Emmett

“When can you come home, Emmett?” Amy asked, her big eyes on her father.

He blinked and looked down at her. “Two days they said,” he replied. “God, I’m sorry about this!” He glanced toward Melody. “I had no right to involve you in my problems.”

That sounded like a wholesale apology. Perhaps the head injury had erased his memory so that he’d forgotten her part in Adell’s escape.

“I don’t mind watching the children for you,” she said hesitantly. She pushed back her hair with a nervous hand. “They’re no trouble.”

“Of course not, they were asleep all night,” he replied. “Don’t let them out of your sight.”

“Aw, Dad,” Polk grumbled. “We’ll be good.”

“Sure we will,” Guy said. He glanced at Melody irritably. “If we have to.”

“It’s only for a day or two,” Emmett said. He was feeling foggier by the minute. “I’ll reimburse you, of course,” he told Melody. He touched his head with an unsteady hand. “God, my head hurts!”

“I guess it does,” Melody said gently. She moved closer to the bed, concerned. “Shall I call the nurse?”

“They won’t give me anything until the doctor authorizes it, and he’s in hiding,” he said. His eyes closed. “Can’t say I blame him. I was pretty unhappy about being here.”

“I noticed.”

He managed a weak chuckle. “If Logan had been at home, you wouldn’t be landed with those kids….”

He was asleep.

“Is he going to be okay?” Amy asked. She was chewing her lower lip, looking very young and worried.

Melody smoothed back her hair. “Yes, he’ll be fine,” she assured the girl. “Come on. We’ll go home and I’ll make lunch for all of you.”

“I want a hot dog,” Polk said. “So does Amy.”

“I hate hot dogs,” Guy replied. “I don’t want to stay with you. I’ll stay here with Dad.”

“You aren’t allowed to,” Melody pointed out.

He took an angry breath.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” she murmured. “But we’re stuck with each other. We’d better go.”

They followed her out, reluctantly. She stopped long enough to assure the nurse at the desk that she’d bring the kids back the next day to visit their father. She was concerned enough to ask if it was natural for Emmett to go to sleep, and was told that the doctor would check to make sure he was all right.

Guy’s dislike of Melody extended to her apartment, her cat, her furniture and especially her cooking.

“I won’t eat that,” he said forcefully when she put hot dogs and buns and condiments on the table. “I’ll starve first.”

She knew that it would give him the upper hand if she stooped to arguing with him, so she didn’t. “Suit yourself. But we’ll have ice cream for dessert and you won’t. It’s a house rule that you don’t get dessert if you don’t eat the main course.”

“I hate ice cream,” he said triumphantly.

“No, he doesn’t,” Amy said sadly. “He just doesn’t like you. He thinks you took our mom away. She won’t even write to us or talk to us on the telephone.”

“That’s right,” Guy said angrily. “It’s all because of you! Because of your stupid brother!”

He got up, knocking over his chair, and stomped off into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Melody took a bite of her own hot dog, but it tasted like so much cardboard. It was going to be a long two days.

She didn’t know how true her prediction was going to be. Guy sulked for the rest of the day, while she and the other two children watched television and played Monopoly on the kitchen table. While they were going past Go for the tenth time, Guy opened the apartment door and deliberately let Alistair out….

Melody didn’t discover that her cat was missing until she started to put his food into his dish.

She looked around, frowning. “Alistair?” she called. The big cat was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t have gone out the window. The apartment was on the fourth story and there was no balcony. She searched the apartment, including under the bed, but she couldn’t find him.

“Have any of you seen my cat?” she asked.

“Not me,” Amy murmured. She was watching cartoons with Polk.

“Me, neither,” he said absently.

Guy was staring out the window. He jerked his head, which she assumed meant he hadn’t seen the cat.

But he looked odd. She frowned. Alistair had been curled up on the couch just before Guy had stormed off into the bathroom. She hadn’t seen the cat since. But surely the boy wouldn’t have done something so heartless as to let the cat out. Surely he wouldn’t!

Melody had found Alistair in an alley on her way home from work late one rainy afternoon last year. He’d had a string tied around his neck and was choking. She’d freed him and taken him home. He was flea-infested and pitifully thin, but a trip to the veterinarian and some healthful food had transformed him. He’d been Melody’s friend and companion and confidant ever since.

Tears stung her eyes as she searched again, her voice sounding frantic as she called her pet’s name with increasing urgency.

Amy got up from the carpet and followed her, frowning. “Can’t you find your cat?”

“No,” Melody said, her voice raspy. She brushed at a tear on her face.

“Oh, Melody, don’t cry!” Amy said. She hugged her. “It will be all right! We’ll find him! Polk, Guy,” she called sharply. “Come on. Help us hunt for Melody’s cat! She can’t find him anywhere!”

“Sure,” Polk said. “We’ll help.”

They scoured the apartment. Guy looked, too, but his cheeks were flushed and he wouldn’t meet Melody’s eyes.

In desperation, Melody went to the two apartments nearby to ask her neighbors if they’d seen her cat, but no one had noticed him. There was an elevator and a staircase, but there was a door that led to the stairwell and surely it would be closed…

All the same, she checked, and was disturbed to find that the stairwell door was propped open while workmen carried materials to an apartment down the hall that was being renovated.

Leaving the children in the apartment, she rushed down the steps looking for Alistair. She called and called, but there was no answer, and he was nowhere to be found.

Defeated, Melody went back to the apartment. Her expression was so morose that the children knew without asking that she hadn’t found the cat.

“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “I guess you love him a lot, huh?”

“He’s all I have,” Melody said without looking up. The pain in her voice was almost tangible. “All I… had.”