29. Nadia
29
NADIA
I decide not to warn my parents ahead of time that I’m coming home, or that I have cats.
It’s a grueling fourteen-hour drive. As the desert gives way to mountains, I realize that nobody knows anything about my life other than Dalton. Max knows about the cats, of course, but I haven’t told anyone that Dalton is more than a roommate.
Or how hard it was to leave.
Now I have no one to talk about it with.
I go in and out of crying as the hours tick by. The cats are hard, yowling and miserable. It’s difficult to get them to eat, or to use the litter box. Even though Catzilla has a big dog crate because of her size, it’s still not a great situation for the six of them inside it for hours.
By the time I pull up to my parent’s house late in the evening, I’m exhausted. But I can’t simply turn the cats loose. The two-story stone house is huge, with an enormous open bottom floor plus an upstairs of bedrooms. I have to figure out where to contain them, or four errant kittens will easily get lost.
I’m relieved nobody’s home, my mother’s Infinity gone from the garage. It’s a Friday night, so hopefully they are engaged in hours of something. Once the kitties are settled, I’ll text them about my return and the cats so they know not to accidentally set them loose.
My old bedroom has its own bath, a privilege of being the only girl with three brothers. My parents built this house when I was in high school, and only Axel and I officially lived here. The boys shared a bathroom in the hall when they stayed during summers off and, later, holidays.
This will be a good space, but I’ll have to kitten-proof everything.
I flip on the light. The cats are yowling but I don’t dare let them out until I have set up a litter box and food dishes.
“Hold on, hold on.” I set the crate on the floor by my bed. It’s all still very high school here, boy band posters on the walls, and oh, the Biebs is up there.
I quickly collect all my blown-glass figurines from my dresser and hide them in a drawer. Those wouldn’t last a hot second with the cats.
“One second, babies!” I say to them and race downstairs to my car. I snatch up the litter box and the paper bag with the kitty food and dishes.
I’m considerably slower heading back up. This is nuts. I’m dead on my feet from driving all day, cried out, and emotionally drained over leaving Dalton behind.
Over and over again, our last moments play in my mind, the painful goodbye at dawn, Dalton barefoot in his T-shirt and running shorts. He refrained from telling me he loved me again, as if wringing the words out of me might hurt even more.
No, don’t think about it now. Focus. Keep busy.
I set up the litter box under the vanity in my bathroom and make a line of cat dishes. I fill each bowl and add fresh water to two others.
“It’s time!” I kneel to unlatch the crate.
An explosion of fur shoots out the door.
I sit back, watching to see what they will do.
Catzilla, remembering the room from previous visits, heads straight for the bathroom.
Mama Cat, realizing Catzilla is on to something, follows her.
But the kittens immediately start scaling the bed skirt. Ferris Mewler takes the lead, and Greyson isn’t far behind.
Doppelg?nger is the smallest of the bunch and gets stuck immediately. Pumpkin takes it slow and steady, but makes it up.
I tug Doppy off the fabric and set him on top with his siblings. They stand on the edge and mewl pitifully, as if I stranded them up there.
“Okay, okay.” I gather the whole lot of them in my arms and walk them to the bathroom.
They spot Catzilla and Mama Cat eating and nearly squirm out. I kneel to let them zoom to the wet food I’ve left.
Whew.
All my suitcases are in the car, but I’m way too exhausted to think about hauling them up. Tomorrow.
I sit on the floor at the end of the bed. From here, I can see in the bathroom while I send all the necessary texts.
To Dalton: Made it home. Miss you already.
He’s not at work yet, so he writes back quickly.
Dalton: The apartment is impossibly empty.
My throat tightens. It probably is harder for him. He’s sitting in the midst of everything we had been.
Me: I’ll do everything I can to get back to LA.
Dalton: I’ll be here.
I lean back against the end of the bed and close my eyes. Tears threaten, but I refuse to give in. I’ll figure this out. This is temporary.
Getting a job back in LA at a real salary is imperative. Finding something different to rent will be easier if I can afford more, maybe a house, or an independently owned condo with more lenient rules about pets.
The kittens stumble about, overfilled, tired. We’re all road weary. Pumpkin approaches and crawls up on my lap, then falls asleep instantly.
I should go back to the car for the cat bed, but the whole crew makes their way up onto mine. I lift Doppelg?nger so he won’t have to fight it again, then carefully move Pumpkin to be with the others.
Probably there’s room for me up there, but I’m not ready to fight it. I drag a clump of abandoned stuffed animals close to me and use them as a pillow.
Right as I’m about to wink out, I remember I was supposed to text my parents, too.
But I’m tired. I’ll do it in a minute…
“Nadia?”
My head feels clogged, like I drank too much, like the morning after the hospital.
“Nadia? Are you okay?”
I open my bleary eyes. The sun is up. I slept all night.
Mom is looking down at me, a coffee cup in her hand. “I’m sorry to wake you, but I got worried. You came home without calling?”
I slowly pick myself up from the floor, stuffed animals scattered all around.
“Why are you sleeping down here?”
That’s when I notice the open bedroom door.
