The Beginning of After

Chapter Twenty



Are you sure you don’t want to come watch?” asked Meg one day after last period. She and Gavin were going to try out for My Fair Lady, the Drama Club’s fall musical.

Meg and Gavin were now a well-established couple. Her first real boyfriend, and he was a good one to have. He wasn’t in Andie’s crowd but everyone liked him; plus, he had his own car. They had this habit of leaning together against a wall with their hands in each other’s back pockets, which I thought was just sickening. Sometimes I pictured myself and Joe standing there with them, doing the same thing, and that made it even harder.

Fortunately, I was scheduled to be at Ashland that day. Meg’s face fell when I reminded her, as if she really wanted me to watch her French-kiss in the back row of the school auditorium. I knew she was trying to pull me back into my old activities ever since I’d reduced my hours at the hospital to just two afternoons a week. I needed the time to keep up with class work, but I missed the daily rhythm of the hospital, and being surrounded by people who didn’t know anything about me. Now when I went, after a day of school and people staring sideways at me, it was almost more of a break than being at home.

Sometimes, when it was slow, I’d take a few minutes to sit on the rabbit bench out front and think of that day with David. Wondering where he was and when I’d hear from him next.

When I got to Ashland, all was chaos. A family had brought in their dog after he’d gotten into a fight. He was pretty beat up and bleeding, and Dr. B had been working on him for an hour. Which meant that the regularly scheduled appointments got delayed, and people were pissed. “He just pooped in his own carrier!” said a woman with a cat who was howling low and constantly.

“The doctor is handling an emergency at the moment,” said Eve calmly. “You’re welcome to reschedule, and we’ll give you a discount on the office visit fee.”

This placated the woman and Eve turned to me, made a face. “He’s got to get another doctor in here full-time,” she whispered. “There are just too many days like this.”

I made myself as useful as I could. Dr. B and Robert got the injured dog stabilized, and we were able to start getting appointments in. After an hour, a man in a paint-covered jumpsuit walked in holding a dirty duffel bag with both hands. I saw Eve stiffen and found myself doing the same thing.

“Can I help you?” she said politely as he stepped up to the desk.

“I hope so. My crew was painting an empty apartment and we found this kitty in a closet. She seems sick or something.”

Eve stood up and opened the duffel, peering inside. After a few moments she turned to me. “Get Robert ASAP.”

I did what I was told, and Robert swooped in and took the bag as Eve whispered something to him. After he disappeared with it, Eve composed her face again and turned back to the man.

“You don’t know where she came from?”

“I called the owner and he said the tenants who just moved out had a cat. Maybe it was theirs?”

Eve bit her lip. “We’ll take care of her.”

“Will she be okay?” he asked. “I’d . . . I’d take her, but my wife’s allergic. . . .”

“I think she’s about to give birth, actually.” She leaned over and touched the man’s arm. “You brought her to the right place.” Then, when he didn’t move, Eve added, “Do you want your duffel back?”

He shook his head, then looked around the waiting room where three clients sat, having watched the whole exchange, staring at him. He bowed his head quickly to Eve and left.

After the remaining clients had been seen, Eve and I went in to check on the cat. Robert had set her up in a bottom cage and hung a towel over the front of it. Eve pulled the towel up gently and peeked in.

The cat looked up at us, a skinny, coal-black thing with haunting yellow eyes, still on her guard. She looked tired and spent as she nursed a mass of squirmy newborn kittens. Dr. B came in and Eve dropped the towel back into place. “So we have a new mom?” he asked wearily. “That’s what, six weeks of that cage being occupied, until the kittens are weaned and you can place them?”

“I’m out of foster homes,” said Eve with a pleading edge to her voice. “What am I supposed to do? Take her to the shelter?”

Dr. B just shrugged. “It’s an option.”

“She can’t go to the shelter. She’s already been dumped once, and if you bothered to look at her, you’d see how malnourished she is. They’d all get sick and die there.”

Dr. B sighed. “Then you take her.”

“My parents will kill me if I bring home any more.” Eve was tearing up. She pulled up the towel again, hoping to force something in Dr. B. “Look at how depressed she is. All she wants is her family back.”

As soon as Eve said that, I could feel my throat close up and a bolt of something hot and sharp behind my eyes. For the love of God, I thought, please don’t start crying here. And then I saw something in my head. A bright place with a window and a soft bed that sat empty as wasted space on the planet.

Toby’s bedroom.

“I can take her,” I said, before I could think of the many reasons not to.

Eve put both hands on my shoulders, smiling wider than I thought her face had room for. “You CAN?”

I just nodded, looking at my palms. “I have room,” I said after a few seconds. “I have plenty of room.”


“Laurel, how can you do something like this without asking my permission first?” said Nana as we stood in the living room, a cardboard box full of cats at my feet. She was angry, her mouth pursed and her frown lines making cracks in her carefully applied makeup. I’d almost forgotten what that looked like.

“I didn’t think you’d mind,” I said, shrugging, not looking at her.

“Well, I do mind, but that’s beside the point. This is my house too now, and I’m in charge, and if you want to bring in some homeless animals to live in your brother’s . . .” She stopped as the word stuck in her throat, and turned away from me, finally spitting out, “Your brother’s room . . . we have to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Why don’t you take your trip upstate, like you’ve been planning? That way you won’t have to deal with it.”

“I don’t feel like going right now. Don’t change the subject, Laurel.”

She looked at me, her anger giving way to what seemed like confusion, like she was wishing she had a handbook she could check to figure out what to do in this situation.

“It was just something I needed to do.” I thought of the cat’s expression, imagined her alone in the empty apartment she knew as her home, wondering what she’d done wrong.

Nana saw that I was about to break down, but held her mouth in a firm line. “I understand that, and I think I understand why. I just wish you’d remember that you’re not the only one trying to figure out how to get through.”

Now that firm line fell apart, and she reached out to me. “I lost them too, you know,” she said shakily.

I stepped into her and felt her arms grow tight around me, her crisp plaid blouse pressing against my chest. It was a place I didn’t realize I wanted so badly to be.

Neither of us said anything for a little while. I pictured the kitty in the box, listening to all this, thinking, I’m not sure this is going to be any better than the animal hospital.

Finally Nana took a deep breath, stood back, and said, “Okay, but you feed them, you clean up after them. And you find them homes as soon as you possibly can.”

I just nodded, and decided I would call my mama foster cat Lucky.





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