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I rolled over and reached for my phone where it was charging on the nightstand. Two-twenty-seven. The bed squeaked as Petreski rolled over and stretched.
“Can’t sleep?” he whispered.
“No. It’s too quiet and too noisy at the same time. And I miss my memory foam mattress.”
“I know something that would make you relax.” I felt his hand slip to my waist and grabbed him by the wrist.
“We are not having sex in your parents’ house!” I hissed.
“Why not? They do.”
“Oh, geez, do not go there! And it’s their house! And this bed is squeaky!”
“Yeah, okay. The bed is squeaky. We could go down to the barn.”
“No. What if your sister’s still down there hunting mice or whatever?”
“Hmph. You’re no fun.”
“Go back to sleep, Boo. I’m gonna go downstairs and read or something.”
He was already snoring softly as I closed the door behind me.
All the lights were off downstairs, but I was able to find my way to the kitchen and locate what remained of the apple whiskey. A healthy portion of it had been poured over the apricot pecan cake and I was tempted to sneak a piece. I was looking at the container when I felt an icy sensation at the back of my neck. I turned around, but no one was there. I shuddered, and took a juice glass from the cabinet by the refrigerator.
Taking my glass of whiskey to the living room, I switched on a lamp and settled onto the sofa with my phone to see if reading would quiet my mind enough to let me sleep.
I hadn’t gotten very far when a large black shape jumped onto the sofa next to me.
“I told you, Boo, I’m not going to have s–” I stopped short, noticing the dusting of white hairs around this Cat’s mouth. He gave me a slow blink and a silent meow.
“Uh, hey there, Mr. P.” There was no doubt that this was Petreski’s dad.
The Cat batted softly at my hand with one paw, claws in, but still a scold.
“Sorry. Leo.”
He purred.
“Thought you were Boo, I mean Ruben, for a second, there. Y’all look a lot alike.”
He sat up a little straighter and preened – that’s really the only word for it. I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, you are both very handsome Cats. Are all Cats this vain?”
A streak of black tumbled onto the sofa, and a lanky black cat spun around in a circle before stopping and looking back and forth between us.
Leo leaned forward, swiping his pink tongue over the top of the newcomer’s head, and she settled down. I say she, because this adolescent bundle of energy could only be Andi.
“Andi?” I asked, and she turned to look at me, her eyes round and impossibly green in the lamplight.
She mewed and jumped up to the back of the sofa, coming closer to sniff my hair and my ear.
“That tickles,” I laughed, reaching up to rub my ear.
She licked my hand, and I scratched her ear, the way Bridger likes, and she sprawled along the back of the sofa, laid her head on my shoulder, and closed her eyes.
“Have you been good?” I asked her.
She purred and I took her word for it.
Leo watched his daughter for a few moments, then started grooming his whiskers.
I woke my phone up and went back to my book, and that’s pretty much how Beth found us in the morning. Me asleep with my head thrown back, Andi sprawled on the back of the sofa with her head in the crook of my neck, and Leo sawing logs with his back pressed up along the length of my thigh.
I woke with a start when I heard a throat being cleared. That woke Andi, who rolled off the cushion and landed on her father, who kicked her when he jerked awake. She swatted at him, he swatted at her, and then he chased her up the stairs.
I rubbed my eyes and blinked up at Beth. “Guh?”
“Not a morning person, I see,” she said with a little smile.
“I, uh, I can be?”
“Coffee?”
“Oh, gawd, yes. So much coffee. All the coffee.”
I rolled myself off the sofa and went upstairs to get dressed. Petreski was sprawled diagonally across the bed, and he yelped when I tickled the bottom of his foot.
“Wake up,” I said. “If I have to be up, so do you.”
He grumbled and untangled himself from the sheets. “Is Mom making coffee?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t come back to bed last night,” he complained.
“I was downstairs, sleeping with your father and your sister.”
“Gross.”
“Yeah, well you set it up and it was too good to let pass. I thought your dad was you for a minute – he was in Cat form – and almost said something horribly embarrassing.”
“He probably would have loved it,” Petreski said, pulling on a long-sleeved t-shirt.
“And then Andi came in and fell asleep on my shoulder.”
“She likes you.”
“So... I noticed last night that Mel is a tortoiseshell in Cat form, and you, your dad, and Andi are black. Is there any kind of pattern or genetics or anything that determines how you look as a Cat?”
