Don't Let Me Go (18 page)

“Ooh, that’ll be good,” Grace said. “If anything’ll get him out from under the bed, I bet that’ll do it.”

• • •

About an hour later, Grace stood in front of Rayleen’s door with the cat purring in her arms. Every now and then the cat rubbed the side of his face against Grace’s jaw.

She knocked quietly, so she wouldn’t startle him.

She heard Rayleen call through the door, asking who it was, but she was afraid to call back, because, after all, she had only just very recently gained the cat’s trust. And you have to be careful with the trust of a scared animal, once you’ve finally got it.

After a minute Rayleen opened the door anyway. Cautiously.

“Oh, it’s just—Oh, my God. Grace. What have you got there?”

“My new cat.”

“
Your
cat?”

“Yeah. Mine. Now.”

“Well, I don’t know where you’re planning on keeping him. Not in here, that’s all I know. Not in this apartment.”

“But he—”

“Grace. I’m allergic to cats.”

“Oh, no! Not you, too!”

“What do you mean, not me, too? Who else is allergic to cats?”

“Peter. Mr. Lafferty’s son Peter. That’s why I have to take him. That’s why I have to keep him, because Peter is allergic, and also because he has to go home on a plane. You sure he can’t stay here?”

“My throat will close up and I won’t be able to breathe.”

“Oh. I guess I have to ask Billy, then.”

“What about Felipe?”

“What’s wrong with asking Billy?”

“You know Billy’s not big on change.”

“I heard that,” Billy said.

Grace turned to see him peeking out through the crack of his door, the safety chain blocking her view of part of his nose.

“Sorry,” Rayleen said, “but…I mean…was I wrong?”

“That depends. What’s the question in question?”

Grace said, “Can my new cat stay at your place for now?”

“Hmm,” Billy’s partially-hidden face said. “Maybe you should ask Felipe.”

“Told you,” Rayleen said.

“But you’re
home
,” Grace said, in her just-at-the-edge-of-whining voice. “You’re
home
, to take care of him. Felipe has to work. And Mr. Lafferty will be lonely, and he’ll be scared.”

Grace watched Billy glance up, over her head. She turned around to see Rayleen catching his eye. So they were doing that thing grown-ups do when the kid needs a talking-to, and they’re trying to decide who has to take the job.

“Honey,” Rayleen said. “Grace. Mr. Lafferty is dead.”

“Not Mr. Lafferty the man. Mr. Lafferty the cat.”

Billy said, “You named the cat Mr. Lafferty?”

“Yeah,” Grace said, proudly.

“Won’t that be a little weird?”

“What’s weird about it?”

“Because it’s the same name as…Mr. Lafferty.”

“
But he’s dead
,” Grace said, exasperated. “Like you guys were just trying to tell me about half a second ago, as if I didn’t know that already. So that still leaves only
one
Mr. Lafferty.”

“I’m going back in,” Rayleen said. “Before my throat closes up.”

Grace turned back to Billy. “Can I come in? Please? I mean,
we
. Can
we
come in, please?”

Billy sighed a very noisy sigh. More noisy than any sigh really needed to be. The kind of noisy that’s more to make a point. But then he took off the safety chain and let them in, which Grace was pretty sure he would. She’d pretty much known all along that he’d sigh that big sigh, but then he’d go ahead and let them in.

She sat on Billy’s couch and put her ear to Mr. Lafferty’s side to listen to the purring.

“He just sort of purrs all the time. Ever since I got him to come out from under Mr. Lafferty’s bed, he hasn’t stopped purring even once, and it’s really cool when you put your ear right up against him. It sounds like he has a motor or something, and it makes you feel good all the way inside, like all the way down to your tummy. You should try it, you really should. I know you, and I just know you’d like it.”

Billy sat on the very end of the couch, acting like couches made him nervous all of a sudden, but Grace figured it was really the cat he was nervous about, even though he wasn’t looking at the cat.

“He’s a
pretty
cat,” Billy said. As if that was the only good thing he could think of to say about Mr. Lafferty. “I’m not much of a cat person — or a dog person, for that matter — but I always thought calico cats were pretty.”

