The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(77)

“Mrs. Lightly,” Bridget gasps.

“Don’t yell at me, young lady. I merely interpret the cards. Between the Hanged Man and the Lovers, I daresay this cat is in danger.”

I pause in scooping litter to frown at her. “Mom. Stop. You can’t read a cat’s cards. He has no self-awareness.”

“All beings have self-awareness, Phoebe.”

“But he still can’t speak English or discuss his inner turmoil, even with a licensed therapist, which you are not.”

Mom lifts the cat and stares into his green eyes.

Or tries to.

The cat’s squirming in her grip, looking for a way out.

“Mom. Let the cat go.”

“Shh, child. I’m having a telepathic moment with him. He needs to know he’s in danger if he doesn’t change his ways.”

“Huh.” Jennifer, the woman in charge, pauses on her way through with a stack of paperwork in hand. “Ziggy’s the one we keep finding hanging from the top of his cage like he’s trying to Mission: Impossible his way out of it.”

Mom gives me the told you so look.

“He’s a kitten.”

“He’s on a path to eternal damnation. Look. The cards say it clearly. He’s willfully ignoring the choices he needs to make to have a happy life.” She sets the cat down, and he scurries to leap into a box of newspapers, which he instantly begins clawing like he’s trying to dig through them.

Bridget’s staring at my mother. “That’s really not a nice thing to say about a cat.”

“The cards say what they say. Talk to the deck. In the meantime, you should stop eating all of those carbs. They’re terrible for your figure, dear.”

“Mother. Stop. Now.” I roll my eyes at Bridget. “Ignore her. Clearly, avoiding carbs hasn’t improved her life any. Or her soul.”

“Phoebe Sabrina Lightly, would you like me to read your cards?”

“Not with that deck.”

“This deck said that Starlight there will find a home with two daughters who will dress her up and love her and treat her like a princess and that Hank over there will live a long and healthy life as the resident cat at the catfé that some enterprising soul will open in Deer Drop.”

“Since when do the cards get that specific?”

“When the participant is willing to give more feedback, their future becomes much more clear.” She eyeballs the cats. “Now. Which one is Fluffball? He’s next on my list.”

“Fluffball is a they/them,” Bridget says.

“My apologies. Where are they?”

“Hiding from your ridiculous cards, because they have no tolerance for malarkey.”

“Malarkey?” I ask the teenager.

“I’m bringing the 1930s back. The cool parts, anyway. Ziggy! Don’t pick on Elmo! You know that never ends well.”

Ziggy leaps away from a very upset black-and-white kitten with a fluffed tail and flattened ears, backs into a calico kitten, who hisses at him, and then leaps away from another calico kitten, who bats at his face, before Bridget finally snags him.

She cuddles him close while he tries to escape her grasp. “I know, I know. You just want someone to play with, but none of the other kittens like the way you play.”

Ziggy meows.

A memory flashes hard at the front of my brain, of me sitting in the foyer of Gigi’s brownstone, second grade, crying to my mother about how Alexia Cordelia had declared me “not a very good friend” at recess, and how the rest of the girls in my class had snubbed me for the rest of the day, leaving me to get picked to play on the boys’ team for dodgeball in gym, and how they’d all thrown their balls harder at me that day, and my heart melts into a puddle for the little cat.

“Phoebe, you are a Lightly,” Mom said to me that day. “When someone hits you, you hit them back twice as hard. Now come. We’re going to make Alexia Cordelia rue the day she dared cross you.”

Her plan worked, of course.

She sent me to school the next day as the first kid in my class to carry a Louis Vuitton purse, and all the girls who’d been on Team Alexia Cordelia the day before became card-carrying members of Team Phoebe instead when I let them touch my purse.

Looking back, I can see why the victory felt so empty.

Those friends weren’t friends.

I could’ve used a real friend.

Just like Ziggy could now.

He just needs someone to love him unconditionally.

To accept him for who he is without demanding that he change.

I’m not sure I’ve ever loved anyone unconditionally like that.

But I’ll damn sure give it my best. “Jennifer, how do you adopt a cat?”

She slides her brown eyes over me, then glances at Bridget, then my mom, before finally looking back at me. “Paperwork and a fee and a home check.”

“Excellent. Bridget, could you please be a dear and fetch me my handbag?”

“Of course, Mrs. Grandma Lightly,” she mutters.

I blink at her once, realize I sounded exactly like my grandmother, and clap my hand over my mouth with a horrified inhale.

Litter dust shoots down my throat, and ick ick ick. “How do cats—gack—do their business—blech—in this?”

“They don’t inhale,” Bridget says, which makes it worse.