Tonic (30 page)

There was no way I was going in today. I reached for my phone and texted Laney.

I’m sorry to do this, but I won’t be in. My cat died this morning.

She texted back almost immediately.
Oh, God. Don’t worry about things here. I’ve got it under lock. Probably best to give everyone here some air anyway. Take care of yourself, and let me know if you need a few days. K?

K

I set down my phone, turning my eyes back to the bundle on my bed.

“Mama?”
 

We turned to find Kira in the doorway, hair mussed, rubbing her eye with her little fist, her bunny hooked in her elbow.

“Hey, Bunny,” Roxy said, the words full of sadness and comfort. She glanced at me before turning for Kira, scooping her up.

“What’s the matter, Mama?”

“Oh, honey,” she clutched Kira into her shoulder and looked to me again. We shared a look full of wariness and weariness, and I got the sense that Roxy was trying to figure out how to break the news to her. “So, baby, I have to talk to you about something. Do you remember Lady Pearl?”

Kira leaned back to look at Roxy, her arms loose around Roxy’s neck, bottom lip poking out just a hair. “Our fishy?”

Lady Pearl was our betta, a pink and purple explosion of color, and a male. But Kira insisted he was a lady and named him Pearl. And thus, our transgender fish was born.
 

“Yeah, our fishy,” Roxy said. “Remember when we found her upside down in her bowl?”

She nodded. “Because she was an old lady?”

“Right. Because she was an old lady, and nothing lives forever.”

“I remember.”

“Well,” Roxy started, pausing for a second. “Do you remember how old Kaz is?”

“Old-old. Almost as old as you, right, Mama?”

“Right,” she said softly. “Well, baby, last night, Kaz went to sleep, but he didn’t wake up.”

Kira’s chin quivered. “What?” she whispered, and a sob rose in my throat. I pressed my fingers to my lips.

“He’s gone.”

“No,” she wailed, her little face bent. “No! Where is he? Where is Kaz?” She looked around and looked at the bed. And she cried, reaching for him as Roxy tried to soothe her, finally taking her out of the room.
 

I picked up the cat and walked down the stairs, not sure what to do with him, working through the biological part of what his death would mean. So I slipped him into a trash bag and put him into a box that I set on our back deck.

When I closed the door, I felt better by only a tiny degree. I could still hear Kira upstairs crying while I called my mother and told her what happened. More tears, hers and mine, and Papa got on the phone, his voice raw as he told me how sorry he was. They agreed to let us bury him in their back yard, said they would take off the next day so we could come over.

So, I’d be off for at least one more day, not that anyone needed — or wanted — me around.
 

I made my way back upstairs to Kira’s bedroom to find Roxy holding Kira on her bed, sobs hiccuping through her little chest.

Roxy’s eyes were wet, her hand skating up and down Kira’s back. “Kira wants to have a funeral for Kaz.”

I sat next to them, my heart broken. “Sure, Bunny. We’ll have a funeral at Babushka and Dedushky’s house tomorrow.”

Kira nodded. “And Dedu Andrei has to come, and Hairy.”

My breath hitched.
 

Roxy shook her head. “Hairy doesn’t need to come, Kira.”

Her little face wrenched again, and the tears slipped down her cheeks in rivulets. “He has to come! Kaz loved Hairy, they were friends, and Hairy has to come! He has to!” Her voice was shrill, edging on hysterical. I couldn’t stand it.

“I’ll ask him, Bunny, but he may not be able to come.”

“He has to!” she squealed. “He has to, you have to tell him! Please, Anni, make him come!”

Roxy and I shared a look. “Okay, I promise, I’ll tell him.”

“Tell him now!” Her eyes were wide and wild, wet and sad. “Please?”

“Kira—”

She cried again, her words all running together, and I reached for my phone.
 

“Okay. Okay. Look, I’m gonna call him right now, okay? Don’t cry, Bunny, please don’t cry,” I said as my own tears fell, and I pulled up his name, hoping he wouldn’t answer. Because the last thing I needed was to hurt anymore. And hearing his voice couldn’t do anything but tear me apart.

Joel

The phone rang on the kitchen table between me and Shep, flashing her name, bringing our argument to a halt.

“Speak of the devil,” Shep said.

