Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(60)

“We have here Chance the Cat and her eight babies,” Max reports.

“What a neat surprise!”

“Don’t get too close. Mom says we have to stay back here because they need privacy right now.”

“Your mom is right. I just want to take a quick peek.” Helen leans over the crate. “Oh! They’re precious! Look, Karl. Oh, I want one!”

“I want them all,” Max says.

“We can’t have five cats, Helen.”

And we can’t have any at all, Bella thinks.

“You said we couldn’t have three cats, either,” Helen tells Karl. “Or four. And now look.”

“Yes, now look,” he says flatly, shaking his balding head.

“You have four cats?” Max is impressed. “Are they here?”

“No, our neighbor is taking care of them this week, which means I don’t have to sleep with a cat on my head for a change.” Karl yawns and walks toward the stairs.

“Mom and I are going to sleep with Chance the Cat and all her babies. Mom promised. Right, Mom?”

“What a nice mom. But what happened to your leg, Mom?” Karl asks, and she looks down to see her scraped knee and bruised thigh.

“Oh, that? I . . . I kind of fell up the stairs,” she says with a laugh.

“Up the stairs? That’s a twist.”

“Yes, well . . . I like to shake things up a bit.”

Karl grins again, yawns again, and looks at his wife. “Are you coming up to bed?”

“In a minute.”

“I thought you were exhausted.”

“I am.” She kneels on the floor beside the crate. “I just want to see them for a second.”

“Don’t fall in love, Helen.”

“Too late, Karl,” she returns lightly.

Smiling, Bella moves aside to let him pass her on his way up the steps.

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full, there, Mom,” he says, and winks at her. “Good night.”

He seems sweet and harmless, though the wink gives her pause, and her good-night isn’t as warm as it might have been if Pandora hadn’t warned her about his friskiness.

Oh, come on. He’s just being friendly, not flirtatious. Plenty of older men wink. Maybe not in New York, but Iowa . . .

Besides, look at you.

Checking her reflection in the mirror earlier, after Grant had retreated to his room, she’d noticed a purple grape juice stain on her T-shirt to match the circles under her eyes, the lovely scrape where she’d hurt her knee earlier on the stairway, and a fresh bruise where she’d bumped her thigh.

“Aren’t you the sweetest little things?” Helen coos, and Bella turns to see her stroking the nursing kittens with a gentle fingertip.

Max is crouched beside her, boldly daring to get a better look now that Helen has breached Bella’s safety perimeter.

“I love their markings. I see four gray tabbies like mama and a couple of black-and-white tuxedo kitties . . .”

“There’s one that’s only black, too, but he’s getting smushed in there, see?”

A few of the kittens have formed a squealing little heap with a tufted tip of black tail barely poking from beneath.

“They’re just trying to stay warm,” Helen tells him. “It’s okay. It’s what they do.”

“You must have mom instinct, too.”

She smiles a sad smile and shakes her head. “I’m not a mom.”

“Why not?”

“It just . . . it wasn’t meant to be. But I did grow up on a farm, and I’ve been around plenty of newborn litters, so I guess I have . . . kitty instinct.”

“I’m glad,” Bella says, “because I’m new to this.”

“In that case . . . be prepared to keep them all.”

Predictably, Max says, “I want to keep them all.”

“I wish we could, sweetie, but we can’t.”

“Then I’ll just keep Spidey,” Max decides. “And Chance the Cat, too.”

“How do you know which one is Spidey?” Helen asks.

“He’s the teeny tiny black one under there. His name is Spider, but I call him Spidey for short, because he’s short. Extra short. He’s a boy. There are four boys and four girls.”

“Wow! You’re not such novices if you can already tell what they are, because that’s tricky when they’re this little,” Helen says.

“Oh, we can’t tell. Max is guessing.”

“I’m not guessing! Four boys and four girls. I’m not sure which is which, except Spidey is a boy. And I’m worried because his mommy dropped him outside and now he’s the only one who’s not eating.”

“Let’s have a look. Come here, Spidey.” Helen gently reaches into the pile of kittens to extract the black one, and gasps. “Oh, my goodness. He’s a true runt.”

“What’s a runt?”

“It’s a baby that’s much smaller and more fragile than his littermates.” Cradling the mewing, writhing kitten in her hand, she tilts it so that they can get a better look.

Bella realizes Max wasn’t exaggerating much when he indicated that Spider would fit into the fraction of space between his thumb and forefinger. The others may be tiny, but they’re twice his size.