sure know how I plan on going,” Mary said, a saucy gleam suddenly lighting up her eyes.

I put one hand on my hip and looked skeptically at her, happy to have the subject changed. “I don’t think that’s something you can really plan, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear what those plans of yours are.”

She pulled herself up straight to her full height, which wasn’t actually that tall. “I plan to live to be one hundred and be shot in bed by the jealous girlfriend of a much, much younger man.” She smiled at me. “And since I’m nowhere near the century mark right now, I’m going to go wash my hands and then come back and finish those books.”

I watched her head for the stairs. She was in excellent shape. If anyone was likely to make it to a hundred, it was Mary. And even though she was very happily married, I’d seen her get admiring looks from men a lot younger. Those long, strong legs of hers tended to turn men of any age into mush.

I went back over to the desk to see if Susan needed anything, and when she didn’t, I headed upstairs to my office. I dropped into my chair and swung around to look out the window.