Love in the Time of Serial Killers(71)

Sam’s truck was in his driveway, so I went over and knocked on his door. He opened up almost immediately, giving me a wide, lazy smile. “You don’t have to knock,” he said. “Just come on in.”

Obviously someone wasn’t as versed in the Vampire of Sacramento as I was, but there was no time for that now. “Lenore’s gone.”

His smile fell. “Are you sure? Maybe she’s under the bed.”

“I checked there, and all her usual places,” I said. “I was in a hurry this morning, and I think I left the door open for a minute. Of course she ran—why wouldn’t she have run? She probably saw it as a heroic escape. Like that ‘dead giveaway’ meme, remember that one, after those women finally escaped that guy’s basement in Cleveland?”

Sam reached out to grasp me by the upper arms, massaging my shoulders. “The good news is that she’s a savvy little cat,” he said. “She knows her way around. She’s lived out here for years, and always found her way back to this street. We’ll find her.”

“I’m just going to walk around the block a few times, see if I spot her.”

“Give me a sec,” Sam said. “I’ll come with you.”

I waited for him on the front step, unwilling to take my eyes off my own house next door in case Lenore somehow came walking up right at that moment. But by the time Sam had put on his shoes and locked the door behind him, she was still nowhere to be seen.

“I know this is irrational,” I said after we’d walked a little ways. “To be worried about her, I mean. Like you said, she’s lived in the elements for years. She probably saw a strip of blue sky and was like, My wild heart can’t be tamed! and shot right out that door. It’s my own fault, for trying to pin her down.”

“Are you still talking about the cat, or a cowgirl lover?”

I nudged him with my shoulder. “Shut up.”

It was quiet outside, most people probably in the middle of eating their dinner, and sometimes we passed by houses with open blinds that showed a flickering television inside. The sun had set but it wasn’t dark yet, the dusk making me second-guess every shadow, thinking it could be Lenore.

“Did you have a good shopping trip?”

“It was . . .” I’d been about to say fine, the highest compliment I could pay any trip to the mall, but I realized it’d been better than that. I’d found some clothes, and I’d ended up having a really good conversation with Alison that had been a long time coming. We’d just had fun, too, going into the novelty gift store to laugh at the inappropriate refrigerator magnets and grabbing orange chicken and chow mein at the food court.

“Yeah,” I said finally. “It went really well. How about your dance practice?”

Sam had met up with Conner and a few of the kids and their adult chaperones at a local playground, planning out the logistics of the flash mob. I’d teased him with a couple Dance Moms references, but I’d only ever seen the ads for that show, so I’d run out pretty quickly.

“Great,” he said. “The kids are really excited.”

“And Conner?”

“I said the kids,” Sam said, “specifically to be inclusive of your brother. He’s ‘beyond stoked,’ to quote him directly.”

“I don’t know where he gets that shit from. Like he’s a surfer from the eighties or something.”

“He also invited me to play his wedding,” Sam said. “I had to tell him I was out of the live music game, except for the tambourine. If he finds a band that’s almost there but missing that little something extra, I would come out of retirement.”

As we walked by one house, I saw a flash of fur dart behind a car, and I pulled on Sam’s arm to stop. “Did you see that? Was it her?”

“I think it was an orange cat.”

“Could’ve been her,” I said. “Orange and black look really similar in the dark.”

“If I had a choice between wearing a black shirt to bike around the neighborhood at night, or wearing orange, I feel like one of those choices is smarter than the other.”

“Maybe save color theory for the art teacher,” I said, but then the cat emerged from under the car, scurrying back into the woods behind the house. “Okay, that cat was orange, though.”

Sam didn’t say I told you so, which was to his credit. He just put his arm around me, drawing me closer to give me a quick kiss on the head, before releasing me again, as though he knew I was hit-or-miss on physical contact. The problem was, though, that with Sam I was pretty much always hit. I thought back to my conversation with Alison, the novel idea that if you wanted something sometimes all it took was to ask for it. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“I feel like the worst cat owner on the planet,” I said instead. “Cat mom? I don’t know what to even call myself. Whatever it is, I’m the worst.”

“You’re not.”

“I buried my hamster in his little spite house,” I said. “Seriously, I shouldn’t have pets.”

Sam actually stumbled a little over a crack in the sidewalk. “Jesus,” he said. “How old were you?”

“Maybe ten?” Then I saw Sam’s face, and saw the miscommunication that must’ve happened. “Oh god. The hamster was dead. I didn’t bury him alive.”