Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(65)

“What about—don’t you have a friend or relative, maybe, who can—”

He gives a bitter laugh. “Are you kidding? The ones who are willing to help are already above and beyond, and the others—believe me, after all these years, they run when they see me coming. Look, there’s no one.”

No one but me, Bella thinks, looking from Spider to his seven siblings to Chance, who meets her gaze with a long stare and then a slow blink.

She isn’t begging, Bella realizes. She’s . . .

Trusting. Trusting me with her own life and with her babies. Nine lives, all in my hands. What am I supposed to do? Throw them away?

No. No way. I’ve got this.

“It’s okay,” she tells Doctor Bailey. “I’ll take care of them for now—all of them—until I can find someone else.”

Surely Odelia will take on the challenge after she and Max leave for Chicago. Or Grant will. He, of all people, should understand the importance of stepping up to foster.

“I’m going to go talk to my son and my . . . friend,” she tells Doctor Bailey as he removes the kitten from the crate again and puts him on the examining table. “I’ll be right back.”

He nods, again focused on tending to the kitten.

Bella steps out into the waiting room—and finds it empty.

The world skids to a halt. “Max? Max!”

She knew something was off about Grant! She should have known better than to—

Then through the screen, she hears, “We’re out here, Mom.”

Rushing for the door, she sees her son standing on the cement stoop. He’s holding a pair of binoculars pointed at the filmy night sky, and Grant is beside him.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re looking for Sirius. It’s the brightest star in the sky,” Max informs her, intent on the view through the lenses. “It’s part of the dog constellation.”

“Canis Major.” That comes from Grant. “But you usually can’t see it from here at this time of year.”

Talk about a coincidence. Just this afternoon, Odelia was going on about constellations, about trying to connect the dots when you can’t see anything but the occasional glimmer of light.

“There’s a full moon tonight,” Max says. “It keeps going behind the clouds, though.”

“Where did you get the binoculars?”

“From Mr. Grant.”

She doesn’t allow herself to wonder why he might have a pair of binoculars handy.

“Here,” he says, leaning over Max from behind and turning him a bit, adjusting his aim at the heavens. “Try looking that way.”

“Nope. It isn’t there tonight.”

“It’s always there. Sometimes, we just can’t see it because the clouds get in the way.” As he speaks, Grant turns to look at Bella over Max’s head, raising a questioning brow and giving a slight nod toward the building.

Realizing he’s wondering about the kitten, she says, “Hey, I have some great news about Spidey. He’s eating.”

Lowering the binoculars, Max asks, “Really? What is he eating?”

Grant answers before Bella can. “Probably a cheeseburger.”

“Kittens can’t eat cheeseburgers!” Max informs him. Then an afterthought: “Can they?”

“No. But I can, and I’ll bet you can, too.”

“And French fries,” Max agrees, and turns to Bella. “Mr. Grant is taking me out to eat after this.”

“Is that so?”

Sam used to take Max out for burgers and fries, she finds herself thinking. That was their thing.

“I told him that maybe we can swing by a diner later. I hope that’s okay?” Grant asks.

No. It isn’t okay at all.

She says to Max, “I don’t think you can bite into a burger without knocking your tooth out and swallowing it.”

“That’s okay. The tooth fairy will come anyway.”

“I thought you said—or was it Jiffy?—that was against the rules.”

“Mr. Grant says it isn’t. She’ll come no matter what.”

Jiffy’s opinion might overrule Bella’s, but clearly Grant’s trumps all.

She turns to him. “I doubt anything would be open around here at that hour.”

“You’d be surprised.”

She sighs inwardly. Lately, she’s been nothing but surprised at every turn.

Leaving Max and Grant to their celestial search, she heads back inside to learn how to hand-rear a newborn kitten.





Chapter Fifteen


The wind is blowing again, and the wind chimes are chiming too loudly again, and . . .

And the alarm clock is bleating. Again.

Bella fumbles on the bedside table to silence it, wondering why it’s so dark.

Slowly, it comes back to her: it isn’t morning.

Well, technically, it is: four o’clock in the morning.

The last time she got up, it was two o’clock, only she hadn’t slept more than ten or fifteen minutes before the alarm went off that time.

That’s what happens when you go to bed at midnight with a troubled mind and a belly full of cheeseburger and most of Max’s leftover French fries.