“Prue is rubbish at naming the animals,” she decreed. “There’s Baby Blue, Battie’s ragdoll. Floofy, Chassie’s white tiger. And Greystoke, Prue’s gray. You know Snowball and Gingerface.”
“Wait.” I was confused. “I thought they were all Prue’s cats.”
“They are, in a manner. She rescues them and adopts them. But animals have their own way of doing things. They lay their own claims. So Soot sleeps with me. Baby Blue with Battie. Floofy with Chassie. Greystoke with Prue. And, as we were all claimed, Snowball and Gingerface, the newest additions, hadn’t yet found their person.”
She finished that gazing at me meaningfully.
And I had a feeling I understood her meaning, my heart beating hard with it, I just didn’t know what to do with it.
I mean, I’d only been there three days.
And I was leaving in less than two weeks.
“Prue even named Bartholomew,” she went on. “This is why that poor creature has such a ridiculous name. He is, of course, Battie’s dog. But Prue wanted to name him, and Battie is a soft touch, so he let her name him.”
I was stuck on an earlier part of what she said.
“A cat sleeps with Battle?”
She inclined her head. “Baby Blue doesn’t hold a great deal of love for Bartie. But she does for Battie. Once Bartie is down for the night, Baby Blue finds my brother’s bed. Even when he’s not here to be in it.”
I tried to visualize Battle sleeping with a ragdoll cat.
It was so easy to visualize, and such a good visual, I stopped trying to visualize it.
Though, I was so enthralled by this endeavor, I jumped when Temperance surged elegantly to her feet and walked to the side of the vanity so she could look out the window.
“Imagine,” she said in a soft tone that had me instantly bracing, “being a young child and growing up in a house with no love.”
Oh my God.
“And then,” she went on, even softer, “this adorable red-haired baby comes home to you. She giggles. And she’s loud. And as she grows up, she’s excited by everything. She consumes books like chocolate and draws on everything with a surface. She’s utterly enchanting. She’s all that’s good and right, and since you never had that, you and your brother cling to her because she is.”
Oh God.
“Tempie,” I whispered.
She didn’t even look down at me.
“And then she goes to school.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head.
I opened them and lifted my head when she spoke again.
“Day by day, all that joy, all that exuberance leaks out of her, little by little. She hides how much she reads. She draws in secret. She wears clothes she doesn’t like so she can fit in. But she never brings girls home for play dates or sleepovers. She’s never invited to parties.”
My eyes started stinging.
“And it just carries on,” Temperance continued. “Until she’s restricted her happiness and safety to this tiny bubble in the world where the people in it understand her.” She pulled in an unsteady breath. “But she’s so very alone.”
God.
Temperance looked down at me. “And then one day, she’s coming to breakfast with her laptop so she won’t delay in replying to an email she received from her friend.”
God.
“And some time later,” she kept at it, “she comes home wearing a crown of flowers, with sun on her cheeks and a spark in her eyes.”
