731c3e32dd6349cda7e9d6caf76b901f

Now Blaire dropped her voice.“It’s not what you think, okay?” A pleading expression took over her usually smirking features.

“Then what is it?” I demanded, cocking an eyebrow in question. She could either tell me right now or deal with an increasingly uncomfortable interrogation. I wasn’t above tattling to Madame Blue, either.

Blaire must have sensed this because she threw her hands up in the air and growled.“Ugh, you are so annoying. Do you know that?”

I met her with a deadpan expression, refusing to budge.

“Fine, come with me. I’ll show you what I’ve been hiding.”

I followed Blaire upstairs to her second-floor bedroom, which happened to be at least three times larger than the one Charles and I were currently occupying.

She flicked on the lights, then moved across the space to the attached bathroom.“Follow me,” she instructed.

I watched as she stooped down by the sink and poured her glass of milk into a China bowl. A flash of movement from the bedroom caught my eye, and I turned just in time to see a black cat racing toward us.

No, not black.Tortoiseshell.

“Charlene’s mother!” I exclaimed. “You had her this whole time.”

The cat turned toward me with wide eyes.“You found my baby?”

At the same time, Blaire asked,“Uh, what? Who’s Charlene?”

“Oh, we found an abandoned kitten and decided to call her Charlene while we searched for her mother,” I answered flippantly, trying to hide my screwup.

“What makes you so sure this cat is her mother?” Blaire challenged, eyeing me suspiciously.

“I am her mother! I am! Will you bring her to me?” the torty pleaded, coming over to rub her head against my knee.

I couldn’t exactly admit that the kitten had told me and that her cat had just confirmed it to boot. Blaire would think I was crazy, provided she didn’t already. I decided to play off her question instead. “I mean, what are the chances of you finding a cat and us finding a kitten so close together?”

“How do you know I found her? What if I brought her here with me?” Blaire was not letting me off the hook.

I just had to meet her confidence with some swagger of my own.“Did you?” I lifted an eyebrow.

“No, but that’s not the point. You’re making a lot of assumptions here. Just like you assumed I did all that stuff to your husband.”

“Okay, I get your point, but something tells me this is the kitten’s mom. They’re both mostly black, if that helps prove anything. Can I bring the kitten up here to introduce her? We should know by how they interact if they belong together.”

“Yes, yes! I want to see my Charlene!” the torty cried, now pawing at my knee enthusiastically. “I’ve missed her so much!”

Blaire just shrugged, completely oblivious to the pleas of her new feline friend.“I guess. If it will get you off my back,” she said, and I rushed out of there to grab the kitten before the rainbow-haired woman could change her mind.

17

I returned to the room and flipped the light on to help me find Charlene more easily than groping about in the dark. Charles still didn’t stir even from the bright flood of light—sleeping off all the drama of the day, no doubt.

“Charlene,” I whispered when I didn’t immediately spot her. “We found your mother. C’mon.”

The little kitten jolted out from beneath my abandoned pillow.“Really? Let’s go!” she squeaked happily.

“You’ve got it, boss.” I scooped her up, turned out the light, and jogged back up the secondary staircase to reach Blaire’s room upstairs.

As soon as I’d returned, the mother cat came running. Even before I could set Charlene on the floor, she was pawing at my legs and shouting, “My baby! My baby!”

“Mommy!” Charlene mewled in matching excitement. “It’s really you!”

Blaire stood back and watched this happy reunion from the bathroom doorway.“Okay, so they probably do belong to each other,” she admitted. I wasn’t planning on keeping two cats, but I guess it’s fine.”

“You’re keeping Charlene’s mother?” I asked, not sure why I hadn’t pieced that together already but still surprised all the same.

“Her name is Socks,” Blaire corrected, creeping over to join me and the cats.

“That’s not my name,” the mother said as she busily groomed Charlene with her sandpaper tongue. “But I don’t mind.”

“Why Socks?” I wanted to know. I supposed most pets had their names changed by humans once adopted, but this one made zero sense. “She doesn’t have any. Her feet are all black.”

Blaire smirked at my question.“That’s the point. It’s ironic.Duh.”

“Well, then hello, Socks.” I ran my hand over the tortoiseshell cat’s back, and she lifted her tail happily.

“Charlene is a dumb name. I’m changing it,” Blaire said a few seconds later.

Neither cat seemed to pay her much mind as she ran through a list of possible names.“I think I’ll call her Snowball,” she landed on after at least a dozen suchironic possibilities.“And don’t you dare point out that she’s not white. That’s the whole point.”

Stupid names aside, Blaire did seem committed to the feline mother-daughter duo. Still, something nagged at me.“You’ll take good care of them, right?”