I pushed the button on the side of my phone to stop its buzzing, and hopefully my nerves.

“You’re not going to answer it?”

I gave him a flat look.

“Just answer it. She wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.”

My jaw flexed. “Don’t really care.”

“You’re not curious?”

I sniffed. “Not even a little.”

My phone was still showing her number, the button begging me to answer. But there wasn’t enough tea in China to convince me to do it.

He scowled, watching me until it went to voicemail. I picked up the conversation again.

“We can’t get out of the show, Shep. So now it’s our job to convince the shop to get back on board, and I need you to have my back.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “That’s a tall order, man. Ramona and the girls are pissed, especially Penny. She’s ready to Molotov Cocktail the control room.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“All right, then let’s look at this objectively. All emotion out of it. Can you do that?”

My jaw clenched. “Yeah.”

“So, the way I see it, we have two options. The easiest option is this — tell Laney to choose. Us or her. We might have a shot at convincing them to get back on board if she’s gone. But otherwise, it might be hopeless. Laney paying for a night at the bar was great and all, but it wasn’t enough. No one would go in today, which means the shop is closed too. We can’t keep this up. So maybe if
she’s
gone, it can get us back on track sooner.”

As much as I didn’t want to see her, the thought of getting her fired sent dread twisting through my guts. I wished, not for the first time, that she would just disappear without any consequence for any of us.
 

“Last resort,” I said after a moment, and my phone buzzed again, alerting me that a voice message had been left.

Shep and I looked at each other for a split second, and his hand darted out toward my phone. I was a millisecond too late to stop him from grabbing it.

I stood, and so did he as he held up my phone.

“Give it back,” I barked.

He had the nerve to smirk. “Why? What are you afraid of?”

I moved around the table, and he kept pace, keeping it between us so I couldn’t reach him as he opened up my voicemail like a fucking traitor and played the message, putting it on speaker.

“You son of a bitch.” I darted, and he sidestepped to stay right across from me.

The message began, and my chest ached at the sound of her smoky voice, muffled by a stuffy nose.

“I … I’m sorry to bother you.” Kira wailed in the background, and the ache squeezed tighter. “My … my cat died last night.” A pause, more crying in the background. A deep breath. “We’re having his funeral tomorrow at my parents’ house, and Kira wanted you to be there.” Kira wailed
Hairyyyyyyy
, and Shep’s brow dropped. “I understand if you can’t make it, really. But it would mean a lot if you were there.” She rattled off the time for the funeral and her parents’ address with a shaky voice before disconnecting.

Shep eyed me. “Dude, you have to go.”

“No, I don’t.”

He slid my phone across the table toward me. “Yeah, you do.”

I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

“Listen, Joel. I get it. I really fucking do, but you can’t keep pretending that you didn’t play a part in all of this.”

“Trust me, I don’t. You said we had two options, so what’s the other one?”

He shook his head. “You’re not gonna like it. But you need to consider it.”

“Tell me, already.”

Shep watched me for a beat. “Make up with her.”

“What?” I shot the word at him like a cannonball.
 

“I don’t mean you have to be with her, but if you can figure out a way to let it go, everyone else would fall in line. You’re their fearless leader. They’d follow you anywhere, even down the path of redemption. But so long as you’re wounded, they will be too. The longer they see you hurting, the more they dig in their heels.”

My nostrils flared as a hot breath left them. It was impossible. But he was right. I deflected.

“I’m not going to her fucking cat’s funeral, Shep.”

He shrugged. “Even if you don’t go for her, you should go for that little girl.”

I glared at him. “It’s a cat funeral. A funeral. For a cat.”

“Yeah, I get what it is, I’ve got ears, asshole. But if you go, it’s an olive branch to her. You’re there for the little girl who I’m assuming must really want you there, since it convinced Annika to call you.”

I blinked at the sound of her name. “I’m not going, dude.”

He frowned. “Stop acting like you’re the only one who got hurt. She’s not wrong, you know. You gave her permission to do her job, and she did. You lied to her. She lied to you. You hurt each other.”

“It’s not the same,” I growled.

“I’m not saying it is. I’m saying you led her on just as much as she did you.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t lie to her and then fuck her.”

He gave me a look. “That’s exactly what you did.”

“You know what I mean, Shep.”

