Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(63)
A shortcut, just like he said. Okay.
The boulder shifts. Not entirely, but enough so that she can catch her breath.
Grant doesn’t seem to have lost sight of the kitten whose frail life is at stake. He jumps out of the driver’s seat and opens the back door. “How’s our little guy doing, Max?”
She’s struck by the concern in his voice and the fact that he remembers her son’s name—and used it.
I was wrong about him.
Well, of course she was, imagining that this man is some—some crazed killer, carrying out an elaborate masquerade.
How could she have entertained such a ridiculous notion?
It was just for a few moments. A few irrational, sleep-deprived moments.
“He’s kind of quiet right now, Mr. Grant. He’s not moving. Maybe he’s sleeping.”
At her son’s hopeful words, Bella deflates. How is Max going to handle yet another heartbreak? This isn’t anywhere near the catastrophic loss of Sam, and it doesn’t even hold a candle to the loss of their home, but . . .
It isn’t fair. She knows better than to think that life should be, but Max is just a little boy.
“Yeah, he’s hanging in there,” she hears Grant say. “I think he was just sleeping. Listen, he’s crying again. He’s feisty. Come on.”
Fortified, Bella gets out of the car and hurries to catch up as Grant strides toward the building with the crate, Max running alongside.
The door opens before they even reach the porch. Doctor Bailey is waiting for them, wearing his lab coat and an expression of concern.
“That was fast,” he says, flicking a curious glance at Grant.
“We need you to help Spidey,” Max says. “Please! Can you save him?”
Bella is grateful that the vet doesn’t even acknowledge the question as he reaches out to take the crate from Grant’s arms. Silence is better than offering Max false hope or gloomy statistics.
She had already confirmed, courtesy of a quick Internet search on her phone when they first set out, that Helen wasn’t being overly dramatic about the kitten’s condition. It is dire.
“Should we come with you?” Bella asks as Doctor Bailey carries the crate toward an open examination room door.
He doesn’t turn or stop walking. “Just one of you. The room is small.”
She hesitates. The only thing that makes any sense is for her to go, but that would mean leaving Max alone in the waiting room with Grant.
Grant, who took on this rescue mission and delivered them here safely.
But is that just one side of him? Is there another side? A dark side?
Too muddled to remember exactly why she even thought that in the first place, she makes a snap decision. “I’ll be right back,” she says—a reassurance for Max and perhaps a warning for Grant.
In the examination room, Doctor Bailey is already handling the little black kitten with tenderness and efficiency. The crate is on a low counter next to the examining table. Chance lies inside nursing the rest of the litter, but her head is upright, eyes fixed warily on the vet as he places Spider on the table and shines a bright light on him.
“It’s okay, little guy,” he croons, gently checking over the mewing kitten.
“Have you dealt with many cases like this?”
He nods. “With a litter this size, the runt sometimes starves to death because there isn’t enough milk to go around or because the siblings shut him out. Sometimes, the mother is overwhelmed and she rejects it altogether, and once in a while, she even kills it.”
“Kills her own kitten?” she asks in horror. “Why?”
“Maternal instinct.”
“That sounds like the exact opposite.” Bella is nothing if not overwhelmed herself, but if anything, she’s more protective of her child.
“Ever hear of a little thing called Darwin’s Theory of Evolution?”
“Oh. Right.” She nods. “I guess my emotions got the better of me for a moment there. I’m a science teacher, so—”
“So then you know all about nature and survival of the fittest.” As he talks, he holds the kitten on the table with one hand and opens an adjacent cabinet and rummages around with his right. “If the mother senses a birth defect or an illness that threatens the rest of the litter, she might sacrifice one offspring to improve the odds for the others.”
“Chance isn’t going to hurt her baby,” Bella says firmly. “I’ve seen how she is with him.”
When they left the house, she was gently licking little Spider and keeping him warm beneath her arm, shielding him from the squirmy sibling fray.
“I hope that’s the case, but you just never know,” he says. “When were the kittens born?”
“I’m not sure what time, but it was today.”
Again, she thinks about how Chance mysteriously vanished from the bedroom this morning. Obviously, she was seeking a private place in which to deliver her litter—but how on earth did she manage to get out of the room? And how did she get into the train room the first night?
Either she’s a magical cat who can lock and unlock doors—or walk through walls—or someone let her in and out.
“The good news,” Doctor Bailey lines up several items on the table and closes the cabinet, “is that this little guy he can be syringe-fed kitten formula through a feeding tube. I’m going to try that now, and we’ll see how it goes.”