Trail He Took

A Story by Jared Austin

Daughter, Wife, and Mother Deal with the loss of one man.

Ellie sat on her front porch swing staring vacantly down at her white tennis shoes. Her ears caught the sounds of Mamaw in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes from lunch, and her mother had gone upstairs to take a nap - her afternoon routine for the last few days since the funeral. Her granddad left yesterday, needing to get back to the farm to take care of the animals. Mike’s boy Johnny did a good job of feeding the animals, but little else, her granddad said. He promised to return the following weekend though.

A rumble of thunder rolled overhead, causing Ellie to glance at the darkening sky, and the smell of impending rain filled the air, but rather than seeking refuge inside, Ellie wandered down the porch steps to the yard. The grass, normally cleanly cropped by her dad, flopped in all directions. Daddy used to call the lawn his own personal putting green. He loved grabbing his putter, several balls, and a plastic cup, and putting around the yard until mother called him in for dinner. When it was not too hot, Ellie liked to sit on the swing and watch him.

Ellie plopped to the ground in the middle of the vacant yard. Though she wished otherwise, tears did not come. Her mother cried. She cried quite frequently since he died, but tears eluded Ellie and she feared their lack meant she did not really love him. She thought she loved him. Her heart certainly felt broken, so why the absence of her own tears. She almost asked her granddad, but felt embarrassed to admit her failing. She felt extra embarrassed when her mother held her tightly in her arms, tears always seeming to cover her face while she hugged Ellie, while all Ellie could do was sit in her mother’s arms, wishing for matching proof.

Behind her Ellie heard a “mooow,” and she glanced over her shoulder to see a grey and white cat sauntering across the yard. When her eyes fell on the cat, it paused and offered another questioning trill. In response, Ellie spun herself around while still sitting on the ground to face the cat.

“Come here kitty,” she said, trying to sound soothing. She held her hands out to the cat, and it resumed its prance over to her. When it came close, she scooped it up into her arms and hugged it tightly, then started to stroke its soft back. Gray fur capped his green eyes, ran up between his ears and down the back of his head. A shoot of white started between his eyes, circled his little pink nose, and covered his cheeks, chest and arms to his paws. His back from the shoulders to the tale where covered in soft gray. As she petted the cat, it nuzzled her chest and started purring loudly.

“You’re friendly,” she said to the cat, and it flopped back in her arms, purring contentedly as she held him. She stroked his neck with a finger, and he started purring even louder, a baby grin lighting up his face, which made her smile.

“Where did you come from kitty?” she asked the cat, who continued to blissfully accept her caresses. She held him close and kissed his cheek, and he lovingly rubbed his face against hers.

Continuing to pet the pretty cat, Ellie looked around for the cat’s owner, but all she saw was Mr. Hornsby across the street watering his bushes. She knew he certainly did not own any pets. He complained loudly any time a neighbor walking by let their dog wander into his yard. She glanced in both directions along her street, but saw no one else looking for the cat.

A gust of wind swirled about her, launching her hair and causing a shiver across her skin. Overhead the sky rumbled once more.

“A wet kitty is a grumpy kitty?” she stated. She set him down, allowing her to climb to her feet, then scooped him back up and marched up the porch steps. Adjusting the cat carefully into her left arm to allow use of her right hand, she opened the screen door and stepped inside, making her way towards the kitchen.

“What have you got?” her Mamaw asked as she strolled in.

“A kitty I found in the yard,” she answered. “I think it’s thirsty.”

“I guess we should give it some water,” she replied, and retrieved a small plastic cool whip container from a cabinet, ambled to the sink, and filled the container with some water which she placed on the mat in front of the sink, then stepped aside. Ellie carried the cat over to the mat and gently set him down in front of the water. The cat glanced up at her questioningly.

“Go ahead,” she urged, and the cat looked back at the water and lapped up a little of it.

“What are you doing outside when it’s about to start storming?” said Mamaw a little sternly. “And without so much as a jacket. You’ll catch a cold.”

Ellie shrugged. “I was swinging on the porch, and the lawn is long. Daddy always kept it short. So he could putt around. Now its forgotten.”

Mamaw’s face softened. “Granpa can cut it this weekend.”

The cat, having finished with the water, began an exploration of the kitchen. Ellie watched him.

“Daddy always cut the lawn. What if Granpa doesn’t cut it right?” she demanded.

“Oh Ellie,” she whispered, and pulled Ellie into an embrace. She combed the back of Ellie’s hair with her fingers as she held her.

