Kat's Nine Lives

by Laina Villeneuve

  * * *

  “What happened to Kat?” Jeremy asked.

  “She had to step away,” Wendy said, surprising herself with the lie. She sent out a quick text asking if Kat was okay. “Great progress on the bridge, guys!” Each had only a small pile of planks on the sidewalk.

  Jeremy stretched his back. “Did Kat happen to say anything to you about me and Evan?”

  “We barely talked at all. I asked about the donuts, commented on the cottage, and then she had to go. Give me the drill. You promised I’d get to play with power tools.”

  Jeremy handed it over and glanced to the driveway. “She left?”

  “She had to do something inside.” If she wasn’t so preoccupied by why the bridge was causing Kat such distress, she might have found the white lies slipping from her lips amusing. They were so out of character for her, but she found that they came so easily.

  “Evan said that she was really distant at church the other day. He was wondering if she was regretting offering to host the wedding. Since you know her better, I thought maybe she’d tell you if we’d made her uncomfortable somehow.”

  “Why would you make her uncomfortable?”

  “Because we’re both men.”

  “You do realize that I’m gay, too. If you make her uncomfortable, then logically, I would, too.”

  Suddenly Jeremy was very intent on counting the remaining screws.

  Wendy paused. “Wait, you’re saying I make her uncomfortable?”

  “That I never said. I’m sure I’m just being paranoid. We’re stepping on a lot of heterosexual toes these days, and you know Kat. She wants everyone to be happy. Maybe she offered her home even though it makes her uncomfortable only because the church said no.”

  “What are you not saying?”

  “Nothing.” He stared at her a little too long, like what he really wanted to say was making it hard for him to think of something else to tell her. She shook the thought away. Just because Kat said she lied all the time didn’t mean everyone did. “Maybe she is okay with it but her parents aren’t. Maybe they pitched a fit about it, and she’s in there trying to smooth it all out.”

  “Now you’re making things up. It seems like Clyde is helping a lot. He pulled out all this stuff for your bridge and the candy cottage.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” Jeremy agreed, reaching for another board.

  “What?”

  “What nothing. Kat just disappeared so quickly. Like I said, it made me paranoid.”

  “How’s it going?” All three of them startled at the sound of Kat’s voice. Purse slung over her shoulder, Kat stood on the other side of the chain-link fence.

  “On my last plank.” Wendy caught Dave’s eye. “How about you?”

  “Got it!”

  Kat peeked over the fence. “It looks lovely. And a bit dangerous.”

  “We got a lot done today, but the handrail will have to go on tomorrow. I’ve got to meet Evan at the florist.”

  “Dave and I could work on the handrail,” Wendy offered.

  “Unfortunately, Dave is my ride.”

  He snapped a few pictures on his phone before joining Dave at his truck. They both waved as they inched down the long drive in reverse.

  “What a gorgeous young man.”

  “He is. He’s with the majority of the congregation, outraged at Reverend Thorn letting his personal bias color his decision. You wouldn’t believe how many people have come by the office to ask how they can support Jeremy and Evan. So in the end, Thorn’s intolerance has demonstrated just how loved they are. There’s some justice in that.”

  “That’s the perfect consequence. Maybe all the love he sees in the congregation will make him reconsider.”

  “Or run with his tail between his legs. That would be okay with me,” Kat said.

  Wendy smiled. “I was going to mess around with the shelves in the cottage, but it looks like you’re on your way out. I guess it can wait until another day.”

  Kat shook her head. “No. I was actually coming out to offer to pick up lunch for everyone.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s no bother. My mom asked for In-N-Out. It’s the least I can do to pick something up for you, too. Will you still be here for a while?”

  “Another half hour, I’m guessing.”

  Kat took her order, and Wendy returned to the cottage. She thought about the response of the congregation and how so many had stepped forward to support Jeremy and Evan. No other wedding had made her think about who would attend her own wedding ceremony, and it brought some sadness to realize that beyond her parents and Cory and José, she couldn’t really picture much more of a guest list.