“Well... I guess it’s just like with regular humans. You can take after one parent or another. Andi and I look like our dad, both human and Cat. We have dark hair and green eyes. Mel and the rest look more like Mom, except the eyes. We’ve all got Dad’s green eyes.”
“Hmm. Okay, how do I look? I have no idea what we’re doing today.” I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and Chuck Taylor high-tops, and Petreski gave me a thumbs up. He was wearing pretty much the same thing, except of course on him it looked classy.
* * *
I wound up sandwiched between Andi and Peter at breakfast. Petreski’s brother is an architecture student, and his twin sister, Julia, is in med school. Also, they’re only a year younger than me, which didn’t make me feel like an underachiever at all.
Peter looks more like their mom, with sandy brown hair and a shorter, leaner build. In fact, he looked more like he could be my brother than Petreski’s.
“So, you’re a trust fund baby?” Andi asked, elbowing me in the ribs as she reached for the bread basket.
“Not like you’re thinking, no. I don’t go jet-setting off on a whim or drive a fancy car.”
Petreski snorted. “Not hardly.”
“Huh?” Peter asked around a mouthful of food.
“My dad owns a few car dealerships. I drive a used Subaru.”
“Tell them why.”
I shot my boyfriend a dirty look. “Because I’m a crap driver. Happy?”
“Got it,” Peter said, swallowing. “Not loaning you my car, then.”
“So what’s the deal with the trust fund, then?” Mel asked. She was sitting across the table from me. She also resembled her mother, but she had Petreski’s knack for looking like a model without even trying. You’d never guess she’d been skulking around a barn killing mice with her bare hands – or claws – the night before.
“My grandmother set it up when I graduated from high school, so I could pay for college and living expenses without going into debt or worrying about anything other than studying.”
“She sounds like a smart lady,” Beth said.
“Is she rich?” Andi asked. I already loved this girl – she had no filter.
“Hmm... How to explain Grandma Rosemary... she’s not so much rich as shrewd. You’d probably call her a free spirit, but she has a knack for identifying young artists with exceptional talent, and being in the right place at the right time. Everything just seems to work out for her.”
“I want to be a free spirit when I grow up,” said Andi.
“God help us all,” Leo said, not even looking up from the sausage he was cutting.
“Amen,” said Beth, from the other end of the table.
Andi sighed and rolled her eyes.
“You’re the trouble-maker, aren’t you?” I asked her.
“No, I’m high-spirited, is all.”
Mel snorted, sounding just like her oldest brother. “You just read that in a book somewhere.”
“At least I read!”
“I read!”
“Fashion magazines don’t count!”
“At least I take pride in my appearance and don’t run around looking like a feral!”
You could have heard a pin drop. Leo laid his fork down on his plate and looked up at his second-youngest daughter.
“Dad–” She shut her mouth, her eyes round, when Leo held up his hand.
“Apologize to your sister.”
“But–”
“You know we don’t use that kind of language in this house.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“To your sister.”
Mel sighed. “Sorry, Andi.”
I wasn’t sure what, exactly, was going on other than that Mel had insulted her sister, and that the term “feral” was some kind of bad word.
“It’s okay,” Andi said, but I could tell by her tone it really wasn’t. I reached over and took the hand she had curled into a fist on her thigh, and she relaxed it just long enough to wrap it around mine. The girl had a strong grip.
I leaned over to whisper in her ear, “The Elf on the Shelf knows what she’s done,” and she raised her other hand to cover her smile.
* * *
“Oh, sweetie, you don’t need to do that,” Beth said, taking the plates I was carrying to the kitchen from me. “Mel’s going to do the dishes.”
“Mo-om!”
“You didn’t think you were getting off with just that half-assed apology, did you?” Beth stared down her teenage daughter.
Mel, wisely, didn’t argue and took the stack of plates from her mother before going into the kitchen.
Beth and I did finish clearing the table, though, and stacked the dishes on the kitchen island. I looked around and did a double take when I saw what could only be the Elf on the Shelf perched on top of a Hoosier cabinet.
“Ohmigod, that is creepy!”
Beth followed my gaze. “Nah, he’s cute. You don’t think he’s cute?”
I shook my head.
“Well, it’s time to move him, at any rate,” she said, plucking up the little weirdo. “No peeking!”
