“IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, PENNY. STAY OUT OF it.” Brad slammed out of the house, his anger continuing to boil as he walked to the truck, hopped in, and drove away.
It had been like this all summer between him and his sister. Their dad had spent a lot of time playing referee between the two, to no avail. It wasn’t as if Brad hadn’t tried to keep his temper, tried to mend fences, tried to get back to the way things used to be between him and Penny. But nothing he’d tried ever worked for long.
Their latest fight had started when she’d repeated—for what seemed the millionth time—her plans for his life after he graduated from Boise State. That was still three years away, but she acted like the future was etched in stone—and she was the stonecutter.
He’d made the mistake of saying, “I don’t know what I’ll do or where I’ll go after college. I may want to take a job someplace besides here or Boise. I’m thinking about Nashville.” He should have known better than to mention Nashville. It was code for “country music,” and they both knew it.
Things had escalated quickly from there, Penny calling him selfish, Brad calling her a control freak. He’d left before either of them could say anything worse.
Arriving at a parking area that led to the river, Brad found a place in the shade and cut the engine. Then he got out of the truck and started walking. Fast. With any luck he could burn off the anger and frustration with a good hike.
Maybe he’d been wrong to listen to Penny’s urging to go for an engineering degree. Maybe that had given her the idea that she was in charge—that he would do whatever she told him to do. It wasn’t too late to change his major. He could study music.
“You’d end up a teacher, Brad,” Penny’s voice echoed in his memory. “You’ve never said you want to teach. Do you?”
No, it wasn’t what he wanted. But neither did he want to be an engineer just so he could get a job that paid lots of money. He wanted to be a drummer. He wanted to live and work with other musicians. Why couldn’t she understand that?
He halted on the path along the riverbank. Closing his eyes, he drew in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. Once, twice, then a third time.
I shouldn’t let her get to me that way. I should hold my temper. She’s just trying to help.
He opened his eyes and looked at the sky. “Okay. So how do I make things better?”
Leave for college now!
That wasn’t an answer from God. That was his own thought. And not the right answer. Not really. If he—
Meooow.
He looked around.
Meooow.
He hadn’t imagined the sound. It was a kitten. A kitten in distress. He stepped off the beaten path and began poking through the underbrush.
Meooow.
He found the black-and-white kitten at the base of a pine tree, clinging to the trunk only a few inches above the ground. He doubted it was more than six or eight weeks old.
“Hey, look at you. How’d you get all the way out here all by yourself?”
The most probable answer was that the kitten had been dumped here. Or maybe it had escaped being drowned in the river. He knew people did that kind of thing, although he couldn’t understand how they could. Slowly he reached out and gently pulled the kitten off the tree trunk. It wasn’t any too happy, but it was too small to escape his grasp. He turned it around to face him.
“Hey, look at that tuxedo you’re wearing. Aren’t you a handsome guy? Oops, I think maybe you’re a girl. That’s okay. I like girls.” He grinned. “We’ll call you Tux. What do you think of that?”
Meooow.
Brad laughed as he drew the kitten close to his chest. “Yeah. Things are tough all over. But you won’t feel that way when we get home and I get you full of milk.”
Imagining Penny’s expression when she saw he’d brought home a kitten made him laugh again. His sister tried to like cats but never quite succeeded. Still, maybe Tux would make her forget their latest fight. He could only hope.