  When she was happy that the shelving was stable, she returned to the bridge. She walked to the middle, precarious as it was without the handrails. Before she could puzzle out how they were going to be built, Kat arrived. Chagrined, she hustled off the bridge and jogged to meet Kat at her car where she accepted the take-out bags.

  “Give me just a second to fish out my parents’ food.”

  “We can sort it out in the kitchen. I need to wash my hands anyway.”

  Kat didn’t answer right away, and Wendy noticed her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed.

  “Are you okay?” Wendy asked gently.

  * * *

  Kat wasn’t okay. Nothing about the day had been okay, including seeing Wendy standing in the middle of the pool. God, Ava would have loved it. She had adored the rope bridge that Halloween. She closed her eyes and clamped her tongue between her teeth. She would not cry again.

  She took a deep breath. “I will be. I wasn’t prepared for the memories this would bring back.”

  “Oh, were you and your husband married here?” Wendy asked, her eyes wide.

  At first Kat didn’t follow the question, but then she understood that Wendy was tying the weddings together, not the bridge. “We were married at the church. But we had the reception here. I’m sorry. I know it makes no sense. It’s this bridge. It’s the cottage. It’s all these…my dad’s projects. It brings back memories, and…” She swallowed. She couldn’t say more.

  “And there’s no getting away from them.”

  Kat sighed gratefully. “How do you always know what I want to say?”

  “I don’t. Can’t we tell your parents we prefer to dine with the tortoises?”

  “That might work to deter my mom. The tortoises freak her out. But my dad would ask to join us.”

  Wendy handed the food back. “You can sort it out inside. I can scrub my hands in the pool.”

  If she didn’t have her hands full, Kat might have hugged her for understanding. Inside, she grabbed two plates for her parents, grateful her mother had not descended yet and that her father was still outside. She left two drinks and carried the others out with the bag of burgers and fries.

  “Lunch!” she called up the stairs and out the front door before escaping out back. She didn’t feel like explaining that she was eating with her friend. She found Wendy already feeding grape leaves to the two desert tortoises. She dished out their meals, smiling when Wendy snatched her chocolate shake and took a long pull from it.

  “You earned that today.”

  “And yesterday. I swear riding a horse feels like exercise even though Erin insisted that only the horse was getting a workout.”

  “Oh, is that why you are so stiff?” Kat blushed hard when she realized that admitting she noticed the way Wendy was walking would betray where her thoughts had been.

  “Wait, you thought I was sore because I spent all weekend in bed with Erin?” Wendy said.

  “I never said…”

  “You didn’t have to! The look on your face!” Wendy laughed. “Give me some credit. I barely know her!”

  “I’m sorry.” Kat tried her best to hide her embarrassment. “From her texts, it seemed like you two really hit it off.”

  “She’s very nice, and we did have a good time.”

  “I’m glad
it worked out. That makes me happy.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. Wendy fed the smaller tortoise some of her lettuce while she worked on her milkshake. “Not as happy as drumming that Go-Go’s song.”

  Kat looked up to find Wendy’s piercing dark eyes on her. She worried that she was going to ask her why she’d been crying.

  “You didn’t do ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’,” she noted.

  “I hope you weren’t disappointed. Travis liked ‘Head Over Heels’ better.”

  “I’m impressed you got teenaged boys to play The Go-Go’s, at all, and you’ve got the perfect voice for it. You were amazing on the drums, too. Don’t tell Erin, but I liked listening to the kids doing covers way more than our restaurant’s fancy jazz band.”

  “I was so worried you hated being there!”

  “Not at all! It was fun hanging out with you. A little bizarre with your ex and his girlfriend and everything, but fun.”

  “I hope you’d say if it wasn’t because it was so much better having you there.”

  “As long as you promise to do the same, like if it was too hard to have Jeremy and Evan get married here.”