“Calico! That’s the kind I was trying to think of.”

“I still think he needs a better name,” Billy said.

“I think Mr. Lafferty is a perfect name.”

“But it’s confusing.”

“I don’t think it’s confusing.”

“Look. Think about what you said a minute ago. He’s been purring ever since you got him to come out from under Mr. Lafferty’s bed. So, Mr. Lafferty’s been purring ever since Mr. Lafferty came out from under Mr. Lafferty’s bed. Confusing.”

“But he won’t be under the bed any more, and Peter has to take all Mr. Lafferty’s stuff and either take it home or get rid of it, so then Mr. Lafferty won’t have a bed any more.”

“Who, the cat?”

“No, Mr. Lafferty. Pay attention.”

“But you said
the cat
was Mr. Lafferty.”

“I know you’re just doing that on purpose, Billy. I know you’re not even confused for real.”

“Try this one on for size. You overhear someone talking about how Mr. Lafferty died. And just for a minute, you think, Oh, no! My cat!”

“Hmm,” Grace said. She pressed her ear to the cat’s side again, because she wanted that nice tummy feeling back. “Maybe you’re right. But I already told him his name was Mr. Lafferty, and I don’t want to go and break a promise to him first thing, so I guess his name is Mr. Lafferty the Cat. Why are you looking at me that way?”

“It’s kind of long.”

“Let me ask him if he minds.” She pressed her ear to his rumbling side again. “He says he doesn’t mind. So. Can he stay here?”

“I don’t know, baby girl. I’m afraid of animals.”

“You’re afraid of everything!” Grace blurted out, exasperated.

Then, as soon as it left her mouth, she could tell she’d hurt Billy’s feelings, and she felt bad.

“That was cold,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

She wanted to go on to say, “I didn’t mean it.” But she sort of had meant it. She still agreed with it. She just knew now that she shouldn’t have said it out loud.

“Really, I’m sorry, Billy. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Can I just leave him here while I go upstairs to Mr. Lafferty the Man’s apartment, so I can get Mr. Lafferty the Cat’s litter box and look for cat food?”

Billy hadn’t finished looking hurt yet.

“I guess so,” he said.

Grace let the cat down on to the couch, and Billy jumped up and backed all the way over to the window, which seemed like overdoing it, even for Billy. After all, Mr. Lafferty the Cat wasn’t even a very big cat.

Grace ran to the door.

“I figured out something really important,” she said, her hand already on the knob. “I can’t tell you everything about it now because I’m in a hurry, but it’s about how people should all have somebody, and about how nobody should have nobody, and about how, now that I figured it out, things are going to be a lot different around here. We’ll have to have another meeting.”

Then she threw open the door and raced out into the hall, slamming the door behind her.

Not three steps later, a hand stopped her forward progress. The hand just came out of nowhere, and slapped over her mouth so she couldn’t yell, and then another hand grabbed around her waist, and then she was on her way down to the basement apartment whether she wanted to go or not.

Which she didn’t.

She squirmed, and she even kicked backwards, but the kick missed.

She wanted to yell. She tried to scream, to say, “Help! I’m being stolen!” but the hand over her mouth was too tight.

It wasn’t until she was inside her basement apartment that she found out she’d been stolen by her own mom.

Billy

“We’re getting impatient,” Billy announced.

It didn’t sound noticeably different from Billy’s daily comments to himself. But, in this instance, he was talking to Mr. Lafferty the Cat, who looked directly into Billy’s eyes when he spoke, unnerving him.

Mr. Lafferty the Cat was curled on Billy’s couch, settled, but not asleep. Staring at Billy. For just a moment, Billy dared to stare back. He had interesting markings, that cat, with a line of color change right down the middle of his face. Like a mime, Billy decided. Like a showman in makeup.

Maybe we have something in common after all, Billy thought, but he did not say any of that out loud, for fear the cat would hear it as some type of invitation.

