If I don’t get the convertible running, I’ll be doing a lot of riding on this old bicycle. The seat feels as if it were cast in cement—I need all the extra padding I can get.
The ride back to Thorne Manor is straight up a twelve percent grade, and I’m spurring myself on with the promise of chocolate-dipped flapjacks when I see Del heading my way on his bicycle. He looks even more bizarre in daylight, his macintosh thrashing, clunky work boots pumping the pedals, the pipe clamped between his teeth. On a fishing boat, he’d be right at home. A bicycle? Not so much.
His face is set in a way that defies anyone to stop him. So I’m about to lift a hand in greeting as we pass, but he pulls to a halt, and I realize that’s just his normal expression. Impatience and annoyance, set in the stone of his weathered skin.
“Won’t be up today,” he says. “Got a call in town. Urgent business.” A roll of his eyes doubts it’s urgent, and if he’s right, I wouldn’t want to be the person who summoned him. “I was going to come by and see if you needed owt. You’ve found the grocer.” He peers into the basket, and his face darkens. “Frey’s scones not to your liking?”
I smile. “They’re too much to my liking, which means they’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll bring you more, then. Saints knows, she baked enough of them. Said she remembers you eating a whole basket by yourself when you were a sprog. I said you had probably learned restraint. Guess not.”
“Frey?” I say. “Is that short for Freya?”
“Aye-uh.”
“She used to teach in town, didn’t she? She played whist and bridge with my aunt.”
Freya was living in Liverpool when I returned at fifteen, so it’s been over thirty years since I’ve seen her. I pull up a mental collection of a soft lap and a softer voice, a laugh too hearty to come from that voice. A pile of dog-eared books. A basket of fresh scones. The smell of chalk and sage and browned butter.
“I’d love to see her,” I say.
“She doesn’t get out much these days. Waiting for a hip replacement. She’s off to the city today for a doctor’s visit. She’d love to have you for tea tomorrow, though.”
“I’ll enjoy seeing her whenever it’s convenient. Oh, and I found a kitten upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” His gray eyebrows soar into his hairline.
“Locked in my old bedroom.”
He frowns. “I was there all last week, cleaning. No kittens inside or out. They’d have a feast in that garage, but I’ve never seen any even in there.”
“This one’s very young.” I show him the picture on my phone.
“Huh.” He eases back on his bicycle seat. “Doesn’t seem big enough to be away from her ma.”
“I know. Last night, I tried looking up what to feed her, but I don’t have a cell phone signal.”
“Aye, we’re in a bit of a dead zone here. It’s fine down’t the road, but at the house, you need to be in the sitting room. Or the front yard. Unless the wind picks up. Or the fog rolls in. Or it rains. But I don’t need the internet to tell you that’s a very young kitten who can’t eat that.” He points to the dry kibble in my basket. “You’ll need to mix it into a slush.” His gaze lifts to mine. “You keeping her?”
“I’d like to find her family if I can.”
“Kitten that young? She hasn’t wandered away from town. Someone dumped her. If you want her, she’s yours.”
I should say that I’m only here for the summer, and I know nothing about caring for pets. Mom was allergic, and Michael and I had been preparing to buy our first house—which would have meant our first pet—when he got his diagnosis. After that, I just didn’t get around to it. Like I “didn’t get around” to dating again, “didn’t get around” to having kids, “didn’t get around” to buying a house . . .
All that was on The List. After three doctors declared Michael’s tumor terminal, he made a list of everything he wanted me to do when he was gone. Buy a house. Fall madly in love. Get married and have children. Well, no, actually, I was supposed to have a few flings first. Forget long-term relationships, and just have sex with hot guys. Yes, that was actually on The List.
Somewhere on it was this, too. Adopt a cat. And so, while I’m sure I’m not the ideal pet-parent for a barely weaned kitten, when Del asks whether I’m keeping her, I find myself saying, “Yes.”
He nods and says he’ll talk to the local vet and then come by tomorrow morning.
While I promised myself chocolate flapjacks as my hill-climbing reward, in reality . . . Let’s just say it’s probably a good thing Michael and I never had kids, because I display a strong risk for becoming my mother, who’d promise me treats for an accomplishment only to bait-and-switch later.
No, I wouldn’t actually do that to my child, not when I know what it was like. I do, however, do it to myself. I postpone the flapjacks and boil a couple of farm-fresh eggs instead. Then, for added masochism, I do twenty minutes of ballet exercise.
Mom had been a professional ballerina, who’d hoped her only child would follow in her slippers. Unfortunately, I inherited Dad’s body shape. I’m five-foot-ten and not thin. Never been thin. I was a “big-boned” kid, who became a “voluptuous” adult, both being polite euphemisms for a figure that will never grace the princess—or even the queen mother—in Swan Lake.
When I was little, my mother held out hope that I would shed my baby fat even when my bone structure scoffed at the notion. That probably explains a childhood of “You can have ice cream if you clean your room,” which turned into “Here’s a nice yogurt parfait.”
I went to ballet lessons twice a week and adored it. By the time I turned nine, though, Mom realized I’d never follow in her professional footsteps and declared the lessons a waste of money, claiming her child support wouldn’t cover them. That last part was a lie. As I later discovered, Dad always added extra for my lessons.
I don’t remember my parents ever getting along. They were like colleagues forced to work together on a shared project, and that project was me. When I was five, they finally split. As Mom put it, Dad “ran off with some girl.” The truth is that he reunited with his childhood sweetheart and asked Mom for an amicable split with joint custody.
In leaving for another woman, Dad stole Mom’s dignity, and she retaliated by stealing me. She claimed Dad was abusive, and he lost all visitation rights. I hated her for that—I hated her for a lot of things—but there was love in our relationship. Taking me out of ballet lessons wasn’t spite or greed. I clearly would never be a ballerina, and she didn’t want to set me up for disappointment. The idea that I’d have been happy dancing as a hobby likely never occurred to her because she wouldn’t have been.
My mother has been gone two years. Lung cancer from a lifetime of cigarettes to keep her ballerina thin. Dad lives in Toronto, and I see him at least once a week. He’s still with his second wife, who is as lovely and non-evil a stepmom as anyone could want.
As for ballet, when Dad discovered I’d stopped, he insisted I take it up again. I still dance with a troupe every week—the ballet equivalent of community theatre—and I love it even if you couldn’t pay me to wear a tutu.