  Kat looked stricken. “What? Why?”

  “Because maybe your parents have a problem with them being gay?”

  “They don’t think that, do they?”

  “A little?”

  “Wendy! That’s ridiculous. My father’s gay.”

  “What? But he’s married to your mother.” Wendy looked confused.

  “Doesn’t make him any less gay. You’ve met my father. You’re telling me he didn’t set off your gaydar? Didn’t he give you the Rock Hudson spiel?”

  “I thought he was…artistic.”

  Kat laughed. “He wanted a family, and back in his day, you got a family by marrying a woman.”

  “Did your mom know when she married him?”

  “She knew but she didn’t know. He told her he’d been in a relationship with a man, but she was nineteen. She didn’t really understand. She’d been trying to catch my dad for a long time, so when he proposed, she thought that was it. She’d won.”

  “But somewhere along the way, he started to have boyfriends again?”

  “After I was born, he began an affair that my mother didn’t know about.”

  “And when she found out, she stayed.”

  “She did. I think it kind of worked for her that my dad had another person to go out with. We went to the zoo with him and his boyfriend. They took us to museums and to the beach, all sorts of places my mother wouldn’t go. My mom isn’t easy, either. But my dad has stayed with her.”

  “Your dad is gay,” Wendy said like saying it out loud would help her understand.

  Kat wadded up the burger wrapper. “My family is…complicated. How well my mom can cope with my dad and how much patience my dad has for my mom change day to day. So it’s always been hard to have people here.”

  Wendy snorted. “You don’t have to explain to me. I never wanted anyone to come to my house. I didn’t want them to know where I lived. Didn’t want them to know how little money we had or see my father who didn’t ever seem to care how little we had. He used to say that all we needed was each other. Now I understand that he didn’t want me to think that if I had stuff I’d be happy, but as a kid, it was really tough to be the one kid without new brand-name clothes.”

  “I agree with your dad. The stuff I had didn’t make me happy. I had stuff, and I had them, but it was like they wanted the stuff to make up for what they couldn’t be.”

  “Because of your dad’s sexuality?”

  “Partly,” Kat said. How could she explain the void they were trying to fill without talking about Ava? There was nothing they could give her to replace what she’d lost. The vow her dad made that he would not date again did not replace the time he had spent with his boyfriends. Though her mother was physically present and bought her everything she wanted, she wouldn’t talk about Ava. So Kat had learned not to mention Ava either. She put the past in a box that could remain closed if she spent time at her friends’ houses with their normal parents, part of their normal life. Though she wanted to, she didn’t know how to explain.

  “I can see where that would have made it hard to bring your friends home. I can’t get over how different your life is from what I’d pictured. I thought this was the perfect house. Who wouldn’t have the perfect childhood living in a place like this? I even envied you for having parents who are still together…”

  Kat laughed. “Before I told you about my dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stuffed her trash into the bag. “You finished?”

  “Yes.” Wendy followed Kat out of the yard.

  “Now I have to text Jeremy to tell him my parents are happy to have them get married here. This is all your fault, you know?”

  “What’s my fault?” Wendy face crumpled with worry.

  “If I’d just lied and said I didn’t think the bridge was a great idea, it wouldn’t have come up.”

  “Sorry I’m such a bad influence.”

  “No. You’re not. You’re the best. I can’t thank you enough for being here today.” Before she chickened out, Kat stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Wendy. She closed her eyes and let her whole world just be that warm, safe hug.

  Chapter Ten

  Wendy tucked her phone back in her pocket and washed her hands.

  “I thought you were going to lunch,” Cory said.

  “She couldn’t get away after all.”

  “Hmm.” He kept his eyes on the mini-quiche pastry he was rolling for the evening baby shower.

  “What does that mean?”

  “People have to eat,” Cory responded.

  “She had a lawyerly emergency.”

