Kat's Nine Lives

by Laina Villeneuve

  “I can help,” Wendy said.

  “What? No.”

  “They have to be put away after the memorial anyway. I’ll help you load them up.”

  “You don’t have to do that. After feeding all those people tomorrow, I’m sure you’ll be wiped out.”

  Wendy could hear her typing as they talked. “Okay. I get it.”

  “Get what?” The typing stopped.

  “You want all the glory. You want to be the one who works all day and then goes the extra mile. You want to be the white knight everyone counts on to save the day.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Okay, then you’re the only kid. Growing up, all the work fell to you and there was no one else for you to say, ‘make her do it!’ so you don’t even realize you’re pulling way more than your weight.”

  “No. That’s not how I grew up.”

  There was something serious in Kat’s voice that Wendy had never heard before, and it made Wendy hot with discomfort. She was trying to tease Kat into letting her help, but it had backfired. She searched for how to fix it. “There’s only one other explanation.”

  “What’s that?”

  Her voice was tight, and Wendy wished they were talking in person. “That I smell bad.” Finally Kat laughed again, so Wendy continued. “You’ve been looking for a way to break it to me, but you don’t know how to, so you insist that you can take care of it on your own. I’ll shower. I promise.”

  “You do not smell bad.”

  “Great! So we have a plan.”

  “We do?”

  “I feed a bunch of famous people at the church, and then we take the tables and chairs to your place.”

  “You said you were helping me load them. You don’t have to follow me home. I’m sure you have better places to be. I wouldn’t want to stop you from hopping over to Hidden Hills to see Erin.”

  “We don’t have any plans this week. I was swamped even before Mr. Famous died.”

  “Oh, I thought…” Wendy waited for her to finish her sentence, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “I’m swamped too,” in a tone clearly meant to wrap up the conversation.

  Wendy wasn’t going to let her off easily, though, and said, “Exactly why you should accept my offer.” She thought she was speaking softly, but Cory looked up. Why was he looking at her like that? She furrowed her brow at him, and he raised his and lifted his hands as if incredulous that she didn’t see what he did. Wendy frowned and turned her back to him.

  “Why are you so nice to me?”

  “Because you deserve some niceness.”

  “You’re so stubborn. If I didn’t have so much work to do for this memorial, I’d convince you I don’t deserve any kindnesses.”

  “I’ve got my own work to do, so thank you for giving up.”

  “I didn’t say I was giving up.”

  “Thank you anyway. Especially for the referral. It means a lot. Especially to Cory.”

  “Always glad to help.”

  Wendy punched the phone to end the call and pressed it against her chest for a moment.

  Cory popped a sheet of quiche in the oven and cleared his throat.

  “What’s that for?

  “What about the perishables?”

  Wendy frowned. She hadn’t given thought to how she usually took home and sorted out what was left over after events. “You can take them home. The dishes can wait. I’ll bring those.”

  “You’ll be too wiped out to go out to dinner tonight, but you’ll take on all that grunt work tomorrow?”

  “I’m not up for a date. Helping with chairs and tables is hardly a date.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I don’t date straight ladies.”

  “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Kat’s into you.”

  “Well you can stop saying that. She told me herself that she’s straight.”

  “Wait, you asked her? How could you not tell me that?”

  Wendy hadn’t wanted to share that Erin had pursued Kat. Too many layers of weird. There was so much history between Kat and Erin, between Kat and all the people she’d met at the bar. She would rather not have divulged it all to Cory, but she’d forced her own hand. “I didn’t ask her. Erin did. There was no spark.”

  “Just like you!” Cory said

  “I’m attracted to Erin.”

  “Sure you are.” Cory’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Just because I’m not up for a date tonight doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to her!”

  “Okay!” Cory drew the word out in a sing-song manner. He pulled open the oven to check the quiche. He exchanged the cooked ones with another sheet.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “My offer to break down tonight still stands. That’s all.”

  Wendy ignored him and went to the walk-in refrigerator. Cory could finish the quiche, and she could slice pears and wash the spinach. She grabbed some butter. She’d get started on the candied walnuts as well.

  None of this took her mind off Cory’s suggestion that Kat was simply not attracted to Erin. Hadn’t she thought the same thing when she was riding with her, wondering whether Kat had not liked kissing Erin because she was a woman or simply because she was Erin? Wendy shushed her inner monologue, telling herself that there was no purpose in thinking about Kat kissing women.

