I walked them to the door. “Goodnight.”
“Later,” Orion muttered as they left. I watched as he got into his gold Mustang, and Chapel climbed behind the wheel of a white SUV.
I closed the door and walked into my kitchen. I was about to toss Chapel’s card in the trash when I paused, studying it. It said Three Hills Gifts with a little sketch of the hillocks, the name ‘Chapel’ with no surname, and a phone number. I glanced around the kitchen. Nothing stirred. “Fucking ghosts,” I muttered, but shoved the business card in a drawer instead of tossing it in the garbage.
Even with my denials, when I went to bed, I placed a dictionary on my cellphone on the bedside table. Spite that, bitches. See if my spiritual termites could move my cell phone with that heavy book on top of it.
I slept peacefully, and in the morning, the dictionary was still resting on top of my phone. Upon doing a walk through, nothing in my house was amiss. No open cabinets or drawers, and the garage door was still closed and locked. I was relieved, but a small part of me remained unsettled, and it wasn’t all about ghosts or sleepwalking. I’d ordered Orion to let me handle everything concerning my father from here on, then I’d pissed him off, and possibly hurt his feelings before he left last night. I now had no excuse to call him or see him again.
But I wanted one.
Chapter Nine
I heard a ‘meow’ outside and looked over from where I sat at my workbench in the basement. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and I had the door open for ventilation. My wood carving involved paint and stains and various finishing polishes, and I didn’t want to poison myself with fumes. Not that I was feeling particularly vigilant about preserving my health lately. I just figured that being found on the basement floor beside a workbench full of mini tree sculptures would be a pretty embarrassing way to die.
Death by polyurethane.
A small black cat stood at the threshold, eyes on me while it made little mewling sounds, like it was asking permission to come inside. “Hey, Kitty.” I put down the wood burning iron, then walked slowly across the floor. I didn’t want to scare the cat away; it was the first decent company I’d had in two weeks.
My father was being a stubborn prick again, not taking my calls. When I showed up at his house, he’d insist he needed nothing. No shopping, no errands, that he was handling it all himself. And he was back to not inviting me inside, insisting he was busy or napping. I didn’t think Orion had broken his promise to me, or that he was helping my dad on the sly. I’d shown up unannounced several times and hadn’t spotted him or his car anywhere near my father’s house. So I guessed this behavior was just Jasper being Jasper, too proud to succumb to my offers of assistance.
I knew he was a proud guy, and hated my insinuations that he might need some help. But his refusal to even sit down and have a cup of coffee with me hurt. Especially since it wasn’t all about him. I was lonely. It would be nice to have my father to talk to. I figured he’d want the same thing. We did have some healing to do after all that had gone down recently.
Maybe he was regretting telling me about his betrayal of my mother. Maybe he was ashamed, and I was a reminder. But it wasn’t like I was showing up raging or being a jerk. I was being a grownup about it, no matter how wounded I felt for my mom. I was trying to be the bigger person and acknowledge that my father’s choices were his own. But I was annoyed that after dropping that bomb on me and all his supposed regret, nothing had really changed between us. We weren’t fighting, and we weren’t suddenly closer. We were simply back where we’d always been: contentiously related.
In the meantime, my loneliness was really getting to me, so I was doing everything I could to stay busy. I’d installed the shelving in the garage suite and finished the wiring and insulation, and it was now a livable space—not that I expected Jasper to move in any time soon. I’d gone on one date, with a woman called Denise from ‘How Sweet’ and we had a nice dinner down at the seaside. She was friendly and pretty, but once we settled into small talk, I learned she was recently divorced. This wasn’t a red flag in and of itself. Hell, I still considered myself ‘recently’ divorced after an entire year.
But Denise spent most of the date relaying all the ways her ex-husband had wronged her, in such excruciating emotional detail, that I determined she was not only still in love with him, but looking to date other men as a kind of payback. Her suggestion that we stop by the bar where he worked for a nightcap to ‘rub it in his face’ was the first and last clue I needed.
The cat remained in the doorway as I crouched down, and it allowed me to rub behind its ears, purring and dragging its back along my arm. “Where’d you come from?” I asked softly as he leaned into my stroking hand. I checked the tag on the collar, a small chrome disk with an address on it. I chuckled, recognizing the house number. “Ah.” A quarter mile down the road was a white cottage where my friend Paul Bassock lived, a local Hillock Beach cop I’d gone to high school with. We’d been fairly close back in school, but had lost touch over the years, beyond waving as we passed each other on the road, or a quick ‘How you doing’ when I saw him in the diner.
I knew Paul lived alone, but it had been so long since we’d had an in-depth conversation that I wasn’t sure if he’d ever been married, or if he had a girlfriend now, or anything about his personal life. But apparently, he had a cat. And if Paul’s cat was here at my house, maybe he was looking for it. Picking up the cat, I stepped outside and closed my basement door. I felt a little stupid walking down the street with a cat in my arms. It would likely be able to find its way home easily without my help. Probably went on excursions often, and the woods out in back of my house made for exciting feline exploration.
But I’d spent the past two weeks going stir crazy, phoning my married friends, only to be given a bunch of shit excuses why they couldn’t go out for a drink. I’d not heard a word from Orion, and while that was strangely disappointing, I hadn’t really expected to. There was nothing left for us to talk about. I wasn’t up for any more ‘How Sweet’ dates right now, but I was craving human contact. So I found myself climbing Paul Bassock’s porch with his cat and ringing the doorbell.
Paul answered the door in his police uniform, looking surprised, but he smiled when he saw me. “Kurt! Hey.”
“I found this creature over at my place while I was working in the basement. Not sure if you were missing him…her?”
“Her.” Taking the cat from me, Paul chuckled. “This is Blackie.”
“Very original.”
He shot me a smirk. “She was already named when I got her. Was my niece’s cat but she’s gone off to college. Shit, she was all the way down at your place?”
“Yeah. Like I said, wasn’t sure if you were looking for her.”
He stepped onto the porch and set the cat down. She immediately took off and disappeared around the side of the house. “Thanks. But she has her own door to get in and out. She always comes back, so I don’t really worry. Was she bothering you?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. Anyway, figured I’d walk down and say hi. It’s been a while.”