  They worked in companionable silence for a few minutes. She was mercifully busy with this last-minute event which had required an unplanned run to the local grocery store and doubling up on the usual prep work. Too busy to think about Kat and what she was doing and whether she had a Go-Go’s song playing in her head. Wendy had reprogrammed her radio to an eighties station, and every song made her think of Kat.

  “Are you going to see her tonight?”

  Wendy almost opened her mouth to say that she hadn’t talked to Kat since lunch last week. Then she realized that Cory was talking about Erin. “No. I’ll be wiped out after this shower.”

  “I could handle the breakdown if you want to get dinner with her.”

  The right answer was yes. Wendy knew this, but she couldn’t make herself say it. To be honest, she was relieved that Erin had flaked. Though the horseback riding had been fun, she found herself hesitant to set up another date. Erin had been trying to find a time to get together for the last week, and Wendy had been dragging her feet wondering how to say that she wasn’t interested in getting together again. The phone rang, saving Wendy. Cory answered.

  “Key Ingredients of Fairbanks Bistro.”

  She seasoned the spinach custard for the quiche, not really listening to Cory’s phone conversation. She jumped when a pad of paper dropped in front of her. Wiping her hands on her apron, she read over the notes. Mr. Whitman. Unexpected death. Food for a hundred. Tomorrow. Wendy’s eyebrows shot up. She pointed to the word. “Tomorrow?” she mouthed.

  Cory pointed to the phone and then to Wendy. Already mapping out the hours of work added after tonight’s event, she took the phone.

  “Hello, this is Wendy Archer. My assistant says you’d like us to cater a funeral.”

  “A memorial,” the speaker on the other end of the line clarified. “My brother died suddenly. We’d only just arrived for the Alternative Music Awards show. He was a record producer. The Mawling Screemies’ latest album is up for the Progressive Pop Award but now…”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” She waited politely as the brother shared details about the number of family in town who would be flying out the following evening, necessitating the hastily planned memorial. “Where
will you be holding the reception?” she asked. She smiled as she wrote the familiar address. She walked to her storage refrigerator and took inventory of what she had on hand. She ran through her standard luncheon menu options taking notes on Mr. Whitman’s preferences for a Jamaican theme including jerk chicken sandwiches and several sides.

  As she talked, Cory searched the producer’s name on his phone, flashing pictures of the man with various celebrities. Each find increased his excitement to the point that Wendy had to turn around to tune him out. The financials were established and the deposit transferred electronically. When she’d ended the call, Wendy held the phone to her chest. “We’re not sleeping tonight.”

  “As if you could. Look at this!” He flashed a photo of the deceased with The Absolites at his home in Beverly Hills. “Please tell me they’re having food at his house.”

  “Sorry. Not this time.”

  “How in the freak did you get this gig?”

  That reminded Wendy. Someone deserved a thank-you. She pulled up Kindred Souls on her phone and hit dial. “Is Kat Morehart available please?”

  Cory smirked and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Stop, Wendy mouthed as she waited to be put through. She motioned for him to take over the quiche, unable to hide the smile that lit up her face when she heard Kat’s voice. “You have no idea how happy you’ve made my assistant.”

  Cory leaned toward Wendy and sang, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “Why is he so happy?” Kat said, laughing.

  Wendy loved that sound. “Apparently the dead guy was the man responsible for his favorite band.”

  “Say they’ll be there! Oh my god. I could meet Bobby Desimone tomorrow.” He spun in circles unable to contain himself.

  “I’m glad to make someone happy.”

  Wendy heard ruefulness in her voice. “You make everyone happy.”

  Kat huffed into the phone. “Right.”

  “We’re all excited about this job, and it’s completely ruined your day?”

  “Something like that. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take it out on you. I lined up help to load Jeremy and Evan’s chairs and tables today, but with the memorial tomorrow, I had to put it off. Why didn’t I tell them to rent tables and chairs? It would have been so much easier.”