Now I’m awake. I leap to my feet. “The kittens!” I race across the room and slam it closed. “Where are they?”
“Your big cat is right there,” Mom says, pointing to Cattarina.
Cattarina sits on my pillows, but there are no other cats.
“The kittens! There are four! Plus their mother!” I frantically lunge for the bathroom. Mama Cat is there, licking the empty bowl. She looks at me accusingly, like I forgot to feed her this morning.
I peek in the litter box. No kittens. The shower curtain zips open with a jerk of my hand. Nothing.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
I re-enter the bedroom. “Did you see them sneak by you when you came in?”
“I don’t think so. You brought kittens with you?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m here. I got kicked out of my apartment after I rescued them.”
“You had an apartment? I thought you were staying with Max.”
Uncle Sherman obviously hadn’t squealed. I kneel to look under the bed. “Yes, for a while. Then I found these kittens. But the complex wouldn’t allow me six cats.”
“You signed a lease?” She’s still confused, but I don’t have time to tell her anything.
“I think they escaped. This house is too big!” I check beneath the dresser and under the edges of the curtains. The closet has been closed the whole time, but I open it anyway.
Mama Cat comes out to yowl at me for her breakfast. I snatch up the bag of dry and pour wildly into several bowls in the bathroom, then resume my search.
“What do they look like?”
“They’re all different. One is white. Another mostly black. Pumpkin is orange. The fourth is gray.”
“Let’s go look then.” She opens the door.
I follow her out, closing it behind me in case they are still inside somewhere.
In the hall, all the doors are open. Court’s room. Rhett’s. Axel’s. The bathroom. Then there are the stairs.
“I’ll take the upstairs, you go down,” I tell Mom.
“Okay, Nadia. Don’t worry. We’ll find them. I’ll tell your father not to go outside until we’ve located them all.”
“Thanks.” I race into Axel’s room, next to mine. It’s plain, as he was almost graduated by the time we moved here, all navy blue and forest green. Only some track trophies and a few nature posters show his personality at all.
I zip through the room, peer under the bed, and listen for any sounds. Nothing.
The bathroom is easy to check. Empty.
Court’s room is even plainer than Axel’s, practically a guest room. He only ever stayed here during college breaks. It’s gray and blue and empty of cats.
Rhett’s room fits him, all black and maroon, moody and stark.
Still no cats.
I’m feeling panicked. Did they go downstairs? Did they tumble?
I call their names as I head downstairs. “Pumpkin? Doppelg?nger? Greyson?” I make it down. “Ferris? Ferris?”
My mom spots me. “As in Bueller?”
“Mewler, actually.”
Dad calls from the living room. “I think I might have what you’re looking for.”
I hurry past the front door and into the large room backed by floor to ceiling windows looking out on the mountainside.
Dad lies on the sofa, only his head visible from the back.
I hurry to him. Four kittens crawl all over him like he’s a play scape at a park.
He lifts Ferris. “This one bites.”
Relief flows over me. “They all do. They’re learning.”
I sit on the coffee table next to him. “Mom came in to check on me. I guess they snuck out.”
Mom leans over the back of the sofa. “They’re so little.”
“Eight or nine weeks. I’ve had them a month.”
“This is a lot of cats,” Dad says.
Mom reaches out to pet Pumpkin. “They got her kicked out of the apartment we didn’t know she had.”
Dad peers up at me. “You moved out from Max’s?”
“Cattarina was making Camryn sick. She’s allergic.”
“Oh,” Mom says. “That makes sense. You should have told us. We could have helped.”
“I was making money at Max’s.”
Dad lets out a scoffing laugh. “And you could afford a place in LA?”
“I had a roommate.” I swallow hard. Nobody knows anything different about who Dalton was to me. Is to me.
“A roommate!” Mom sits at the end of the sofa, making Dad shift his feet. “Someone at the deli?”
“No, a doctor at the nearby hospital. He’s an intern.”
Dad’s head snaps up at that. “He?”
Damn. Now I’ve done it.
“Don’t be weird, Dad. It was just an arrangement.” But my voice wavers at the end. They’ll hear that.
And they do. They share a glance.
Mom picks up Greyson and sets him on her lap. “So you got kicked out over the cats. What about your roommate?”
“He kept the place.”
“I see.” She pets Greyson’s soft head, and for her trouble, he rolls to his back and attacks her fingers.
“I need to let the kittens grow, get them fixed, and, I don’t know, figure out what to do. No regular apartments are going to let me keep them all.”
Dad lifts his three kittens all together in his big hands. “They’re trouble. You going to adopt them out?”
“I don’t know. I need a minute to figure out my next move.”
My parents share another glance. “Sherman will want to be involved in that,” Dad says. “He considers you a Pickle.”
All three of us say, “Every Pickle’s a Pickle,” then laugh, startling the kittens. But I sober quickly. Uncle Sherman’s insistence that I work for him is what’s gotten me here.
Dad passes me Ferris. “Let’s get these wildlings back in your room before they get lost. We can figure out a plan over breakfast.”
I hold on to the white kitten, glad for a sounding board. For help.
It’s good to be home.
But I wish Dalton were here.