Shelly woke in the morning on Ellen Graham’s couch. Outside, the sun had risen fully, and it was as if the volume on the whole idea of light had been turned up. There was so much sun on the snow out there that the curtains couldn’t keep it out. In the living room, everything seemed to be shining. The white carpeting, the knobs on drawers, the down comforter Ellen had given her when she made up the couch—and the cat.
That cat.
Had he (she?) simply come back to the chair and sat on it through the night, watching Shelly as calmly and nonjudgmentally as it seemed to be observing her now?
Shelly made the little kissing noise that always brought Jeremy to her side, but this cat didn’t move. This cat, Shelly thought, was as still as the Sphinx. She had an urge to ask it a question but was afraid Ellen might be awake, already up and around in another room, and if Ellen overheard she’d think she’d let a truly crazy woman spend the night in her house.
Shelly knew she would have to get up soon and use the bathroom, but for now she felt as if she’d entered some kind of eternity. With that sun reflecting so whitely on the snow outside, Shelly felt it wouldn’t surprise her to pull the curtains fully apart and find that everything was gone.
Erased.
Nothing left of the world but herself, and this white cat, and the brightness shining on some motes of dust between them.
The cat continued to regard her. Not even blinking.
This cat was nothing like Jeremy. This cat had none of Jeremy’s scruffy skittishness. Jeremy’s fur had been rough, and his eyes, unlike this cat’s eyes, had been a mottled olive, not this blazing marble green.
But here Shelly was, looking at this cat looking at her, and she felt certain of something she’d once or twice had an inkling of in the past: that each cat is part of some larger cat soul.
That this cat and Jeremy had come from the same place—whatever cat nothingness that was.
Shelly and the cat held that gaze in a trance of that certainty between them, and the incredible comfort it offered, and Shelly didn’t even startle and the cat didn’t move when Ellen called from the top of the stairs, “Are you decent? I was going to come down and make coffee.”
“Thank you,” Shelly called.
She would drink Ellen’s coffee, and then she would head back to town, find Craig Clements-Rabbitt, tell him this new plan, ask for his help.