A Tale of Two Tabbies (9 page)

“Are you hungry? Can I make you something?” I offered.

“No, I ate. If you came by to see if I’m still alive, I am. You can go now.”

I ignored Mr. Parsons, who used to be an ornery sort until Cody moved in and then became quite pleasant. His prickly disposition told me that he missed Cody as much as I did.

“Actually, I’m on my own tonight and I hate being home alone, so I thought I’d come watch television with you, if that’s okay.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Unlike you, I haven’t eaten and I’m hungry. Is it okay if I use your kitchen to scrounge something up?” I knew Cody had done the grocery shopping before he left.”

“Whatever you want. Now hush; I’m missing the best part.”

The movie he was watching was one I knew he’d seen at least a hundred times, but I left him to it while I went into the kitchen to cook us both a nutritious dinner and see to the dishes that hadn’t been washed since Cody left.

Mr. Parsons had lived alone for most of his life, and while he was used to fending for himself, he was getting on in years and it was evident he couldn’t live alone any longer. I supposed if Cody did go off to Florida for a year, we’d have to hire someone to care for him. He was going to hate that and would probably fight it, but I couldn’t in good conscience leave him on his own.

I decided to whip together a beef and vegetable casserole and tidied up while it baked. When it was done I scooped it onto two plates and took them into the sitting room. I set one of the plates down in front of Mr. Parsons, who didn’t say anything but did begin to eat. I poured us each a glass of milk and settled in to watch the movie.

There was something calming about sharing a meal with this man I’d known my whole life and watching a movie I’d seen so many times I could almost recite it. I’d come to visit Mr. Parsons in order to make sure he was okay, but it turned out that my visit did a lot to make sure I was okay too.

When I woke up on Sunday morning I had the sensation that the day ahead was going to be filled with shocks and surprises, not all of which were going to make me happy. Siobhan and I drove to church together, and she confirmed my fear that Maggie hadn’t yet returned from her trip. When we arrived for the first mass of the day we were greeted by Father Kilian, which indicated that if they had indeed been together he had come back alone.

Because Cody was away I was left to deal with the choir on my own. At least everyone showed up on time and most of them seemed to be in a fairly cooperative mood. Luckily, Cody had lined up someone to play the piano before he went off the island. I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d been left without an assistant
and
without a pianist.

Although she didn’t sing or even speak, Miranda showed up and she stood with the rest of the choir as they performed. I still needed to speak to Finn about locating Theresa’s next of kin, but if it was her daughter who had inherited her assets, as I imagined it must be, I was sure she wouldn’t have any use for a cat. I hoped we could work something out so that Miranda and Sydney could be together.

Once mass was over, Siobhan and I headed to our mother’s. As directed, I’d worn a dress for the occasion, in spite of the fact that it was a shorts and T-shirt kind of day. I’m not sure what I was expecting when I arrived at the house in which I’d grown up. I knew Mom had invited a guest, which was the reason she wanted us all to look nice, but I was expecting someone of the old-friend-from-high-school variety, not a fiancé none of us had ever even met.

“Engaged!” I spat after Mom announced she had plans to marry Reginald Pendergrass, the nicely dressed but much too smooth-looking man sitting next to her at the dinner table. “How can this be? When did you meet?
How
did you meet?”

“We met on the cruise the women’s group I belong to went on last February.”

“You’ve known this man for two months and you’re engaged?” My mind absolutely refused to wrap itself around the idea, which I could tell everyone at the table also thought was absurd.

“Have you slept with him?” my sixteen-year-old sister Cassidy asked, a look of shock apparent on her face.

“That, my dear, is none of your business.”

“Oh my God, you have. That’s disgusting. I think I’m going to throw up.” Cassie got up from the table and ran upstairs.

I looked around the table. Danny looked amused. He would be. I’m sure in his warped mind he was just glad the boring dinner he’d been expecting hadn’t been quite so boring after all. Aiden had a guarded look on his face, but he hadn’t said anything yet, which was surprising, considering he was very conservative and had taken his role of head of the family very seriously after my dad died. If anyone was going to go all ballistic, I expected it to be him.

“Do you live on the island?” Siobhan asked politely and diplomatically.

“No. I live in Newport Beach.”

“California?” Siobhan’s voice raised several octaves.

