Page 56 of Smoke and Fire
I set my car keys on an oblong oak table ringed by matching chairs. A tower of wet cat food cans stood on a nearby counter with paper plates and plastic spoons. On the ground lay a small water dish, half full. Shiny cat toys littered the ground here and there.
Driven mostly by curiosity, I moved farther into the living room. A sectional filled up a portion of the space, facing a wide fireplace and a window that overlooked the reservoir. No television, which struck me as odd.
Pictures populated the mantle of the fireplace. I grinned at a dorky photo of what must have been high-school Bastian. He had his arm flung around the shoulders of a younger version of Hernandez. Bastian’s skin was deeply tanned, almost burned. They stood in bright sunshine, grinning. I couldn’t stop my giggle. They looked like they were twelve.
Other photos lived there, snapshots in time. A towering Black man, a lot like Bastian, had his arm around Bastian at high school graduation. Next to them, a girl with Down’s syndrome and a bright, toothy smile stood at his other side, tiny and pale next to their broad frames.
My heart caught.
There are people that need me,he’d said.
Was this what he meant?
I spun around. More photos littered the walls. The coffee table. A desk tucked into the corner. Post-it notes littered the wall in front of it, a variety of colors and sizes. Chicken-scratch writing filled them, nearly illegible. As if someone here didn’t want to forget something. Orhadforgotten and required reminders.
The aging house clearly wasn’t Bastian’s. His father’s, maybe. So where was he? Had Bastian’s father passed away? I presumed the Black man was his father, because he filled most pictures. Was Bastian adopted?
A few older pictures of a woman with auburn hair and bright green eyes were displayed here and there, but not many. Bastian’s mother, maybe? The resemblance wasn’t strong to her, if so. What happened to her?
To any of them?
My curiosity only grew, expanding with more and more questions. I thought about texting Dagny to ask, but stopped myself. No, that felt like too much of an invasion. If I wanted Bastian’s story, I needed to get it from Bastian. Really, I should just feed the cat and go.
But I couldn’t help myself.
Grateful to have a second away from the strangely close rooms, I stepped outside to get the mail. The lawn was a short, rectangular box of land behind a wooden fence. My car waited just beyond it. I returned to the curb, reached into a mailbox made out of old license plates, and reached for the mail. Although I didn’tintentionallylook, when I returned inside to set the envelopes next to the rest of them on the counter, my eyes snagged the corner of one.
Memory Care Services.
Geez.
Was his father sick?
Something soft and silky touched my ankle. I jumped with a gasp and glanced down to see a calico cat threading itself around my legs. The purr melted me. I reached a hand down. The cat sniffed it, studied it, then butted its head against my palm.
“You are lovely,” I murmured, then crouched next to it.
The silence of the house settled around me as I petted her. Eventually, I put a hand around her and lifted her up.
“Psycho, huh?” I murmured.
She purred against my jaw, boneless in my hands. Oh, this was a cat I could bond with. None of that holier-than-thou stuff.
“Yeah, you’re not a tough nut to crack like your owner.”
Unless Bastian’s father was the owner. In which case, this puzzle continued to complicate.
Why had Bastian sentmehere to take care of the cat? Surely Dagny would have happily taken over. Had it been a spur-of-the-moment decision? Hernandez and Bastian had clearly been friends for much longer than the hot minute that we had known each other.
Why not ask them?
I had my suspicions, but I also had my own emotions over this whole situation. Emotions I didn’t really trust yet. As I had resolved before, I needed to move slowly. I laughed into the quiet house.
This was so beyond that now.
“The road this attraction leads down is a road that I’ve taken before,” I said to twelve-year-old Bastian in a picture. “I want to like you, Bastian. And I’m reluctant to admit that I do. But I’ve done this before. Liked someone quickly. The road it took me down ended with heartbreak. Is it worth it?”
Time-frozen Bastian just smiled at me with a warmth and delight I’d only caught hints of now.