  * * *

  Kat tucked her phone back into her purse. She should have been texting Jeremy to let him know that the chair issue had been resolved, but she just sat, thinking about how easily Wendy had offered her help yet again. She was ashamed that when Richard Whitman’s brother had called the church to arrange the memorial, she was happy to have a reason to call Wendy. Since Jeremy installed the bridge the week before, she had been pretending her days were what they normally were when they were anything but.

  Somehow having this wedding at her childhood home had trip wired so many emotions, dredging up memories that she had boxed away long ago. Being married to Jack had given her years of training in the art of focusing on the present. She was a wife. She was a mother. That was enough, and for years she had been able to fool almost everyone. With her past flooding into her present, she waited for her volunteers to ask if she was okay. She waited for the priest to rest his hand on her shoulder and notice how tired she looked. She’d been doing the bare minimum work-wise, and so far no one had noticed.

  Yet Wendy had known. After she’d said her father was gay, there was something in the way that Wendy had hugged her that suggested things would be okay. Kat tried to remember the last time that someone had held her like that, as if their arms alone could make things better. Had Jack ever held her that way? Her parents might have, once, before she pushed them away.

  Miranda had hugged like that. Not when Kat had first joined cheer. All the girls hugged generously and with ease, and Kat had been full of self-doubt, judging herself for being shorter and less fit than the others. She had kept those memories at bay for so long that it took some time to tease out when Miranda’s hugs had become different. At first she thought that it was her own insecurities playing tricks on her because Miranda was the prettiest cheerleader: tall, athletic and graceful. Everyone she knew, male or female, sighed when she drove up, her honey-brown hair windblown from driving her convertible Karmann Ghia with the top down.

  First, she felt Miranda watching her. Then she noticed that Miranda’s hugs had changed. They were tighter but less frequent. Kat noticed immediately and asked what she had done wrong, sure that Miranda considered her an impostor. They met away from school, away from practice, where Miranda could finally explain that she didn’t want to upset Kat, explaining her attraction as if Kat had never heard of the same gender desiring another.

  It was when she had hugged Miranda that things had shifted. She had meant to reassure Miranda that her feelings were not wrong. She had not expected her body to react.

  And now Wendy’s reassuring hug had had a similar effect.

  S
he would see Wendy tomorrow at the funeral. If they embraced again, Kat honestly thought she might dissolve in her arms. It made her believe she could tell Wendy everything, even things she’d never told Miranda.

  She drove home in silence that evening, memories wandering freely in her mind. She climbed the stairs stealthily and instead of turning right and heading to her room, she turned left. Her mother lay in her bed in the larger of the two south-facing rooms. Warm hues from the sunset spilled into her parents’ room. Though there was at least an hour of light left, her mother was fast asleep.

  Ava’s room was darker at this time of day, having windows on the south and east walls. She crept in and perched on the edge of a straight-backed cane chair. Her parents had not kept a shrine. They added more comfortable chairs in the room and kept only a few of Ava’s things. A picture she loved of a girl having tea with her stuffed monkey. The multicolored herd of wild ponies behind the glass of the secretary their father had crafted for her. Her mother’s trinkets.

  Kat shut her eyes and tried to imagine what her life would be like now with Ava. She took a shuddering breath and felt tears slip from her eyes. The pain of not having her sister with her broke through the foggy barrier she had erected long ago. Kat shut her eyes and let the tears come again.

  She looked to the east-facing window and saw the prism her sister had hung in her now dark window. Ava had always made her own rainbows. Maybe it was time for Kat to make some of her own.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kat could not move. She was on her way back to the office to print the programs for the memorial service when out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Wendy wheeling a contraption that held trays of food. She had on her signature crisp white chef’s coat that buttoned to one side, tailored black slacks and black clogs. Here, they were two professional women, yet Kat’s body reacted as if she was about to meet Wendy in private.

  “Kat!”

  She tore her eyes away from Wendy to find Verna waving her toward the office. Reluctantly, she followed. Kat hadn’t planned on telling Wendy about her father and was tempted to cross the patio to make sure that she wouldn’t talk about it with anyone, but she waved instead. She felt certain Wendy wouldn’t betray her confidence. She glanced back and found Wendy’s dark eyes on her. She smiled shyly and the smile Wendy returned was just as cautious, as if she, too, felt like something had changed between them.

