Cat Trick

“Hot chocolate, please,” Wren said to me. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s not,” I said.

“Me too,” Elizabeth said, brushing her hands on her jeans and getting to her feet. “Could I help?”

I pointed to the bubble-glass plate sitting on the counter. “You could put the cupcakes on the table.”

Wren sat on the floor, talking to Owen and Hercules until the hot chocolate was ready; then she stood up and joined us at the table. I showed them a couple of pictures I’d taken of Lucy walking in the long grass behind the carriage house. Both Wren and Elizabeth had a lot more questions about the cats, and I tried to answer them all as honestly as I could.

Hercules came to lean against my leg, and I reached down to stroke his fur. I noticed he was watching Wren. Owen sat halfway between my chair and Wren’s, watching her too, but not with the same goofy adoration that he gave to Maggie. If he’d been a person instead of a cat, I would have said that he seemed concerned. Wren had an air of sadness about her, and given that both cats seemed to be able to sense someone’s mood, maybe he was concerned.

After a few minutes, Wren grew silent. She was rubbing her thumb against her finger again. A couple of times she caught the edge of her lower lip between her teeth.

“Wren, is there something you wanted to ask me?” I said. Twice it had looked like she was going to speak but then she hadn’t.

She traced the rim of her cup with a finger. “Yeah,” she said, “but it’s not about the cats.”

“That’s okay,” I said, folding my hands around my own cup. “What is it?”

She took a deep breath as though she were trying to work up her nerve. She seemed very fragile. “Is it true that you found Mike Glazer’s . . . that you found him?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes. It is.”

Elizabeth reached over and gave her friend’s arm a brief squeeze.

“Did he . . . did it look like he . . . suffered? I hate thinking he just lay there alone for hours.” Wren lifted her head to look at me, and I could see the grief in her pale blue eyes.

I took a moment before I answered. I wanted to say something that might make her feel a little better, but I didn’t want to make up a story, either. “From what I saw, I don’t think so,” I finally said. “I didn’t see anything that made me think he’d had a fight with someone. There were no signs of a struggle. No overturned furniture. He was just there. There wasn’t any blood.”

She swallowed a couple of times, gave Owen—who was still watching her—a small smile and then looked at me again. “Just so you know, I, uh, I’m not trying to be some kind of a ghoul. When I was little, I was really close to Mike and his family.”

“I know about Mike’s brother,” I said.

“I hadn’t seen Mike in a long time . . . years,” she said. She picked up the cupcake on her plate, broke it in half and set it back down again without taking a bite. “I was so happy when I found out he was involved in this tour thing. I thought about going to see the whole family a bunch of times, but I didn’t exactly know how to find them and I didn’t want to make anybody feel bad.”

She shrugged. “It probably sounds dumb, but us both being here at the same time just kind of seemed like a sign.”

“It’s not dumb,” Elizabeth said. She might not have been raised by the Taylors, but like her father and her half siblings, Elizabeth seemed to be fiercely loyal to the people she cared about.

“No, it’s not,” I agreed.

Wren took a sip from her hot chocolate. “I know that people are saying he was a jerk, but he really wasn’t.” She twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “I was going to see him that night, you know. I’d already missed seeing him once. But I had car trouble . . .”

She swallowed again and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “I was going to see if we could have lunch and catch up.”

“I’m sorry that didn’t happen,” I said. Both cats were sitting next to Wren’s chair now. It was impossible not to be touched by the pain she was feeling.

“Things didn’t exactly turn out the way I thought they would,” she said.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. “We should get going,” she said, touching her friend’s shoulder.

Wren nodded. She leaned over and smiled at Owen and Hercules. “It was nice to meet you,” she said. Owen meowed and Herc lifted one paw.

“They feel the same way,” I said. “You’re welcome to come and visit anytime.”

Wren smiled, the first real smile I’d seen that hadn’t been directed at a cat. “Thank you,” she said, getting to her feet. “I might do that.”