Billy had already tried to sit down once, in his big stuffed chair, because the couch was alarmingly…taken. But Mr. Lafferty the Cat had been inexplicably drawn to that move, and he had frightened Billy by jumping on to the arm of the chair and then trying to sit on his lap. So now Billy just stood, his back against the sliding-glass door, which felt shockingly cool. From his vantage point, he could see the kitchen clock, which he’d been watching with even greater than usual compulsivity.

“How can it take her an hour to go get your litter box and food? Unless she has to rummage around in all the cupboards looking for cat food. But still. An hour. Do you think she got distracted by something?”

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Lafferty the Cat appeared to have no answers. No opinions.

• • •

Exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes after Grace had left on her cat-food run, someone knocked on Billy’s door.

“Grace?” he said, running to answer it.

Mr. Lafferty the Cat jumped down and crouched on the rug, ready to run under the furniture if anything else alarmed him.

It had been Rayleen’s signal knock, and Billy knew it. But he called Grace’s name anyway, because he wanted it to be Grace. She could be imitating the knock. Kids imitated.

He undid the locks and threw the door open wide.

It was only Rayleen.

“Oh. It’s only you,” he said.

“Nice to see you, too. I’m thinking I need Grace back now.”

“I haven’t got her.”

“Don’t make jokes.”

“I’m not making jokes. I don’t have her. Last I saw her she ran out my door so she could go up to Mr. Lafferty’s — the man, not the cat — to get a litter box and food for Mr. Lafferty — the cat, not the man.”

“Maybe she’s at Felipe’s,” she said.

“I hope so,” he said, with a dawning sense that panic, rather than irritation, might be in order.

“I’ll go check.”

Billy uncharacteristically remained there in the doorway, waiting and viciously biting his nails, until she came back down again.

Rayleen shook her head. “You don’t suppose she went back to her mom?” she asked. “She was pretty upset about not coming when her mom called her.”

“No,” Billy said. “Oh, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. But it just doesn’t seem possible
now
. When it first happened, maybe. Or tomorrow. But she just got this new cat, and she was going to run upstairs extra-fast and get something to feed him. She’s excited about the cat. She couldn’t wait to get back to him. And she knew she only had my permission to leave the cat here for a matter of minutes. It just doesn’t work timing-wise. The whole thing just doesn’t add up.”

“OK, I’ll keep looking,” Rayleen said.

“Wait! Um. Sorry to sound like a wimp, but…” Too late, Billy thought. You’ve been sounding like a wimp all your life. But he pushed the voices away again. Such nasty bastards, as always. “Maybe the cat can stay with Felipe while we figure all this out.”

“Sorry. Felipe isn’t home.”

“Oh. Well, then maybe he does have Grace. Maybe they went someplace together.”

Rayleen shook her head, as if wishing she didn’t have to. “He was home. I talked to him. But now he’s not. I don’t want to freak you out too much—”

“Then don’t,” Billy said.

“You really don’t want to hear this?”

“Well. I guess I have to. Now.”

“OK. Here goes. There was one stranger in the building today. Mr. Lafferty’s son. He was here going through his father’s things.”

“Yeah. I overheard that. Wait. Shit. You don’t think—”

“We just can’t take any chances, that’s all. Felipe was talking to him for a while today, and the guy happened to mention where he was staying, which I’m sure he wouldn’t have done if he was up to no good. But, just to be on the safe side, Felipe is going to go down to his motel and check it out.”

“I feel sick,” Billy said.

And he meant it quite literally. Suddenly he felt flushed, feverish. Achy. The world’s fastest onset of the flu.

“Just keep breathing,” Rayleen said.

“You checked old Mrs. Hinman’s?”

“I did. There’s one possibility we haven’t discussed yet. Maybe her mom snatched her back. You know. Against her will.”

“Oh, God. I hope it’s just something like that. Not that a thing like that isn’t bad enough. Should we be calling the police?”

“I don’t see that we’re in any position to,” Rayleen said. “We’re not her legal guardians. So we call them, and they come over, and let’s say it turns out she’s at home with her mom. And we say we called them — why? Because we stole the kid, and her mom stole her back?”