“Bloody thing isn’t anywhere in this house, either. It isn’t anywhere,” he says, voice rising at the end. “I’ve had my ass in the air looking for it for hours.” He drops his hands to his hips, then paces a tight loop at the edge of the carpet, as if movement alone will conjure the missing piece back into existence.
I know he’s being serious, but in his condition, it’s hard not to laugh.
From just beyond the doorway, there is a brief flash of rich brown hair and an even brighter flash of teeth—the unmistakable grin of Philomena, who has been shadowing him for most of the afternoon. I catch her in the reflection of my old dressing mirror, perched on the edge of the banister with her phone in hand, fingers dancing over the keys as she records my mate’s ass-in-the-air escapades for posterity. In another life, shewould be shamed into helping, but in the Maison, there is a tacit understanding that humor is its own kind of medicine.
I watch for a moment longer, then return to Aradia, whose misery now seems even more pronounced in our household’s peculiar blend of chaos and affection. I stroke her again, feeling the slight tremble in her haunches. There is a hopelessness in her posture that undoes me. I know that look. I once wore it myself, in the long years when every comfort had been stripped away and replaced by a parade of barely adequate substitutes. The pain of loss doesn’t fade with repetition; it only sharpens, refines itself, until you are left with nothing but the raw nerve of want.
“I can’t even locate it; the boys and Siren are out looking all over the grounds and house. I don’t see where it could be,” Rafe says, throwing up his hands. He slumps against the wall, eyes closed in defeat. The exterior bravado is just armor to make my tiger feel better.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I whisper, burying my face in her fur. I breathe her in, as if I could fix her sadness through osmosis. “I’m so sorry.”
There are a dozen places we haven’t checked, but the logic of loss is rarely logical. Her favorite blanket could be anywhere; it could have slipped through a gap, been carried off by one of the crows that haunt the sacred space, or simply been forgotten somewhere, the way things eventually are. The more I think about it, the more I am certain the search is less about finding and more about honoring the hope that things can be restored to their proper places.
We all need that right now, especially with what’s going on in the community right now.
The others keep looking. The droids, having been given Victor’s stubbornness, have torn apart every linen closet, every laundry hamper, even the damp crawlspace beneath the porch, emerging only to compare notes or accuse one another of sabotage. Siren has taken to wandering the grounds in long, aimless arcs with her head tilted back as if waiting for the lost item to fall into her waiting arms from the sky. Their persistence is beautiful and a little bit heartbreaking.
It might not help, and I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.
For a while, I let myself believe. I let myself imagine the blanket will materialize, as if conjured by collective longing. When it does, Aradia will flick her tail, circle three times, and collapse in a puddle of relief. The world will be right again. But in my heart I know some losses are permanent, no matter how hard you search.
Aradia sighs, her tongue lolling out in a rare show of self-pity, and I can’t help but smile at her. I scratch behind her ear the way she likes, and feel her body release some coiled tension, if only for a second. I remember all the times she has comforted me—through heartbreak, through betrayal, and through the sorrow that leaves you wordless. She taught me about loyalty and forgiveness, about the way love can be pieced together from the damaged and the lost.
Not being able to right her world is making it even harder to cope with.
I wish I could explain to her that the blanket’s absence doesn’t mean she is any less loved. She is still my solace in a world that refuses to stay the same for even a moment, but animals don’t care for explanations, even the smart, familiar-skilled ones. Ilower my head to hers, forehead to fur, and close my eyes. For a second, the rest of the house falls away. There are only the two of us, suspended in that silent, aching space where loss and comfort coexist.
Losing your security and safety is one of the hardest things in the world. I’ve learned that the hard way repeatedly.
That damn blanket represented that to my tiger. She dragged it around in her mouth constantly, and when I was hurting, Aradia would find me, snuggle up, and cover us in it.
Come to think of it, I’m tearing up a bit.
“What are you doing?” my mate asks, settling down on his haunches. He tilts his head to look at me, and I furrow my brow.
“Huh?”
“You’re growling; it’s bizarre,” he says, eyeing me. “At least you were until you spoke to me.”
Aradia nuzzles my hand, looking at me, and like that, the strange, guttural noises rumble out of my throat. I blink, not understanding where they’re coming from until it hits me: the Beast. She’s speaking to Aradia outside of my mind.
Whoa, this is weird.
Hex’s entrance is full of energy, reckless as he skids on the hallway carpet, pitches through the door, and holds aloft his prize with the haggard triumph of a battlefield courier. His hair is more ungovernable than usual, and his eyes are wild around the edges. Behind him, Siren seems both a step ahead and a step behind; her sharp gaze already inventorying the emotional temperature of the room. The two of them frame the moment with a kind of feral intensity, as if even their smallest errandswere freighted with the possibility of violence or wonder. The punky droid spits a mouthful of sand out before he speaks, his voice more raw than usual.
“Found it,” he gasps, and I see an almost mythic joy in his declaration.
Siren stands in his shadow and studies me, as if the aftermath of pain interests her more than its onset. She looks at Aradia, then at the mass of what Hex holds, then at me, making a silent equation of suffering and hope.
The blanket is a disaster. I smell it before I see it up close, noting the reek of brine and kelp and sunbaked rot. It hangs from Hex’s clutch in limp, sodden strips, an uneven patchwork of tartan, beach grass, and dark, unidentifiable stains. The familiar blue-and-green pattern has faded, some squares bleached to ghostly white by the ocean, others stained a greenish black as if the salt had tattooed new colors into the very fabric.
But it is, unmistakably, Aradia’s favorite blanket. That I know for certain.
Even from across the room, she recognizes it; her great cat head lifts, ears forward, and blue eyes dilated to pools. For a second I think she’s going to leap from the floor and seize it whole, but she simply shudders.
I take the blanket from Hex gently, not trusting the wet mass to hold together in my hands. There isn’t much left of it—less a blanket now, more a collection of fabric that is barely staying together. I press it to my nose and choke with the heavy scent of the sea. Looking at Aradia, I see hope, and then she drops her chin back to her paws to make a sound so small and high-pitched it’s more vibration than voice.
The helplessness pulses out of her and into me and my chest tightens.
