knocked over a stack of Alice’s schoolbooks. All in vain. The yarn was definitely gone.
Unless we had a ghost, the cat had eaten it. I’d never had a pet of any sort, much less a cat, but common sense told me that eating a yard of string couldn’t be good. I scooped up the cat, his body as sleek and firm as an otter in my grasp. “What do I do?” I said, looking frantically at Cal for guidance.
His emergency-response training kicked into gear.
“Where’s the cat carrier?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I wailed. “The house is such a freakin’ mess. I don’t know where anything is.”
“Calm down, Tally. It’s okay. We don’t need the carrier.” He disappeared down my hallway and returned a moment later with a bath towel. He shook it out and laid it across the back of the couch.
Gently, he pried Sherbet out of my hands, set the cat on the towel, and wrapped him up like a mummy. Just a blue terry-cloth football with a cat head sticking out of the top. Cal tucked the edge of the towel into a fold, so the bundle was secure, and handed the cat back to me.
“Come on, Tally. Let’s go. I’m driving.”
And just like that, our roles reversed. Strong, silent Cal had taken charge.
chapter 7
All Creatures Animal Hospital smelled like wet dog and fear. I cradled Sherbet, still cocooned in his periwinkle towel, close to my body while Cal did the admitting paperwork for me.
A vet tech in hot pink scrubs directed us to the plastic chairs that ringed the waiting room and assured us a vet would be with us soon.
I looked down at Sherbet in my lap. He stared up at me with eyes like yellow marbles. I know he’s a cat, and I know they have very small brains, but I felt like we connected in that moment. He opened his mouth in a silent meow, and my heart about broke.
“I’m sorry, little man. I know you didn’t mean to do anything wrong. And I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I scratched behind his ears, and a tear escaped my eye to fall on his silky little head.
Cal’s big hand reached out and grasped mine, and he rested our twined fingers on Sherbet’s back.
“He’ll be fine, Tally,” Cal whispered.
“He’s a pretty cat.”
I hadn’t even noticed there was another person in the room, so her compliment startled me. The woman had a little kick-dog on her lap, one of those dogs that looks like someone stuck a small fox in a clothes dryer and let it get all puffy. This one had fur the color of ground cinnamon, but with a silvery muzzle and a frosting of white along the edges of his ears.
The woman herself looked like a shopping mall Mrs. Claus: an elfin woman with snow-white curls around peppermint-pink cheeks, a ring of delicate cream lace around the collar of her evergreen-colored blouse. She looked vaguely familiar, and I was pretty sure I’d seen her before. In real life, not just on a Norman Rockwell calendar.
The woman smiled, dimpling cheeks as soft and powdery as unbaked biscuits, and the dog’s tongue lolled out in a matching doggy grin. That’s when I placed her—she’d been at Bryan’s funeral, sitting with the faculty and representatives from Dickerson.
“Is your little friend sick?” the woman asked.
“He ate yarn,” I said. A nervous laugh escaped me. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m a dog person, aren’t I, Ginger?” The dog on her lap shuffled his tiny feet, the tags around his neck jingling merrily. The woman’s voice sounded curiously flat and nasal to me. I couldn’t place the accent, maybe something East Coast, but she definitely wasn’t a Texan. “But my niece Madeline has a cat. She’s had terrible trouble with that cat eating all manner of things—strings, ribbons, dental floss, rubber bands. He’s already had surgery six times to remove foreign bodies.”
Six times?
I met Sherbet’s terrified yellow gaze again. I tried to send him a telepathic message: let’s not make a habit of this, okay?
“What about Ginger, there? Is she okay?” Cal asked. I should have inquired myself, but I was way too freaked out by the thought of my little buddy going under the knife to be polite.
“He,” the woman corrected. “Ginger’s a boy. We’re here all the time, aren’t we, Ginger?” She lowered her face and the tiny dog licked the tip of her nose. She giggled girlishly. “Ginger’s getting up