“I do know what you mean, but I’m saying that what you did
to each other
was shitty. You’re both assholes. I’m not saying you have to be best friends with her. I’m not even saying you have to forgive her. But either you find a way to work with her or she’s got to go. You can’t have it both ways.”

I turned for my room, not knowing where else to go. But I had to get away. “I’m not fucking going, Shep.”

And he sighed as I closed my door to shut the world out.

Annika

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I FOUND myself in my childhood kitchen, milling around with my family, all dressed in black, somber clothes. It felt more like an actual human wake than I cared to really acknowledge, and with more people than I’d anticipated, including several family friends who I’d known all my life. Mama had cooked enough food to feed half of Russia, including all of Kira’s favorites, and desserts galore.
 

All I’d had to eat was half a dozen chocolate pirogi, and I didn’t even feel bad about it.

Papa had pulled me aside and asked me about Joel, after Kira wouldn’t stop talking about him, wondering if he would come, and I’d told him everything, the two of us in the quiet bedroom hallway. And I cried again, loss piled on loss, and I couldn’t find the edges of the two anymore to separate them.

After a little while, when we’d said the little service would start, we moved into the living room where a table covered in black cloth stood with Kaz’s tiny cat-sized coffin on top. Papa had built it the day before out of simple pine and dug his small grave in our sliver of back yard, and Mama had covered the mirrors in mourning. I took my place next to the table as everyone sat in folding chairs lined up in the living room. Kira sat in front, her eyes big and shining, her stuffed bunny in her lap and hair braided in a crown around her head. Her small mouth was pinched, her rosy lips tight.

I took a heavy breath as they all got settled, blinking back tears, telling myself the show was for Kira. But it was more for me than I was really willing to admit. I fought the urge to lay my hand on his little coffin, winding my fingers together in front of me instead, squeezing them tight.

“I’d like to thank you all for joining us today to say goodbye to Kazimir, destroyer of peace, shoes, and sometimes, hearts.”

A chuckle rolled through them, and I gave a small smile, feeling a little better. Until the door opened, spilling slanted daylight into the room.

Joel stood in the doorframe, massive, imposing, his brows low and lips drawn, his eyes connecting with mine immediately.

I couldn’t breathe, the room suddenly hot, stifling.

Everyone had turned to the motion, and Kira cried, “Hairy!” before bolting around the chairs and into his arms.

He scooped her up, clutching her into his chest as her little arms wound around his neck.

“Hey, kid. You doing okay?” he asked softly.

She leaned back, arms still circling his neck, sniffling. “He’s gone.”

His face softened and bent, his eyes brimming with sadness. “I know. I know he is. I’m sorry.”

She nodded, fresh tears slipping down her round cheeks. When he set her down, she slipped her tiny hand into his gigantic one and pulled him to the front. And he did her bidding, sitting right next to her.

Right in front of me.

I swallowed down a dozen emotions, his eyes heavy on me as I looked away. I felt cheated by his presence, no longer free to feel however I felt, everything complicated simply because he was there. So I looked at everyone but him, determined to keep it together.

“Mama found Kaz behind the shop, tied up in a trash bag with his brothers and sisters, the lot of them mewling and crying to get out. When she freed them, they took off, all of them but Kaz, who climbed into her lap and purred his thanks. She gave him milk and brought him here, brought him home.”

Kira leaned into Joel, Roxy nearly forgotten altogether. She looked a little miffed at the fact too, shooting him looks, though it may have also been on my account.
 

“I was beside myself — Mama had refused me a pet since I’d been able to talk.” Another chuckle. “But Kaz wiggled his way into our lives easily, mine easiest. You might remember me pushing him up and down the street in a buggy with a bonnet on.”

Mama laughed, which turned into a sob. She dabbed the corner of her eye with her handkerchief and leaned into Papa.

“He slept in my bed and let me walk him with a collar. And even though Mama threatened to turn him out for scratching at the sofa and marking her closet when he was mad, she never did. I don’t think she could have, because even though he was impossible, he was family. He was ours.” Another swallow, another breath, another heartbeat. “He didn’t have many friends, which made his affection that much more enviable. And they say that only the good die young, which is probably why he lived for eighteen years, and we all thought of him as immortal. But everything has its end in life, and nothing lasts forever.”