“No as in I don’t believe it.”Brother spoke in a hushed tone, as if he were in one of his beloved cathedrals.“This year’s author is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the tour organizers say they’re waiting for final approval to set up not only a visit to Conan Doyle’s home, but a tea with one of his living relatives.His actual relative!”
“Wow,” I said, seriously impressed.Like Brother, I had a deep and abiding love of mysteries, and also shared a passion for those books written in the first thirty years of the twentieth century.I’d grown up cutting my literary teeth on Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L.Sayers, so I understood just how thrilling was the thought of visiting Sir Arthur’s home and having tea with one of his relations.“That is very cool.Can you take a visitor with you?Just for the visit and tea?I’d pay my own way if you could.”
“I’ll ask,” Brother said, followed by more key clicks.“I’m going to sign up now in case they get a sudden rush of participants, and we’ll work out the logistics later.”
“Grandma?”I prompted.
“I don’t think so, dear,” Mom answered, sounding distant as if she’d moved away from Brother’s phone and was looking through a Neo-Pict course catalog.“She’s getting close to ninety, and that many hours in a plane wouldn’t be good for her legs.What about Dru?”
“She’s going to try, but she just found out she’s pregnant again, and she’ll be about eight months by wedding time.Don’t mention it to anyone, please.She says they’re going to wait to announce it, although both their parents know.Holly and her wife, Marla, are coming, though.”
“You’ll ask your sister, of course,” Mom said a few minutes later, when I had finished my tea and was seriously reconsidering eating the last two cookies.
“I’ve left a message for her to call me, although god knows why she’s using a vegan bakery as her answering service.In fact, they didn’t want to take the message until I told them I was Bess’s sister, and then all they said was that she was on the continent working with a group to take down a fur-processing plant.You know that I admire what Bess and Monk are doing, but damn.They live like they’re eco–Jason Bournes.”
Mom murmured something in an increasingly distracted tone, so I said my goodbyes, and flopped down on the couch, suddenly hit with a sense of grief, loneliness, and isolation.
That’s how Fang found me an hour and a quarter later.
“How did the calls go—ah, Emily.Not another Leonardo day?”
I lay curled up in a ball on the couch, clutching a small blue scrap of blanket.
He pulled me upright, sat down in my spot, then opened his arms.I splatted myself against his chest, trying hard not to cry on him, but he was so warm, and solid, and wonderful, that even though he stank of a particularly slovenly barnyard, just holding him made life infinitely better.“I know.It’s pathetic of me to still be crying over a cat who lived his life the way he wanted, and died surrounded with his family, but it just kind of hit me after I got off the phone with Mom and Brother.”
“I told you that we can get another cat,” Fang said into my hair, rubbing my back as I snuggled into him, relishing his body heat.“We can go to the animal society this afternoon and pick one out.”
“No,” I said, leaning far to the side to blow my nose before returning to droop on him.“It’s your turn.We agreed that the next pet would be a dog.”
“But you’re sad because Leonardo is gone,” he pointed out in that matter-of-fact manner that sometimes irritated me, but mostly made me grateful he counteracted my impulsiveness so nicely.“And since you’re working from home, it makes sense for you to have a cat as a daytime companion.Speaking of which—” He glanced at the clock.“I only have twenty minutes, and I need to change before I go in to the office for the afternoon appointments.”
“We’ll get a dog,” I told him fifteen minutes later when he’d had a fast shower and changed to clean clothes more suited to a handsome—if taken—vet in a thriving Cotswolds practice.“I like dogs, Fang.You know this.If we get a dog, he can be my buddy, and I’ll stop having blue Leonardo days.”
He paused on his way out the door and tipped my head back, his lovely peaty-brown eyes smiling at me as he said against my lips, “I love you beyond reason.You know this, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, biting his lower lip until he kissed me the way I wanted.“Because I’m just as unreasonable about you.”
“We’ll get both a dog and a cat,” he said, kissed me soundly, and squeezed my left butt cheek before hurrying off.
“Sexy, loving, and with exceptionally good brains,” I said, waving as he tooted the car horn at me when he drove off with a cloud of warm exhaust on the cold air.I clutched Leonardo’s blue blanket, and told it, “If he isn’t the perfect man, then I don’t know who is.And he’s mine, mine, mine.A catanda dog.Hmm.Let’s think about this, shall we?”
Thankfully, the blanket didn’t answer.I did keep it with me for the rest of the day, but my spirits felt a bit brighter, as if Leonardo approved of the plan.