Mel made a rude sound and I gave Beth a head start out of the kitchen before going to look for Petreski.
I wandered around the rambling ground floor without seeing him.
“Have you seen Petreski?” I asked, when I found Peter in the TV room.
“Which one?” Smartass.
“I mean Ruben. Have you seen him since breakfast?”
He shrugged. “If he’s not around here, he’s probably outside. Maybe the barn.”
I went out the front door and looked around the yard, but didn’t see anyone. I heard the sound of low-pitched voices, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Probably Petreski and his dad, I figured, and started walking towards them.
“... young. Are you sure?” I heard Leo say.
“You were young. Mom was young. I’m... less young, now.” Petreski’s voice.
“There’s different kinds of young, though.”
“I get what you’re saying, Dad, but there are... things you don’t know. I need you to trust me. Trust that I know what I’m doing.”
“Of course I do. But I’m still your father.”
Yeah, I was pretty sure they were talking about me, and while I knew they liked me, did they approve of me for their number-one-son? But I remembered what Petreski had said a couple of weeks ago. “No matter what.”
“Hello?” I called out, pretending I hadn’t heard them as I came around the corner. “Oh, there you are.”
They didn’t look like a couple of guys who’d been caught talking about you, but they had cop faces, so who knows?
“Hey,” Petreski said, holding one arm out to me so I’d come over and slip under it. I did, and he hugged me up against his side.
“What’s up inside?” he asked.
“Mel’s doing the dishes, Peter’s in the TV room. I don’t know about everyone else. Was wondering if we have plans today?”
“I was thinking you and I could go into town, check out the square, have lunch later.”
“Sounds good.”
“You boys mind taking Andi with you? She could probably use an outing.”
“It’s fine with me,” I said, looking up at Petreski. He nodded. “What happened earlier, at breakfast, when Mel got in trouble? What was that about?”
“Calling someone ‘feral’, it’s like the Cat n-word. It implies that you’re no better than an animal,” Leo said. “I understand Mel is at a rebellious age, but she knows better than that.”
“So, what about regular cats, wild ones, is it bad to call them, you know, that word?”
“That’s different,” Petreski said. “It’s not pejorative in that sense. It’s just describing that they’re wild. So the word isn’t completely taboo – it’s all about the context.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Let’s go find Andi and see if she wants to go to town with us.”
When I went through the front door I felt that same chill I’d felt the night before in the kitchen, and came to a halt.
“Oof! What the?” Petreski said, bumping into me.
“Sorry, just got this weird chill.”
“Maybe because the door is open and you’re letting the cold air in?”
I shook my head, but moved forward so he could come in and close the door.
“Hey, Boo?”
“Yeah?”
“This house isn’t haunted or anything, is it?”
“Haunted? Look, Waxahachie has its fair share of ghost stories, but there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“Okay...” I said, but shivered again as I looked around the wide entry hall.
“Andi!” Petreski bellowed up the stairs.
“What?” she bellowed right back.
“Jake and I are going to town. If you want to go, be down here in five minutes!”
She didn’t answer, but I could hear her moving around upstairs. Four minutes later she came running down the stairs, sounding more like a herd of miniature horses than a twelve-year-old girl.
“Sit down and put your seatbelt on,” Petreski told her when she stuck her head between the front seats after we’d piled into Petreski’s Honda.
“Oh, fine,” she huffed, but did as he said. “You’re such a stickler.”
“I am an officer of the law, you know.”
“I am an officer of the law, you know,” she mimicked in a high-pitched, prissy voice, and I couldn’t help laughing.
“Don’t encourage her.”
“Where are we going anyway?” Andi asked.
“Town,” Petreski answered.
“Uh, duh. But specifically?”
“Ohh, specifically.”
“Yeah,” I added. “Specifically, Boo. Where we going?”
“Courthouse? Walk around the square? Antique shops? Diner for lunch later? They have pi-i-ie.” He managed to drag pie out to about eight syllables.
“Antique shops are dusty and boring. What about the library?” Andi suggested.
“Speaking of dusty and boring,” Petreski muttered.
Andi and I gasped in unison.
“Geez, lighten up. I’m kidding. But it’s Christmas vacation, maybe Jake doesn’t want to spend his holiday poking around the library.”
I turned around to make eye contact with Andi. “You and me,” I said, “Library, tomorrow. Yeah?”
She nodded. “Antique stores are still boring, though.”