“Can I keep him?” Ellie asked

“You’ll have to ask your mother. I can’t make that decision,” Mamaw replied.

“Mooow.”

Ellie pulled away from her Mamaw to see the cat glancing up at her. A yawn escaped her lips.

“Tired?” asked her Mamaw. Ellie nodded as she watched the kitty.

“Perhaps you should take a short nap,” suggested Mamaw. Ellie nodded again, and when the cat turned back to her, she picked him up and headed for her bedroom. She passed her mother’s room on the way, and saw her clutching a pillow tightly to her chest as she slept. She thought about waking her mother to show her the cat, but decided to let her rest. For the last week, she had slept fitfully, tossing about the bed so much that Ellie quit sleeping with her mother after two days. Instead, Ellie continued to her room.

She dropped the cat onto the bed, climbed on, and started to untie her gray tennis shoes while the cat walked around the bed, staring about the room. She dropped her right shoe first with a thud on the floor, then pulled the laces on the left shoe and let it slip from her foot with a soft thud as it first hit the other shoe, and then a little louder and rolling thud as it hit the floor. She curled her legs up onto the bed and rested her head on the pillow. Another yawn escaped her lips, and she closed her eyes. After a couple of minutes of pacing around the bed, the cat came and snuggled up to her chest, and she draped an arm around him. The cat purred gently until she fell asleep.

Ellie awoke alone on the bed. She sat up and looked around the room for the cat, but it had departed. She clambered out of bed and with another yawn, set off in search of the cat. She padded down the hallway, hearing her mother and Mamaw talking in the kitchen. She peeked in Mamaw’s room as well as her mother’s, but saw no sign of the cat, and she continued on.

“…out in the yard earlier,” said her Mamaw. “It doesn’t have a collar, and Ellie didn’t see its owner anywhere.”

“We don’t know anything about taking care of a cat,” said her mother.

“We’ll look for missing cat signs, Deborah, and maybe we can post one saying we found this cat,” replied her Mamaw. “In the meantime, the cat may do Ellie some good.”

Ellie pushed open the kitchen door and plodded in. Her mother and Mamaw turned their focus on her, mother sitting at the kitchen table and Mamaw standing next to the sink. At Mamaw’s feet the cat ate hungrily from a small container of cat food, but at her entrance the cat looked up at her, gave a quick “mooow,” and when she just stood there watching, the cat went back to eating its food. Ellie walked over and sat in a chair at the table next to her mother, staring at the table.

“Sleep well?” asked Mamaw. Ellie nodded.

“Mamaw said you found the cat in the yard earlier?” asked her mother, leaning forward and brushing back a strand of Ellie’s hair from her face. Ellie nodded once more, still feeling drowsy.

“It’s a pretty cat. Is it a boy or girl?”

“Boy,” answered Mamaw.

“You didn’t see anyone who might’ve been its owner?” asked her mother, still leaning in close to her daughter. Ellie shook her head.

Mamaw went over to the cabinet by the fridge, pulled out a short, plastic blue cup and filled it with water from the spout in the fridge, which she carried over and set on the table in front of Ellie, then joined them at the table. Ellie picked up the cup with both hands and drank thirstily, her mouth dry after her nap. Once finished drinking the water, she stared for a moment at the empty cup before setting it back on the table and leaning back against the chair.

Can we keep him?” she asked.

“I suppose we should keep the cat a few days while we look for its owner,” offered her mother.

“I want to keep him,” said Ellie petulantly.

“What about its owner? Don’t you think the owner misses their cat?” asked her mother. “You have to at least look for the owner.”

Ellie crossed her arms as she leaned back, unhappy with this pronouncement, and then the cat sprang from the floor up into her lap. She jumped in surprise, then settled back into the chair and started stroking the cat. The cat looked around the table, then sat contentedly in her lap and started purring, steadily increasing in volume and arching his back under Ellie’s strokes. Her mother and Mamaw’s eyes widen in surprise.

“You’re a loud purer,” said her mother to the cat, and she leaned forward to stroke his cheek. He happily nuzzled her hand.

“By the way, your granpa called,” said Mamaw. “He wants to know if you’d like to come out to the farm this weekend.”

Ellie nodded excitedly, her whole face lit with a bright smile.

“Want to visit Granpa’s farm?” she asked the cat, leaning forward to look the cat in the face. “He has lots of animals.”

The cat’s continued purring and nuzzling was his only response.

