“LET HIM GO,” said her grandmother. “He’ll sleep it off.”
“Are you sure?” Mercy fought the urge to run after him.
“He’s going to be fine.”
“Okay.”
“Promise.” Patience squeezed her shoulder. “Now what about that cat?”
“I’ll go get her.” She went out to the Jeep and gathered the kitten in her arms and carried it into the hospital. She could feel its tiny ribs right under the matted fur.
“Poor little thing.” Patience took the skinny bag of bones from her.
“I know. And there are a lot more where she came from.” She described the abomination of abused cats at the Walker place.
“I’ll let the animal rescue folks know.” Patience sighed. “We’ll organize an evacuation.”
“Good.”
“This one is a cutie. What’s her name?”
Mercy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“She’ll need a name.”
“Okay.”
“You’re distracted. And it’s not this tiger tabby you’re worried about.” Patience led the way to one of the smaller treatment rooms. “It’s the prowler. You’re itching to go after him.”
“Yeah.” Mercy shifted on her feet and looked away from her grandmother’s sharp blue eyes.
“Without backup.” Patience examined the cat, from ears to tail. The kitty just stood there, body trembling, tail twitching, whiskers twiddling.
Mercy’s grandfather never waited for backup either. It had killed him in the end.
“Everyone’s working overtime. The holiday.”
“Call Troy Warner.”
“He’s a game warden,” she said, a little too loudly. “He’s busy writing up drunk boaters.”
The cat quaked at her tone.
“You’re scaring her.”
“Sorry.” She nuzzled the frightened kitty and lowered her voice. “So sorry, kitty.”
“You know better than that.”
Mercy wasn’t sure if her grandmother was talking about the cat or the warden. Either way she was probably right. She usually was.
Patience straightened up. “Probably nothing wrong with this little girl that a little love and food and a couple hundred bucks’ worth of shots and meds can’t fix.”
“Great. Just add it to my bill.”
“I’ll take it out of your inheritance, per usual.” Patience grinned at her, then frowned. “Troy Warner is a good man with a good dog.”
High praise for her grandmother.
“You sound like you know him well.”
“I’m his vet.”
“You’re everyone’s vet.”
“He adopted Susie Bear, you know.”
“Nice dog,” Mercy said evenly.
“Great dog,” said Patience. “She was a rescue from Alabama. Left to die in the woods down there. Half starved, full of parasites, missing teeth, evidence of a cracked skull somewhere along the line … she was a mess when they brought her up here. I’d bet money somebody hit her in the head with a shovel. Or a baseball bat.”
“That’s terrible.” Mercy shook her head. “She seems fine now.”
“Thanks to that handsome young man. Hold the kitten.”
She held the timid creature—still shaking like a leaf—and sweet-talked her while Patience injected the little cat with a slew of vaccines. “I’ll have to keep her here for a couple of days until those parasites are cleared up. And get her spayed.”
“Whatever she needs. You know best.”
“Remember that.” Her grandmother retrieved a cat carrier and slipped the kitty inside. “I’m afraid it’s quarantine for you, little one.” She waved Mercy ahead of her. “Let’s take her into the kitchen with us for a cup of tea. She needs food and water anyway.”
“I should get going.”
“You need to eat something before you head off after an armed robber.”
Mercy knew there was no point in arguing with her. Patience had an infuriatingly gracious way of making you feel like an unreasonable boor if you disagreed with her. “Can we check on Elvis on the way?”
“Sure.”
They found him curled under the long window seat in the living room, hiding from the world. He was already dozing off, his light snores the bass to the sweet purring of the half a dozen cats—all rescues—stretched out on the plump velvet cushion lining the window seat right above him.
“As you can see,” said Patience, “he’s fine. That sedative will last him awhile.”
Mercy was relieved to see that he was breathing easily and sleeping normally. She’d promised Martinez she’d take good care of him, and here she’d gone and gotten him shot. She would never forgive herself if anything happened to him on her watch.
“Feeling guilty?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. Her grandmother had been reading her mind since she was three years old. Maybe longer.
They walked through the reception and through the French doors that separated the clinic from the kitchen in the house proper. Not that there was much difference, apart from the medical equipment. The house was decorated in the same clear and bright Zen palette as the hospital. Patience believed in the healing power of color, and every room was painted according to the desired effect—calming blues and greens for surgery and treatment rooms, soothing violets and purples for recovery and post-op rooms, cheerful oranges and yellows for the reception area and the kitchen. Music played in the background, an eclectic if melodious mix of mellow reggae and soft rock and harmonious Gregorian chants and kirtan. Patience insisted the music encouraged positive behaviors in dogs and cited the studies to prove it when Mercy expressed any skepticism. Which she never did anymore, now that she knew from her own time on the mat with Elvis that it worked.
The kitchen was her favorite room in the house. Her grandmother loved to cook, and she’d modeled her chef’s kitchen after the ones she’d visited in the south of France. A large, welcoming space dominated by a big island topped with white marble, the room reminded her of a Van Gogh painting come to life. The deep yellow walls nearly glowed in the natural light that poured in from the big windows and French doors leading out onto the porch that wrapped all the way around the house. Gleaming copper pots and pans hung from the ceiling and colorful pottery from Provence brightened the open shelves. And there on the long pine table, just where she hoped to see it, was a freshly baked carrot cake.
“Put her down in the corner.” Patience handed her the cat carrier.
She placed it on a Windsor chair by the baker’s rack, then pulled up a stool at the island and watched while her grandmother turned on the electric teapot and then filled two cerulean blue bowls, one with water and the other with kitty kibble.
Mercy placed the bowls in the carrier with the kitten, who wasted no time in availing herself of what might be her first real meal in way too long.
