had smelled in the shared house she’d lived in for her last year of college—but it certainly wasn’t the kind of odor anyone would want hanging around or spreading.
“You already checked under the furniture?” she asked.
From the doorway, Will nodded. She followed his eyes toward where two vent covers had been lifted from where they were usually set into the hardwood floors, and she furrowed her brow in curiosity.
“I didn’t know if—” he began, then cleared his throat again. “I thought maybe you’d put something in the vents.”
Her eyes snapped to his. “For God’s sake!” she said. “What kind of person do you think I am?” (The kind of person who has definitely thought about it once!)
He shrugged. “I didn’t—”
“Wait,” she interrupted. “Did you hear that?”
She waved a hand to shush him before he could answer, turning her head. Silence. But she could’ve sworn she’d heard something a second ago, a barely audible, high-pitched . . .
“There!” she said, waving him over to where she stood. “Did you hear that?”
Slight miscalculation to usher him over, since once he was beside her she again felt compelled to move closer, to lean her body into his. If she pressed her face against his chest, if she breathed in the scent of his soft-looking T-shirt, she wouldn’t have to smell the—
“I heard that,” he said, and she nearly jumped.
Forgetting yourself, she scolded.
“Right?” she said, even though she’d missed whatever he’d heard by virtue of her inappropriate olfactory fantasies about a rude man’s T-shirt. “It sounds like a—”
“Oh, Christ. Is there an animal in here?”
“Shh.” She tiptoed in the direction of the closet. After a few seconds of renewed silence, she looked back at him and whispered, “Did you already look in here?”
He nodded, stepping forward to follow her. And then, like they’d choreographed it, Nora slipped her phone from her back pocket and flicked on its flashlight, and Will reached his arm out to slide open the closet door.
Despite not-dumpster day, this hadn’t been emptied yet, and immediately, Nora felt a wave of sadness to see a line of Donny’s faded flannel shirts, so familiar to her.
“This stuff still has to go to Goodwill,” Will murmured.
Nora ignored that, stretching to her tiptoes and shining the light on the shelf above.
“I said I already—” he said, but quieted when they heard the noise again, coming from somewhere lower, and before he could stop her, Nora dropped to her knees, bending forward to stick her whole head inside the closet. Will made a noise behind her, maybe some kind of cough-warning, and at that moment she realized both her awkward position and her suddenly increased risk of getting bitten or spit on by a rabid animal that was about to have its hiding place discovered.
But from her spot on the floor, she could hear the noise clearly when it came again, and it was only because she knew this closet as well as she knew her own that she could tell immediately where it had come from. She thought of that bad-smelling basement from college, remembered the roommate who had an old and recalcitrant cat that had a sad habit of missing the litter box.
She knew what that sound was.
She moved her flashlight so it wouldn’t beam directly on to the small storage door she already knew she’d find partway open.
And when she gently pulled it the rest of the way, two sets of wide, frightened eyes peered back at her.
“Congratulations,” she said to Will, a smile spreading across her face. “You’ve got kittens.”
“The storage door,” Will said, for probably the fourth time in the last hour. “In the closet.”
Nora suppressed a smile. “Mrs. Salas tried to tell you about it,” she said, only a little smug.
“Kittens,” he said, that stunned quality still in his voice.
Nora hoped he couldn’t feel her shoulders tremble with suppressed laughter, but honestly, she doubted he could miss it. Inside what had to be the tiniest treatment room of an otherwise spacious veterinary clinic, Nora and Will sat, side by side, on a small vinyl-covered cushioned bench, waiting for the vet to return. Probably during any other time, Will would be leaning casually against the door, looking annoyingly unbothered while he kept his distance from her, but Nora had the feeling he was so shocked his legs wouldn’t support him anymore. It was pretty funny, but at the same time, now she definitely had her suspicions about the texture of his T-shirt confirmed (soft, indeed!), and she also was newly