**********

Deborah stepped out of the car, clicking the lock button on her keyless as she walked towards the store. It was the first she had left the house since the funeral, but she wanted to do this alone. The last thing she needed was to give Ellie or Susan one more thing to worry about, especially since Susan might feel obligated to stay around longer. Deborah had always gotten along well with her mother-in-law, and she certainly appreciated Susan taking care of Ellie and the house, but it also presented a problem. She needed to take care of Ellie and the house herself. She needed the responsibility to help push her forward. It was also the last thing she needed, adding this responsibility to the mix.

Up ahead, she saw a bulletin board with all sorts of signs posted. As she neared, a light blue Toyota Sienna minivan pulled in front of her view and parked. As Deborah passed the van, a woman carrying a couple of grocery bags opened the back door, dropped the bags in the back seat, and climbed into the passenger seat. The van pulled away out of Deborah’s sight as she turned towards the grocery store sliding doors.

On the bulletin board was posted a sign Deborah missed due to the minivan. The sign had the picture of a gray and white cat’s face, with the words Missing Cat at the top. Underneath the picture the sign read, “If Found, please call Claudia,” which was followed by a phone number. Deborah was already past the sign however, thoughts completely focused on her reason for the trip.

Nearing the doors, they slid open and an older woman walked out carrying a bag. The two women exchanged a slight smile of greeting as they passed. Inside, Deborah saw a couple of open checkout lanes, a few customers in each lane. The store did not look particularly busy that evening.

Deborah turned left, hurrying past the grocery aisles on her way to the aisle for body products, which she swiftly turned down. She passed deodorant, shampoo and conditioners, and halted in front of the pregnancy tests. She glanced over the different brands, afraid to even pick one up. After the difficulty she and Louis went through just to have Ellie, they figured she would be their only one. Deborah had wanted to give Louis a son, knew how happy having a son would make him, but she had already been thirty-four when she finally gave birth to Ellie, and it had taken them five years along with a considerable amount of money and tests and even different methods before they finally got her. When the police called to tell her about the accident, she had already been worried about being late, late now that the contemplation of having another had gone. After the news she was even more worried, the thought of raising two children alone overwhelmed her.

Fighting her growing anxiety, she finally picked up a First Response pregnancy test kit, then trudged towards the checkout, trying to simply shove all thought from her head. She fell into a line with two other people in front of her. As she stood there, she stared at the magazines over the conveyor belt, holding the kit stiffly at her side away from the people in front of her. National Inquirer had a story running about a two headed alien baby whose mother claims she was abducted. She rolled her eyes and looked for another. The new Entertainment magazine had a story about the new Star Trek film. Louis always loved watching Star Trek. He tivo’d episodes and watched them while doing daily workouts. She had never been a big fan of sci-fi, but she sat through the occasional film with him anyway.

When the boy in the checkout line finished ringing up and bagging the two people ahead of Deborah, she nervously placed her pregnancy test kit on the belt, feeling her face heat up as she waited for him to ring it up. The boy, probably seventeen or eighteen, glanced up at her, then pulled the kit across the scanner and dropped it into a bag.

When the boy glanced at her, her embarrassment increased. He probably wondered what a woman her age was doing with a pregnancy test. She suddenly felt the urge to flee, to race out of the store to her car, and speed away. The Want to Get Away? line from the Southwest commercials suddenly popped into her head, and she wished she was on a plane that very moment.

“Your total is $14.21,” said the boy. Deborah pulled her debit card from her purse, slid it through the machine, and used the little attached pen to enter her pin. The first time she entered the wrong pin, and she huffed in frustration, before beginning the process again. She refused the cash back option and accepted the total. The boy handed her the receipt and her bag, which she accepted wordlessly, and headed towards the exit. As she advanced, she imagined she felt the eyes of the boy staring at her back until she exited through the sliding doors, and they had closed shut behind her.

The rest of the car ride home, she imagined the horror of watching herself get fat once more, and all the sympathies from friends now that Louis was gone. They would bring her all sorts of baby items, but rather than being gifts to celebrate its birth, they would be donations to help out. She agonized over these possibilities all the way home.

She jetted into the garage, bolted into the house and through the kitchen door into the living room, then headed down the hallway. Ellie and Susan were on the couch watching the tele as she rushed past

“Everything alright?” asked Susan.

“Fine,” managed Deborah as she continued to her room, where she shut the door almost completely, the stumbled into her bathroom, this time carefully shutting and locking the door, both to prevent anyone else from entering and to avoid slamming the door and alarming her daughter and Susan.

