Inevitable and Only(3)
“But I’m a vegetarian,” I sobbed again, as if I didn’t know any other words in the English language.
“Good people can hurt things without meaning to,” he said. “It happens all the time. Shh, Cadie, breathe. Breathe with me.”
He started counting inhales and exhales and I breathed with his counting until I calmed down enough to stop hyperventilating. Then we waited for Animal Control to come, and when they arrived they examined the body and told us there was nothing they could do: the cat had no collar or tags; it was probably a stray. But they scooped it into a bag so they could take it back to the lab and look for a microchip, and then Dad said he’d drive the car home. We could see our house from where we’d stopped, so I said I’d walk the three blocks down Elm Avenue. Dad gave me another hug, then nodded.
I cried while I walked, and when I opened the front door, Mom was waiting to give me a hug, too.
“Dad told me what happened, querida. Don’t cry. It could’ve happened to anyone. At least you’re okay.”
But I didn’t want to be comforted out of my misery. I’d killed an innocent living being and I deserved to suffer.
“And it sounded like the cat was very old, anyway,” Mom said, stroking my hair.
I pulled back and gave her my best look of disgust, then stalked upstairs to my room. When I curled up on my bed, I felt something poke me in the ribs, and pulled my learner’s permit out of my sweatshirt pocket. I tossed it under my desk, rolled over to face the wall, and closed my eyes.
I heard footsteps coming up the stairs a while later, but I kept my eyes closed when the door creaked open. The footsteps paused at the doorway, then continued into my room, and I felt my mattress sink down. I opened one eye a crack to see Dad perched on the edge of my bed.
He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just sat there. I squeezed my eyes shut again. Finally, he spoke.
“Cadie, my Cadiest,” he said quietly. “What can I do?”
I just shook my head. How could I say it out loud? I, Acadia Rose Greenfield, was a murderer. At the age of fifteen. With my eyes closed, I saw one image burned into my retinas: Animal Control lifting that little body off the road, its matted fur glowing midnight black in the beam of their headlights. My stomach twisted and all I wanted was to vomit it out, to purge myself of the horrible memory. To go back in time before it had ever happened and fix it somehow. But there are some mistakes you just can’t undo.
“Dad?” I whispered. “If crossing paths with a black cat is supposed to be bad luck, what kind of luck is it if you kill one?”
Dad didn’t say that was stupid or superstitious. He didn’t try to comfort me or convince me I was overreacting or try to make me feel better. He knew it wouldn’t do any good. Dad knows me inside and out, because we’re the same that way—when we’re upset or angry, we just have to ride it out.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I know how much you’re hurting. Do you want me to sit here with you awhile longer?”
I nodded and reached out my hand, and he held it. And he must have stayed there until I fell asleep, because when I woke up the next morning, I didn’t remember him letting go or leaving.
The next day Mom whisked Josh off to the Peabody Preparatory for his cello lesson after school. I had art club, and then I took the bus down to Mt. Vernon to the bookshop. I couldn’t wait to tell Dad my news.
I got off the bus a few blocks early so I wouldn’t have to transfer and walked the rest of the way. I love walking through Mt. Vernon, especially in early September when the leaves are starting to turn. Baltimore is grimy, lots of it is falling apart, but it’s also a city full of brightly colored row houses, old churches, little monuments tucked away in odd corners.
Fine Print Books inhabits one of those painted row houses, a musty three-story structure approximately the same shape and size as our house. (You might wonder whether that tells you that our house is small, or the bookshop is huge. Let me give you a hint: used bookstores don’t make enough money to be huge.) Dad hides there among the stacks all day, while my mother runs meetings and draws up budgets, and my brother practices cello to become the next Yo-Yo Ma.
And me? I convinced Mom to stop my violin lessons when I was ten, when it was already clear that five-year-old Josh was a cello prodigy. To my surprise, she agreed without too much arguing—I think because the extra money they saved on my lessons went to buy Josh a decent half-size cello—and I was allowed to amuse myself however I wanted to while Josh was herded off to Peabody for lessons. While he practiced for an hour in the morning before school, I slept in. During his two hours of practice in the evening, I joined clubs I never stuck with for more than a few months.
But I’d never been as excited about any of those clubs as I was about drama class. I started walking faster just thinking about it. Dad was going to flip when I told him about the winter play.
Fine Print has at least one resident cat per floor at all times. Dad says that “all true bookshops have feline familiar spirits.” He says it’s a principle of physics, like magnetism. Cats are naturally drawn to a place filled with armchairs and people sitting in them with books on their laps.
Today, when I walked in the door, Grendel—a huge tabby who spends all day sleeping in the window display—rubbed against my legs, and a lump of tears rose in my throat. What if that black cat had been someone’s pet? Someone’s feline familiar? What if it used to sit in someone’s lap and make it impossible for them to turn the pages of their book, like Grendel does?