“Yes. On the beach. It’s a very nice house with plenty of room for when you visit.”

“Visit?” I asked. I looked at my mom. “You’re moving?”

“Yes, dear. After the wedding.”

“But you can’t,” I argued.

“Whyever not?”

“Because you live here. You’ve always lived here.
We’re
all here.”

“I can assure you that I’ll bring your mother back to visit whenever she likes,” the man told us.

I looked at my mom. “You can’t be serious. This must be some sort of delayed April Fool’s prank. Am I right? Please tell me I’m right!”

The monster sitting next to my mother put his arm around her shoulders and answered the questions I was throwing at her as if she was too simple to answer for herself. “Margaret and I are quite serious. We’ll have a small wedding with just a few friends and family members as soon as Cassie is finished with her school year.”

“You expect Cassie to move with you?” Siobhan asked.

“Of course,” Mom replied. “She’s my daughter and she’s just sixteen.”

“You can’t do that to her,” I argued. “She can live with me.”

“Or me,” Siobhan seconded.

“Cassie isn’t going anywhere,” Aiden finally spoke. “Nor is Mother.”

I was somewhat comforted by the degree of certainty in his voice, although I wasn’t sure what he could do to stop Mom if she’d made up her mind. I did notice, though, that Mom hadn’t challenged him; she’d simply announced that the lasagna was ready and then asked me to fetch Cassie and Siobhan to bring the bread and salad in from the kitchen.

“Cassie,” I called as I knocked on her bedroom door, “it’s Cait.”

“You can come in. It’s open.”

I turned the doorknob and stepped into Cassie’s bedroom. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” Cassie answered. “If Mom marries that man and he moves into our house I’ll never be okay again. What could she possibly be thinking?”

I decided not to fill Cassie in on the fact that “that man” didn’t plan to move into her home but did plan to move her into his home in another state. She had enough to worry about without adding the fear of having life as she knew it ripped away from her.

I sat down on the edge of Cassie’s bed. It was obvious she’d been crying, and to be honest, I felt like crying myself.

“Has Mom seemed different to you since she’s been back from her cruise?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Different how?”

“Happier. More secretive?”

Cassie rolled over onto her back and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I’m sixteen. I have my own stuff to deal with. I try to spend the least amount of time contemplating Mom’s moods as possible.”

“I guess she’s been lonely since I moved out and you grew up and began being away from home so often.”

Cassie didn’t answer at first, but she did seem to be considering my comment. “She did say something about being alone in this big old house after I go to college in a couple of years while we were taking down the Christmas stuff. I mentioned Aiden never moving out, but she had a sad look on her face.”

“And then six weeks later she goes on a cruise and meets a man who wants to spend his life with her,” I provided. “I guess I can see why she might be pulled in by the idea.”

“But he’s so old. They’re both so old. Surely they can’t be interested in an intimate relationship. Why can’t Mom just get a roommate or move in with one of the aunts? Why does she have to marry some old guy none of us even knows?”

While I didn’t agree with Cassie’s assertion that Mom was too old for an intimate relationship, I did think she was jumping into this marriage thing way too fast. Not only did none of us know the guy but there was no way she could really know him herself in such a short period of time. Especially given the fact that he lived two states away.

“What are we going to do?” Cassie asked.

“I don’t know, but right now Mom wants us to come down for dinner.”

“Forget it. I’m not spending one minute with that home-wrecking monster. Tell Mom I’m sick.”

“Are you sure? She made lasagna.”

“I’m sure.”

I explained to Mom that Cassie had refused to come down no matter what I said. She seemed to accept that and changed the subject to her garden club and their most recent project. Hearing about it was boring, but at least it was better than hearing about the new man in her life. As soon as dinner was over, Danny announced that he had a date, and Siobhan and I made an excuse and left as well. I imagined Aiden could handle Mom and her new boyfriend, but I did feel bad leaving Cassie behind.

“Can you believe that?” I asked Siobhan as we drove toward the peninsula.

“Not even a tiny little bit. I figured Mom would move on at some point. She’s still a young woman and Dad has been gone for over five years. Still, this guy can’t be for real. For one thing, Mom would never leave the island, and for another, she’d never leave us.”

“So what are we going to do?”