She ripped the end of the box, and fumbled with the kit, tears welling into her eyes. She stared at herself in the mirror, her complexion pale and tired. Biting back a curse of frustration, she took the test, then sat on the side of the bathtub to wait the three minutes.

It was too much to handle alone. She couldn’t take care of a baby and Ellie with him gone. She wondered how to even take care of herself without him. Thirteen years. Thirteen years since they committed to each other, and he checked out early, leaving her to shoulder all of this alone. The test shook in her hands, and her stomach lurched, and tears streamed down her face. Why had he gone?

She glanced at her watch. Three minutes and fourteen seconds. In complete dread of what she would see, she flipped over the stick, and it read negative. They had failed for the last time, even though they were not trying. She sank to the floor and stared at the test, a mixture of relief and sorrow at the result.

“We’re not pregnant honey,” she cried, vision blurred by tears.

*******

“Mommy, what are you doing?” asked Ellie from the door of daddy’s study. Deborah sat in his chair behind his desk, right hand on the mouse.

“Just looking through some pictures baby,” Deborah replied. “You want to look at them with me?”

Ellie barreled across them room and jumped into her lap, throwing herself against her mother.

“I was looking through the ones from your birthday last year,” she said.

The first picture on the computer showed the three of them standing in front of the fireplace, daddy in the middle with his arms around them both. He wore dark blue shorts and a white polo shirt with a nike swoosh on the front. Ellie wore white capris with a yellow top, her hair hanging in ponytails behind her ears. And Deobrah wore brown shorts with a beige shirt.

The second picture was of Ellie sitting in the back of their Altima. It was a family tradition to go on a road trip for birthdays, usually to a nearby national park. For Deborah’s last birthday, she insisted they drive to the beach, which had been a three hour drive. Ellie had been fast asleep in the car when they finally got home around midnight. The full day of swimming had worn her out. For her dad’s last birthday, they had gone to a lake so that he could fish. Ellie had a small fishing pole with a bobber that Daddy set for her, but Deborah simply read. On Ellie’s birthday, she chose a hike to see a waterfall.

The third picture showed Ellie sitting next to a scarlet beebalm. The bright red petals looked like the heads of seahorses shooting up out of the bud.

“I love that flower,” said Deborah.

The next picture showed Deborah looking and pointing towards a doe ahead of them. The doe had been drinking from a stream. It froze and stood tall in alarm when it realized they were there, then quickly bounded away into the forest.

The fifth picture showed the three of them sitting on a wide boulder, taking a short rest break. Deborah continued to flip through the pictures, one or the other of them remarking about different things that happened when different pictures recalled a different memory.

When they got to the waterfall, they stopped and stared. The three of them stood clasped together in front of the waterfall as its waters poured down behind them. They were shaded by a large tree, the lowest hanging leaves barely dipping down into the picture. To Ellie’s right lay a moss covered boulder nearly her height. All around them, foliage grew in wild tangles.

But what drew their attention was the rainbow arching down over their heads, the beginning coming straight out of the waterfall, and the edge of it seeming to touch Louis hand as he held Ellie; the rest of the rainbow dipping down below their view. Louis had sworn the rainbow had not been there when he set the camera. It had stunned them all when they got the pictures developed at were looking through them a week later in the kitchen.

The picture no less stunned them now, and Deborah wrapped her arms around Ellie, holding her close. Ellie thought the picture looked like a fairy tale; a King, Queen, and their princess standing in an enchanted grotto. Daddy should have a sword at his side, and they should all be wearing crowns. Behind them, water nymphs would dance in the waters.

Deborah sniffled, and Ellie reached up with both hands to hold her mother’s arms to her chest, and both squeezed each other a little tighter. Ellie knew tears were drifting down her mother’s cheeks, even imagined she could smell the tears.

“Mooow?”

Both women looked down as the cat emerged, and reached up with his front paws on Deborah’s leg.

“Mooow?” he repeated.

“We’re looking at pictures DJ,” said Ellie to the cat. “Want to look?”

“You named him DJ?” asked her mother.

“Seemed like his name,” Ellie replied, reaching to pull the cat up into her lap. He immediately put his paws up on the desk to look around.

“What does DJ stand for?” queried her mother.

Ellie shrugged her shoulders.

“This picture is a fairy tale,” she said to DJ, pointing at the picture on the screen.

“Our Fairy Tale life,” echoed Deborah.

*********

“Come on DJ,” squeeled Ellie, scooping the cat up into her arms and barreling excitedly through the screen door of her grandparents house and down the paint peeling steps towards the barn. Chickens milled about the yard; a couple sent squawking as she swept past.

