Cat's Cradle

“Feel free to just walk right in,” Cat muttered.

Adora looked minimally regretful. “The kitchen door was open.”

“Right.”

“So. Did you see him?”

“Who?”

“Oh, stop it, Cat. You know very well who.”

“Dillon McKenna.” Cat said the name with resignation.

“Yes. Dillon.” Adora gave a voluptuous little sigh. “Everybody’s talking. He stopped in at the grocery store on his way through town. Lizzie Spooner bagged his groceries. And I know darn well that agency you work for must have called you to tell you to open up the house. That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I was there for a while,” Cat conceded, then hastened to add, “And I also had the house out on Turner Road to see to. And the place on Jackson Pike.”

Adora looked reproachful. “I called you three times. Why didn’t you call back?”

Cat cast a rueful glance at the answering machine, which sat on her desk beneath the stairs. The message light was blinking. “I just got in myself.” She bent to finish the task of adding more logs to the banked fire, which had burned down to coals in her absence. When the logs were in, she shut the door on the side of the stove. “Want coffee?”

“Tea would be nice.”

“Tea it is.” Cat headed for the kitchen, where she got down two mugs and the can in which she kept the tea bags. Adora wandered into the room behind her. “How do you do it? It totally mystifies me.”

“How do I do what?” Cat went to the kitchen stove, which was half electric and half wood burning. On the wood-burning side, a huge kettle simmered. Cat stoked the fire there as she had the one in the front room.

“You know what,” Adora said. “How do you live out here in the middle of nowhere without a soul to talk to half the time?”

“I like my privacy.” Cat gestured toward the living room, where several tall bookshelves lined every available wall space. “And I read a lot.”

“How in-tel-lect-u-al.“ Adora teasingly drew out each syllable, then tipped her head and wondered out loud, “Don’t you ever miss all of us together, the way it used to be?”

Cat thought of the house where she’d grown up. It hadn’t been a very big house in which to raise four daughters. There had only been one bathroom, which had always been occupied with one female or another putting on makeup or fixing her hair.

“Well, do you miss it?” Adora prompted when Cat didn’t answer right away.

“Not as much as I like my privacy.” Cat poured water from the kettle over the tea bags.

“I miss it.” Adora’s eyes were as melancholy as her tone. “I’m a family sort of person.”

“I know.” Cat smiled in understanding. It had been hard on Adora when their mother remarried. Charlotte Beaudine Shanahan had always been a man’s woman. And from the day she’d met her second husband, her grown daughters had faded to the background of her life. That was just fine with Cat. And Phoebe and Deirdre both had families of their own now. But Adora felt deserted.

“Come on,” Cat said gently. “Take off your coat.” She indicated the table. “Sit down. Drink your tea.”

Adora sat, then slipped out of her coat and draped it behind her on the back of her chair. That accomplished, she grinned at Cat, who’d taken the seat at the end of the table. “Okay. Tell me all about it.” She actually rubbed her hands together in delighted anticipation. “You saw him, didn’t you?”

Cat restrained a sigh. She didn’t even want to think about her unsettling encounter with Dillon McKenna. And she certainly didn’t want to talk about it.

“Cat. Did you see him?”

Cat wrapped her tea bag around her spoon and squeezed the last few drops from it.

“Oh, come on.” Adora let out a little puff of air in disgust. “What is the matter with you? Are you trying to torture me?”

“No, I’m not trying to torture you.” Cat set the tea bag on the edge of her saucer and lifted the cup to her lips. “And yes, I saw him.” She took a careful sip.

“Oh, I knew it.” Adora actually bounced in her chair. “I was right, wasn’t I? He needs some time to...reexamine his life. To decide where to go from here.”

“He didn’t say that in so many words.” Cat set the cup back on the saucer. “But I think you’re probably right.”

Adora preened a little, dipping her tea bag in and out of her cup. “Do I know him or what?”

“Adora...” Cat began, and didn’t know how to go on.

“What?”

Cat thought of the reckless, troubled Dillon McKenna who had left town sixteen years ago. And of the self-possessed, disturbingly compelling man she’d met that afternoon.

“What?” Adora demanded. “Talk to me. What?”

Cat spoke carefully. “Well, people change, that’s all. You were kids when he left here, both of you, barely eighteen. You’ve each...done a lot of living since then.”

Adora’s soft chin was set. “I know him. He was my first love. A woman knows. What else did you talk about? What happened? Tell me every bit of it.”

Cat looked at her sister and wondered if there was any way to terminate this uncomfortable conversation.

“Talk,” Adora prompted.

“There really isn’t that much to tell,” Cat answered, feeling guilty, though there was no reason to. Nothing had happened. Dillon McKenna had offered her a beer. She’d accepted. They’d talked of mundane things.

Adora was blissfully ignorant of Cat’s uneasiness. She bounced in her chair some more. “Tell me anyway. Every little dinky word he said.”

Seeing no way around it, Cat quickly described her encounter with Dillon, leaving out only those stunning few moments when he’d held on to her arm. When Cat was finished, Adora sat back in her chair and took a sip of her tea. “Well. That sounds good. Very good.”

“Adora, it was an exchange of information, nothing more.”

“To you, maybe.”

“Adora...”

“It was the part where he asked if I was doing well, that was the key, see?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You told him how I was, and then he asked again. He’s anticipating. Just like I am. Wondering what it will be like when at last we meet once more.” Adora’s chair scraped the old linoleum floor as she stood. “I’m going to go to his house and welcome him home. Right now.”

“Adora, maybe you ought to just—”