The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,142

her he would do it—she had a ton of other things to worry about today—but, as usual, she tried to do everything. At least she was letting them all help, even though that added to the chaos. She’d embraced the frantic quality of the day and turned it into a party instead of a hassle. She caught his eye and laughed, then dipped her finger into the melted butter and brown sugar she stirred. She closed her eyes to express her approval.

Danny’s brothers stood nearby, looking like movie stars in their tuxes, eating the scraps of the buttermilk chocolate cake Danny had trimmed off. They laughed at something, and Danny tilted his head and studied them; his brothers looked as different as two members of a family could look.

Most of the time Danny forgot to remember. But today that was impossible. Odd things brought it all back to him. Sometimes the triggers were obvious, but occasionally they surprised him—the scent of a swimming pool, the sight of a flowering dogwood, a glimpse of a black-and-white cat, the sound of his laser printer, police in uniform, or a blond woman wearing pink.

Today it was everyone taking pictures. The flashes and the video cameras reminded him. They always had, since the discovery on that rainy, cold day twelve years ago.

“She’d embraced the frantic quality of the day and turned it into a party instead of a hassle.”

Twelve years. Damn. Sometimes the memory seemed so recent it could still make the panic thicken in Danny’s chest. Other times it was difficult for the man he was now to recognize the boy he had been then. But Danny couldn’t pose for a picture, or have someone film him, without remembering it all.

“Danny didn’t believe that everything happened for a reason. . . . He hated that image of a God, of a world.”

“That summer,” his family called it. Even though it started in the spring, in April. Or “that year.” If they just said “that summer” or “that year,” they all knew what it meant. Anything else would be specific: “the summer that Nate left for med school,” or “that summer I was sous-chef at Arriba Arriba in Manhattan.” But if someone just said “that summer,” the rest of them knew what was meant.

Danny didn’t believe that everything happened for a reason. He refused to believe it. He hated that image of a God, of a world. Too many things were just petty and mean if he looked at them that way. But in college he’d studied a bit about reincarnation in a comparative-religions class. Some people who believed in reincarnation thought that there was a place somewhere, a place they couldn’t ever recognize in this world, from which they chose the path of their lives on earth.

Danny pondered that when he encountered certain people or contemplated his family’s history. If it were true, what made some people choose a remedial, cush life and others choose an advanced placement course? What would have made his family choose the shock, the betrayal, the heartache? He wished he understood it.

On days like this, he felt he got a little closer. Knowing everything he knew now, seeing how it had turned out so far, from this better place, he thought he’d choose this life again. He really thought he would.

“Ready with the raspberry?” Mom asked.

Danny opened the raspberry preserves he’d canned himself. Certain items held a family history. A jar of raspberry preserves was bound to set off a family story.

Danny knew he loved the family stories more than anyone else did. Everyone else would complain and cry out, “Not again!” but Danny adored them, longed for them, and secretly devised ways to get them started.

He spread the raspberry preserves between the three layers of dense chocolate cake. When served with homemade vanilla ice cream, this cake was, as Mom called it, “just about as close to culinary ecstasy as is possible.” This cake had been his father’s favorite, and so it touched Danny that it had been requested for today. Thinking about his dad reminded Danny of a family story. An old one. One that used to be told at all the weddings, the Thanksgivings, the bar mitzvahs, and the birthdays. Always on Danny’s birthday. At Danny’s expense. Before, back before Dad had died, Danny was embarrassed when the story was told. But now he sometimes asked his mom to tell it.

“Danny knew he loved the family stories more than anyone else did. Everyone else would