“You cut the cake and I’ll pour the tea,” Patience said.
Time for a chat, thought Mercy. Tea and cake was how her grandmother always began delicate conversations. Not that there was ever anything delicate about her direct approach.
“And how are you?” Patience handed her a bright orange mug filled with spicy chai.
“Fine.” She sipped. “Tastes as good as it smells.”
“Fine? Really?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m in your kitchen eating your cake.” She slipped a generous bite into her mouth. “Good cake.”
“Let’s see.” Patience counted down on her capable fingers. “You found and lost a baby, then you found and lost her teenage mother, you discovered a corpse and maybe explosives, your house got tossed by an armed intruder, your dog got shot … have I missed anything?”
“When you put it that way…”
“And you met a man.” Her grandmother snapped her fingers. “I knew I forgot something.”
“What?” Mercy laughed. “Who?”
“Troy.”
“Seriously?”
“You could do worse.”
“Not my type.”
“If I remember correctly, you were pretty sweet on Troy when you were younger.”
“I was fourteen,” Mercy said, her mouth full of cake.
Her grandmother continued as if she hadn’t heard. “After he saved that copy of Romeo and Juliet from the Landry boy, you proclaimed it your favorite play.”
“It was always my favorite play when I was a kid.”
“You slept with it under your pillow.”
Mercy rolled her eyes. “At the risk of repeating myself, I was fourteen years old. It was just a schoolgirl crush on an older man.”
“Older man?” Patience scoffed.
“He was a senior,” repeated Mercy. “I was just starting high school.”
“You’re a big girl now. Troy is only, what, four years older than you are. That’s nothing.” Mercy’s grandfather had been twenty years her grandmother’s senior.
“He seems older.”
“You both seem older than your years. Due to your shared military experience, no doubt.”
“Maybe.” Certainly she felt older than most of the people she met her own age.
“Four years. You wouldn’t even need a Plan B.”
Mercy knew she was talking about her grandfather again. Patience had often told her that while she’d loved every minute of their time together, good and bad, they always figured that given their age difference, she’d need a Plan B.
As it turned out, it happened far sooner than they’d thought it might. The life of a cop is always on the line—and thanks to an arrest gone wrong, Patience ended up the widow of a man cut down in his prime, rather than an old man doddering around the house while she played nursemaid. She would have done it, and done it happily, but the last thing he’d told her before he went into surgery to repair the gunshot wounds that killed him was “Live your life, Patience.” Her grandmother was fond of repeating this advice whenever possible.
“Live your life, Mercy.”
And there it was. She tried another tack. “Troy Warner is married to the most beautiful girl in the county.”
Patience refilled her cup from the teapot. “She ran off with a doctor from Orlando.”
Mercy nearly choked. “Seriously? When?”
“Christmas before last.” Patience sighed. “They moved back home after he left the service, and within six months she’d hooked up with this orthopedist. It hit him hard.”
“I bet.”
“It was inevitable,” Patience said.
“Maybe.”
“That lightweight was never right for him.”
Calling someone a lightweight was the worst thing her grandmother could say about anyone. It meant that she believed that you were not up to the hard work and hard choices of real life.
“A match made with a lightweight is a match made in hell,” continued Patience.
Mercy had heard this theory before. Notably when her first love, a wrestler she’d met her freshman year of college, was expelled for steroid use and tried to take her down with him. Patience had warned her against him when they’d visited her over Thanksgiving break. If only her grandmother had met Martinez. She would have liked him. He was made of strong stuff. She suspected Troy Warner was as well.
“And the game warden is no lightweight.” Mercy smiled at Patience.
“He’s a good man with a good dog.”
“So you’ve said.”
“Have some more carrot cake.”
Mercy cut herself another piece. She knew there was a lecture coming on—and her grandmother believed that a spoonful of carrot cake helped the medicine go down.
“I’ve been a widow now for nearly twenty years.” Her grandmother leaned in. “I’m not lonely, mind you, but we women do have needs.”
“Patience.”
“I’m serious. That’s why I have Claude.”
Claude Renault was an animal surgeon from Quebec, a congenial man who had kept her grandmother company for several years now. Mercy was sure he’d like to have a more permanent place in Patience’s life, but he wasn’t the first man to amuse her and Mercy suspected that he may not be the last. That said, she liked the guy, and sometimes she felt bad for him.
“Don’t look at me that way. I got married, I raised my children, and now I can play. With Claude.”
“He died. I buried him.”
“I know, sweetheart.” Patience reached for her hand and squeezed it. “But maybe you need a Plan B, after all. Just as I did.”
“I’m not as brave as you are.”
“Nonsense. You’re braver than I’ll ever be. And you’re young. You need to get married, have a family. You owe it to yourself.”
“I can’t do that now.”
“Maybe not. But you will. You must.”
That was enough grandmotherly advice for one day. Mercy pulled her hand away gently. “I have to go.”
“I know. You want to catch your masked man.”
“He’s long gone by now.”
“But you won’t rest until you know that for sure.”
“I should sit with Elvis.”
“It’s not like he’s going to die,” Patience said gently. “Promise.”
She hesitated.
“Go on. Elvis will be fine. I’ll take good care of the wonder dog.”
Her grandmother had been married to a cop for years; she knew the drill. Which was more than Mercy could say for her parents.
She smiled her thanks. Patience held out her hands, and Mercy obliged her with a hug. Her grandmother gathered her in her arms, just as she had done when she was a little girl. There were few things on earth more comforting than this kitchen, this carrot cake, this woman hugging her.
They walked out to her Jeep together.
“Take your gun,” Patience said. “And name the cat.”