Part 5
Pip entered only after Nora stopped reaching for her.
June went first, climbing into the carrier and immediately chewing the fleece lining. Pip stood outside the open door, watched her sister and then stepped in beside her.
Nora closed the carrier gently.
Anne completed the final signature at the kitchen table while David secured the carrier in the back seat. Nora placed a square of familiar fleece inside and carried the kittens to the car.
“I can send updates,” Anne said.
“You don’t have to send them every day.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Nora laughed, and the tightness in her chest eased just enough for her to breathe.
Through the wire door, Pip stared at her with wide gray-green eyes. There was no gratitude in them, no understanding of sacrifice. She was simply a young cat in a carrier beside the sister she trusted.
That was enough.
“Goodbye, little one.”
The car pulled away.
Otis and Milo left together the following week. The playpen, shallow litter pans and digital scale disappeared from the guest room, leaving pale rectangles on the floor where they had stood.
Clover searched the room after the last kittens were gone. She called from the closet and hallway, then settled on the windowsill. Nora sat nearby without lifting her or trying to fill the silence.
After the kittens were fully weaned, Riverbend arranged Clover’s surgery and vaccinations. Nora submitted an adoption application like everyone else.
Marcy reviewed it without smiling.
“Indoor home?”
“Yes.”
“Annual veterinary care?”
“Yes.”
“No private transfer if you change your mind?”
Nora glanced at Lena, who was studying a poster about flea prevention with suspicious concentration.
“Yes.”
Clover returned from the clinic sleepy and offended. She refused Nora’s lap, ignored the expensive bed beside the radiator and slept on the old blue towel instead.
She did not become an easy pet. Sudden footsteps still sent her beneath the worktable, and she left whenever the doorbell rang. She accepted affection on her own schedule and occasionally hissed at Nora for reasons Nora could not identify.
But every morning she appeared beside the sewing machine before Nora switched on the light.
In early June, Lena picked Nora up before sunrise. The old humane trap from Nora’s garage rested in the back of the SUV.
An unaltered black tom had been appearing behind the bakery. They set the feeding station, positioned the trap and waited inside the vehicle.
The cat appeared after twenty minutes. He circled the wire, vanished beneath a parked truck and returned.
“What if he doesn’t go in?” Nora whispered.
“Then we come back tomorrow.”
The tom stretched his head toward the food. When the door finally closed, he threw himself once against the wire.
Nora flinched but waited for Lena’s signal. Together they covered the trap and listened as the movement inside gradually quieted.
They carried him to the SUV.
Lena shut the rear door. “Coffee Saturday?”
“At seven?”
“Seven-thirty. I’m not a farm animal.”
“You scheduled this before sunrise.”
“That was for a cat. I like cats.”
Near the end of summer, another hard rain swept through Hollis. It rattled the screen door and sent water racing along the gutter above Nora’s workroom.
Clover lifted her head from the blue towel.
For a moment she watched the door through narrowed green eyes. Then she tucked her nose beneath one white paw and settled back to sleep.
Headlights turned into the driveway. A car door closed, followed by Lena’s familiar knock.
Nora switched off the sewing machine and went to let her in.