Around back her Granpa raised some pigs and a few goats; she always liked to feed the goats, but today she only wanted to see Chip, her Granpa’s grey gelding. Chip was seven as well, and Granpa always joked that Chip was her cousin, which always made her laugh. He was certainly one of her dear friends.

Inside the barn, she set DJ on the ground and hurried towards the stall where Chip eagerly stuck his head over the rail upon her entrance, waiting for her. Several other empty stalls lined either side of the barn, a couple filled with equipment, and two more waiting to house the goats and even occasionally the pigs during severe weather.

“Chip, I’ve missed you,” she said to the horse, patting his face as he nuzzled her gently. “How have you been?”

The horse gave her a little snicker in response.

“I’ve got a friend for you to meet,” she said, stepping away from the horse and looking around for DJ. The cat had poked his head into one of the empty goat stalls, staring curiously.

“DJ, come here,” she said. The cat turned a questioning gaze upon her.

“Mooow?”

“Come here,” she repeated, waving him towards her. Striding towards her like a lion surveying his kingdom, DJ crossed the barn to where she stood, hopping up on the rail along the stalls. Chip eyed the cat, but sat patiently as DJ walked over to check him out. When DJ got close, Chip sniffed him gently, DJ tensing a little in uncertainty. Chip whuffed at DJ, which excited the cat, and he pawed at the horse, but Chip turned back to nuzzle Ellie once more. Not wanting to be left out, DJ ambled over and reaching out with first his right paw, placing it on her chest, and then his left, DJ straddled between her and the rail, and rubbed his head against her and purred.

“You’re both so sweet,” she said, and started to giggle, enjoying their affection, but also bracing herself to keep from falling over from their displays. She hadn’t seen Chip since her daddy last brought her up to the farm the previous fall. At the thought of Dad, Ellie suddenly sobered. He was gone, and here she was laughing with DJ and Chip. Her face reddened and she felt hot all over, wondering if mother would be mad at her for laughing when she still cried so often. And Mamaw? Granpa?

DJ crawled all the way onto her and she held him tightly to her chest as she backed up a few paces, feeling confused. Chip leaned forward towards her as far as his stall door let him, but she took a couple of steps further back, then carried DJ back out of the barn, walked around to the side facing away from the house, and sat down, DJ resting contentedly in her lap.

“Daddy used to bring me here a lot DJ,” she began, staring absently. “He said it was a special place. It was where he grew up. He had names for all of the animals on the farm, had started naming them when he was just a kid growing up here, and never stopped. He even let me name some of them.

There is a tire swing around the other side of the house, and after dinner, he pushed me on the swing for a little bit while Granpa and Mamaw sat lounging on the front porch. And there’s a pond nearby where he taught me to swim. Last Christmas, when it was really cold, he took me out to the pond. It was frozen over, and we put on ice skates and he taught me to skate. I fell down a lot, but he always picked me back up and told me I’d get the hang of it soon, and I started to before we left, just a little.”

She thought about her father patiently holding her hand as she wobbled about like a newborn foal, trying her best to keep from slipping on the ice. Each time she fell grasped her arms just under her shoulders and raised her back to her feet, holding until she felt momentarily steady. He told her when he was a kid he used to practice every day, and at first thought he would never get the hang of it, but gradually he did, and he guaranteed she would eventually as well. Furthermore, he promised to bring her every Christmas to skate on the ice together, except now he was no longer here to keep his promise, and tears suddenly welled up in her eyes, and started flowing down her cheeks. She buried her face in DJ’s side and cried, her pent up fear and sadness and anxiety surrounding her father’s death flowed through her and then out of her with her tears.

Memories of her father flooded through her, the Christmas they bought her a red tricycle and he stood outside with her while she rode it all afternoon. He had gotten up early that morning to shovel the entire driveway for her. She sobbed as she thought about the time first time she lost a baby tooth. She had been terrified when she discovered it was loose while watching tv one morning. She feared all of her teeth might fall out and then she would have none, but he held her and soothed her, promising new adult teeth grow in the place of the baby teeth everyone loses, and informing her that if she put the tooth under her pillow, she would get a visit from a magical fairy while she slept. The next morning she proudly showed her parents the quarter she found underneath her pillow where her tooth had been.

When she finally felt her sadness ease some and her tears subsided, she rested the side of her head on the cat, sniffling a little. She pet the cat gently with her hand, and he continued to sit patiently in her arms. Her eyes stung just a little, and her cheeks burned bright red. Daddy used to tell her when she cried that her whole face turned bright red.