Siobhan sighed. “I wish I knew.”

She dropped me at my cabin and then headed off to Finn’s. Normally, Finn came with her to Mom’s for Sunday dinner, but she’d requested that only the immediate family attend this week. I guess now I knew why. I still wanted to follow up on my SP lead by visiting Seal Point and Smith Packing, so I changed into shorts, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt, checked on the cats, and then loaded Max into my car.

It was a beautiful spring day and I was looking forward to a drive around the island. In spite of the fact that Madrona wasn’t all that big, it wasn’t often that I visited anywhere north of Harthaven or east of Pelican Bay.

The road that hugged the coastline was heavily traveled on sunny weekends, so the trip would take several hours, but I wasn’t in a hurry and wasn’t all that anxious to go home to my empty cabin. I rolled down the windows, turned up the radio, and sang along with the pop rock hits of the day. There’s something liberating about singing at the top of your lungs as the wind blows through your hair. If Cody were with me I’d never have the courage to sing aloud, so maybe spending a little time alone wasn’t all that bad a thing after all. Of course I couldn’t help but wish he would call. He’d indicated that the committee would probably fill him in on their decision today. I wasn’t sure I could make it another twenty-four hours with so much uncertainty hanging over my head.

The parking lot at Seal Point was packed with visitors enjoying a day at the beach or a Sunday picnic at one of the tables that lined the bluff. I snapped Max’s leash onto his collar and headed across the asphalt to the large visitor center that provided a history of the area. I hadn’t been to the park since it had been remodeled and I really didn’t expect to find lockers, but Seal Point did begin with SP and it was on the way to Smith Packing, so I figured I had nothing to lose by taking a look around.

As I watched the multigenerational families who had gathered to picnic, I had to acknowledge that life wasn’t going to be the same if my mom did move away. The Harts had lived on the island for generations, and I guess I assumed we’d all be here for generations to come. I could remember how things had been when I was a kid and my grandparents were alive and dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins joined us for Sunday dinner and summer picnics. Now, not only had my dad passed away but all four grandparents were gone, and most of the aunts, uncles, and cousins had moved away.

Our family might not be as large as it once was, but there were five Hart siblings, and I always figured that once we all married and had children of our own, our family get-togethers would once again take on the fullness of the gatherings I remembered.

I walked around the exterior of the visitor center and realized I wasn’t going to be able to take Max inside. I could leave him in the car for the couple of minutes it would take me to go inside to check for lockers, but I hated to do that for even a minute on such a warm day. I noticed a man in blue coveralls emptying garbage cans and realized that if there were lockers on the premises he would know about them.

“Excuse me,” I began. “Can you tell me if there are any lockers on the premises?”

“Not for the public.”

“So there are employee lockers?”

“A few. Why?”

“A friend of mine recently passed away and I thought she might have left some of her belongings in one of the lockers here.”

“Sorry, but unless your friend worked here she wouldn’t have access to a locker. There are only ten, and there are more than ten employees, so they’re hard to come by. I inherited locker number one from my uncle when he retired.”

“So they’re numbered one through ten?”

“Yup.”

“Okay; thank you.”

Based on the code VWSP126 I figured the locker I was looking for was most likely numbered 126. Of course it could be locker number 1, and 26 could refer to the combination, although that seemed too short.

Max and I went back to the car and continued on toward the abandoned building where Smith Packing used to be located. Before it went out of business, the company had employed dozens of people who worked around the clock on rotating shifts. It made sense that the management would have provided lockers so the men and women they employed could change at the end of their shifts.

I pulled into the gravel lot, which was completely deserted. After the cannery on the south shore of the island closed, the area had been developed by merchants such as Tara and myself, who hoped to cash in on the influx of visitors who began coming to the island once the ferry began docking on a regular basis. The north shore of the island, however, looked much as it had ten years earlier. When businesses left the area there weren’t any new ones to take their place, so most of the abandoned buildings were still empty today.

While the building was large it was unimpressive. Windowless walls covered a square frame that covered more than 80 percent of the property. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get in if the place was locked up, but fortunately for me, the side door hung loose on its hinges, so Max and I were able to slip in easily. Of course once we got inside it was pitch dark because there were no windows or electricity, so I returned to my car to get the emergency flashlight I kept in my glove box.