“What do we do?” Nova whispers.
“Nothing,” I say quietly. “I think.”
“You think?”
“I’m not exactly a cat midwife.”
That gets a tiny, terrified laugh out of her.
So we stay back. We sit on the kitchen floor a few feet away and watch the morning change shape.
One kitten becomes two. Then three. Then four.
Nova doesn’t say much. Neither do I. Every once in a while her hand finds mine, or mine finds the back of her neck, and we stay quiet because Dina is doing the hard part and somehow she let us be here for it.
By the time the fourth kitten is pressed against her belly, the sun has moved across the floor.
Four kittens.
Dina nursing them in the morning light on the kitchen mat.
Already certain. Already home.
Like she has been doing this for years in the place she spent eight months refusing to enter.
Eventually, Nova leans into my side on the kitchen floor. Neither of us says anything for a long time.
I look at the room. Her kitchen. Her mat. Dina curled on it like she has always lived here. Four kittens pressed against her belly, three of them looking enough like the cat I adopted because he walked up to my leg in a shelter and sat down and decided.
I know the feeling.
Then we look at each other.
Then we both look at Brick on the counter.
Three of them look enough like Brick to make the room feel personally accused.
Brick looks back at us.
“Brick.”
He blinks once.
“You absolute menace.”
He closes his eyes.
As if saying you’re welcome.
Nova makes a sound beside me. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a cry. Something in between — warm and wet and completely undone — and I put my arm around her shoulders and she leans into me and we sit there on the kitchen floor watching Dina be home like she always was.
Nova’s phone buzzes on the counter.
She doesn’t move for a second. Just looks at it. Then she gets up, crosses the kitchen, and picks it up. Reads it. Reads it again.
Her face does something quiet.
“Katarina,” she says.
