The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,49

more cats cascaded down the steps at us. I yanked the cat from her coat, dropped it, then grabbed her arm to run.

As we fled, the back door of the neighboring house opened and a man shouted, “In here!”

It wasn’t as if we were being chased by rabid wolves or movie zombies, but we ran for that door as if our lives depended on it. A tall, blond man let us into a warm kitchen, where we dripped on his black-and-white tiled floor. A handsome Australian cattle dog sat smiling at us.

“We’re from the Humane Society,” I said, catching my breath. “Thanks for the refuge.”

“Thank you for finally coming. I’m the one who called. I’m Doobie.”

I shook his hand, even though the image in my mind was now turning three hundred and sixty degrees. Doobie? So much for my grumpy old man. Now we had a hippie pothead.

As if he read my thoughts, the man said, “Not Doobie, like, you know”—he mimed taking a toke. “It’s D-U-B-E-Y. You know, from Duberstein? Stuck since childhood. No one calls me Stuart.” He dug around in a plastic tub and handed us each a towel. I dried my face, then looked around the kitchen. Several cardboard boxes stood in stacks, with more visible in the hall.

“Are you moving in or out?” I asked. I’d move out if I lived next door to that nightmare.

“In. Unfortunately. Let me take your coats.” He gestured us to a red Formica table. I sat, still mopping my hair with the towel.

“What a great dog,” I said.

Dubey grinned. “Booker, would you like to meet the ladies?”

“I love Australian cattle dogs,” I said as Booker sniffed my hands and let me rub his large, fruit-bat ears. He was freckled white and tan, with an intelligent face and a stump of a tail.

“You know that breed? Lots of people don’t.”

“Cami’s a vet,” Helen said. We did introductions.

Dubey had been in the house for only a week. His coffeemaker was unpacked, so he started a fresh pot. While it dripped, he unpacked some mugs. “Cream or sugar?” he asked. He was tall, fit, with hair dark blond like antique gold; like the honey sold at a farmers’ market—real, fresh honey with the comb still in the jar—deep golden with a hint of red.

“Cami?” Helen asked.

I shook myself. “Oh! Cream, please.”

Helen grinned, raising one eyebrow. I rolled my eyes at her when Dubey’s back was turned.

Dubey handed us our mugs—Helen’s had a picture of Beethoven on it, mine had Mozart.

“Classical-music fan?” Helen asked.

He joined us at the table. “I teach piano and music theory at the University of Dayton.”

I took a sip. This was good coffee. I could be a bit of a coffee snob—no doubt influenced by Bobby—and I had been expecting only warmth, not quality.

“Well, welcome to Dayton,” Helen said.

“No, no—I’ve taught at UD seven years. I just moved—I’m only renting this, I don’t know how long—” He stumbled over this sentence three or four times before stating, “I’m getting divorced. My wife is in our old house. This is temporary, until I figure out what I’m doing.”

“I’ve been there,” Helen said. “Cami’s getting divorced, too.” I kicked her under the table.

Dubey nodded at me. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Big-time.” I wondered whether he was the leaver or the one who was left. I gestured to the house next door. “My husband once told me that without him I’d become the crazy cat lady.”

“Oh, please,” Helen said. “Not a chance. Well . . . at least not that bad.”

Dubey shook his head. “My wife never said anything remotely that kind to me.”

We talked easily, Dubey refilling our coffee. We learned that Dubey’s wife, Susan, an opera singer, had cheated on him after having become convinced that he was cheating on her—which, he told us, he hadn’t been—and had taken a hatchet to his piano. Although she’d never wanted a dog in the first place, now she wanted possession of Booker in the divorce settlement.

Even my bone marrow chilled. “She’s fighting for custody of the dog?”

“I think it’s just because she knows he’s something I value,” he said. “When we started dividing stuff, I told her I didn’t care about anything but my piano and the dog, and, of course, those are the two top things on her list. She doesn’t even play piano.”

He filled us in on the house next door. “The woman’s name is Charisse Beaumont-Clay. She looks normal—leaves her house in a suit, has a job somewhere. You’d never know