But Daddy was gone. He was gone and would never come back, and she finally understood exactly what that meant. No more trips with him out here to the farm to name the new animals and feed them. No more watching him putt around in the front yard while she sat in the porch swing and waited on mommy to finish cooking. No more dinner and a movie on Friday nights, curled up between him and mommy, watching whatever he picked up from the movie store on the way home from work. No more of him picking her up and holding her tightly in his strong arms. All she had left of him were these memories.

“Why is he gone?” she asked DJ.

*********

The house bubbled like a steaming pot with laughter. Ellie so hard that tears welled up in her eyes as she sat between her mother and Mamaw on the couch.

“After he regained his feet, standing in the middle of the river and sputtering, Ellie, with a completely serious face, said ‘Daddy, mom said no swimming right after eating,’” added Deborah, sending the three into further gales of laughter.

“No more,” begged Mamaw, holding the palm of her hand to her chest as she heaved through laughter. “I can’t hardly breathe.”

All three grinned, and a couple of more chuckles escaped as they sat huddled together. A couple of glasses of red wine and a Shirley Temple sat, partially drunk, on the coffee table in front of them.

“After that he always muttered about how dangerously slippery the bridge was when we went for an afternoon picnic, but he had been walking too close to the edge and was more focused on the story in the newspaper than where he was walking,” said Deborah.

“He got that from his father,” said Mamaw. “His father always read the paper every morning at breakfast, and continued on his way out the door to his car. When we went on vacation, if I wanted to get up in the morning and go somewhere before he finished reading the paper, he carried it with us until he finished. As soon as Louis learned to read, he read every morning with his father until David left for work. It used to drive me crazy to sit down at breakfast every morning, only to stare at the backs of the sections they were reading.”

“There certainly wasn’t any reading at the table when I grew up,” remarked Deborah. “Between my parents, my brother and two sisters, we practically shouted over each other to be heard. So many of us tried to talk at once, especially Jill and Sharon, who always tried to overshadow each other. They competed about everything.”

“Max and Rachel are too whenever we get together at Holidays,” added Ellie. “They try to talk to me at the same time, and then yell at each other for interrupting them.”

“They’ll grow out of it,” said Deborah. “Jill and Sharon did…mostly.”

Ellie stifled a yawn, but not before Deborah saw it.

“It’s well past bedtime,” she said.

“Noooo,” complained Ellie. “I’m not tired yet.”

“We saw the yawn. Go brush your teeth,” said her mother firmly, rising to her feet. “You don’t want to sleep so late you miss Mamaw leaving in the morning, do you?”

Ellie growled in complaint, but got up and headed for the bathroom as her mother bid her.

“I think I’ll call it a night as well,” said Deborah. “I need to at least make an appearance in the office for a couple of hours tomorrow.”

DJ jumped up into Mamaw’s lap, “mooow.”

“I guess I’ll sit with DJ for a bit,” said Mamaw, scratching behind his ears. “Not quite tired yet anyway.”

Deborah nodded, then started to head off down the hallway after Ellie.

“Deborah,” said Mamaw, and Deborah stopped and looked back. “He was lucky to have you…to have both of you. He told me many times how thankful he was to have you two in his life.”

Deborah nodded silently, tears welling up in her eyes and a slight smile on her face, then she continued down the hall after Ellie. Mamaw leaned back against the couch and DJ crawled up on her chest, resting his head a little below her chin and purring happily as she stroked him.

She regretted leaving them, but knew Dave missed her, and it was time to get back home. Nevertheless she felt a little like she was abandoning them both now when they really needed her. It felt good to see the two of them laughing. It felt good to laugh herself, and made her feel giddy to share these memories of her baby with them, knowing they loved him as much as she did.

“You missed out, never meeting Louis,” said Mamaw to DJ, the cat staring at her as though he understood every word she said. “He would have loved you.”

The two sat cuddled together on the couch, Mamaw absent-mindedly rubbing DJ’s back while he lounged in her lap.

“DJ.”

The cat raised his head at the address.

“I expect you to look after the two of them for me,” she requested, as though expecting him to make her a promise. “You’re the man of the house now, and they’ll both need you, even Deborah, but especially Ellie. Can you do that for me? Will you look after my granddaughter and daughter-in-law when I go home?”

For an answer, DJ slowly crawled up her chest, leaned close to her face and affectionately bit her on the chin.

“Oww DJ, you bite too hard,” she said softly, stroking the cat affectionately.