Mothered (60)

This was stupid. Just because Jackie was a fruitcake didn’t mean Grace had to humor her insanity or hide herself away. Grace threw open her door and jogged down the stairs, ready to reclaim her domain. Yet, halfway down, she was relieved when she saw her mother sitting on the front porch. Grace was tempted to turn the dead bolt and lock her out . . . But she resisted, refusing to become the unethical monster Jackie believed her to be.



In the kitchen she did a quick inventory, checking the cabinets, refrigerator, freezer. Nothing had been further rearranged, but Grace needed to stock up on her own food. Let her mother eat like a rabbit if that’s what she wanted; Grace added meatballs, bacon, and frozen chicken strips to her shopping list. For now she had the last burrito. It was fuzzed with freezer burn, but it only needed ninety seconds in the microwave. She excavated a single-portion cup of applesauce from her canned goods and carried her meal to the living room.

For the first time in forever, she got to sit in her preferred spot on the couch. As she ate, she watched a true-crime show about murderous families. Periodically she glanced toward the porch, where she could see the back of her mother’s head. For a fleeting moment she felt sorry for her mom, who seemingly didn’t have any friends to call, anyone she stayed in touch with.

Grace was almost done with the burrito before she wondered why Coco wasn’t beside her, nosing in on her food. Perhaps the cat didn’t like spicy Tex-Mex, though Grace was pretty sure she’d taste anything if given the chance.

“Coco . . .” She made the kissy sound that was most likely to draw the cat’s attention.

Her meal finished, she flicked off the TV and carried her dirty plate to the kitchen sink.

“Coco . . .” Kissy-kissy call. Though she didn’t bother to wash her own plate, she quickly rinsed out Coco’s water bowl and gave her a fresh refill—something Grace should’ve done before breakfast, but she’d been in too much of a hurry when she fed the cat, determined not to cross paths with Jackie. She got the half-full garbage from the cabinet beneath the sink and scooped clumps of pee and poop out of the kitty litter. That didn’t draw the cat’s attention either, like it usually did. Grace knotted the garbage bag and left it by the back door, for now; later she’d take it out to her trash can.

The cat was probably asleep somewhere, ignoring her. But where? Her house wasn’t that big, and if Coco wasn’t in Grace’s room or on the main floor, there were only two places left: the basement and her mother’s room. She tried the basement first. It was nice and cool in the cellar, but it smelled like moldy weeds, a stagnant pond.

“Are you down here? Come here, baby.” She checked behind the washer and dryer but was glad when the cat wasn’t wedged in the crack with the spiderwebs. If one of the cardboard moving boxes had still been in box shape, that would’ve made a good cubby for a cat, but the cardboard was flat, stacked in the driest corner. There weren’t any other places for Coco to hide; Grace could see everything else—her folding table set, a few plastic bins of mementos and decorations and miscellaneous junk, a rickety bookcase that had come with the house and held the laundry products and backup cleaning supplies.

Crap. That meant she had to search her mother’s room.

On the way back through the first floor she considered popping onto the porch to let Jackie know she needed to go into her room. Her mother had unpredictable strategies for revenge—Grace considered it possible that the whole shit show with the feathers was retribution for meddling with Jackie’s things. But Grace was getting antsier by the second about the cat’s whereabouts. Didn’t cats go off to hide when they were sick? As a compromise, she’d tell her mother after the fact—after she’d found Coco.



She dreaded opening the door to her mother’s room almost as much as she’d dreaded, in the end, opening that damn box. It didn’t matter how innocent the room looked, how well put together; it was booby-trapped. Grace made the kissy sounds and turned the knob, praying the cat would burst out, happy to escape from her fetid prison. But alas.

On her knees, Grace checked under the bed. She checked under the dresser, though the fluffy beast would barely fit under there. Grace’s pulse was part bass drum, part ticking clock. If Coco wasn’t in Jackie’s closet, Grace wasn’t sure what she would do.

The cat wasn’t in the closet.

“Shit. Shit.” Her heart drummed faster, clacking against her ribs. Desperate, Grace strode across the hall and checked her own closet, well aware that Coco couldn’t have sneaked in—couldn’t have pried the door open—while Grace had been just feet away, making calls and googling.

She recalled Miguel saying that Coco liked to stretch out in the bathtub when it was really hot out, and sometimes he’d let the water drip for her. It wasn’t that hot, but it was possible the water was dripping.

But no, the cat wasn’t in the tub or behind the toilet or in the cabinet under the sink.

“Fuck. Fuck. Coco, come here Coco . . .” Oh God, Grace was going to flunk the test. Coco wasn’t going to be okay, and then it would be Grace’s fault if Miguel didn’t recover.

Should she check the lower cabinets in the kitchen? Or under the sofa? She descended the stairs so quickly her feet practically slid. “Coco!”

Frantically, she looked in places the cat couldn’t possibly be, unless Coco possessed an invisibility cloak or had reduced herself to the size of a beetle. But Grace scanned behind the couch, under the couch, behind the television and its stand.