  * * *

  This was no time for Wendy to be distracted. She was already behind schedule. Wendy pushed Kat from her thoughts and reached into the warm oven to squeeze a French loaf to see if it was soft enough to cut and assemble into sandwiches.

  Cory was preparing large bowls of fruit which they would set out first with the platters of sugarcane shrimp kabobs.

  “We’ve got time. You could go talk to her,” he said.

  “That might have been an option if I’d pulled the bread out of the freezer last night like I was supposed to.”

  “How are they now?”

  “Almost there. But I’m worried about drying them out.” Twenty minutes before the service ended. Crunch time. She needed the sandwiches to come together. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cory set the fruit bowls aside and start pulling marinating trays of skewered shrimp and pineapple out of the cooler and lining the kabobs on trays to go in the oven.

  Taking the bread out and cranking up the oven temperature for Cory, she grumbled to herself. She should have been finished with the sandwiches now, not just about to start. She swore under her breath. “I need another pair of hands.”

  “Should I call the main kitchen and have them send someone over?”

  “By the time they get here, we’ll be serving. We can do this. We have to do this.” The catering was her responsibility. José had enough to worry about on his end of things than to have to spare one of his prep staff to bail her out. She said a little prayer for a long-winded eulogy.

  “I see people on the patio,” Cory said fifteen minutes later as he finished arranging a tray of sweet potato cakes with tartar sauce and garnishing them with scallions.

  “You’re shitting me.” Wendy glanced up and confirmed what Cory saw. People were congregating on the patio, already eying the buffet tables.

  “Get the fruit out there. Anything that’s ready to go, move it.”

  Ready or not, she grumbled to herself, grabbing the tray of loaves off the stovetop. “Shit, shit, shit,” she swore. The metal was much hotter than she’d anticipated.

  “Fire is hot,” an unexpected voice said.

  Wendy flapped her fingers and grabbed a cold bottle of water. “Oh, no! Are they already complaining?”

  “I haven’t heard anything. You have everything under control in here?” Kat asked.

  Wendy grabbed a loaf and sawed through it. She thumbed the middle. It had just enough give. She pulled a few more. “I’ve got it.”

  She felt Kat hovering. “Cory said something about wishing you had another set of hands.”

  Wendy growled. Here she’d thought Kat was only stopping in. She couldn’t believe Cory would ask her to help. No, that wasn’t true. It was exactly the kind of thing he’d do. “I’m sure you’ve got a hundred things to do.”

  “I’ve got a few minutes. And I happen to have a set of hands.”

  Kat was smiling more brightly than she had earlier. “How are you with a sharp knife?”

  “I can be careful.” Without having to be asked, Kat washed her hands in the sink before joining Wendy at the counter. Her fingers brushed against Wendy’s when she took the knife. “I love it when sandwich bread is warm.”

  So Cory hadn’t mentioned why they needed an extra set of hands. Maybe she wouldn’t chew him out. She spread her jerk chicken mixture on the sliced loaf followed by the mango salsa. She caught Kat watching her. “Hungry?”

  “That smells really spicy.”

  “It’s spicy flavorful. It has a lot of different flavors, but it’s not hot. Once I get the spinach on, we’ll cut the individual sandwiches. We need at least twelve per loaf. Where is my spinach!” She checked the fridge for her tub of washed spinach. “Dammit. Where did Cory go?”

  “Oh my god, oh my god!” Cory came running in straightening his tie. “All of The Absolites are here. I have to get a picture. Is my hair okay?”

  “With all that gel? It’s not going anywhere. But you will not go all paparazzi on them. I need you in here. Where’s my spinach?”

  “The spinach salad is already out. I threw the caramelized walnuts and raspberry vinaigrette on and tossed it.”

  “No, no, no!”

  “What?”

  “Some of the spinach was for the jerk chicken sandwiches!”

  “Oops?” Cory said with nervous look on his face.

  “And you dressed it all?”

  “I was being helpful?”

  Wendy scrambled around the kitchen trying to scare up something green. “The cucumbers! Go grab the veggie plate. I’m going to have to repurpose the cukes.”

  He turned to leave, his phone in his hand.

  “No pictures! We have to fix this first!”

  Cory looked longingly at his phone. “I can be discreet. Promise. They won’t even know I’m there!”

  “Cucumbers!”

  “Got it.” He pocketed the phone.

  “I don’t understand why they are already out of the service! I was supposed to have more time!”

  “Maybe he wasn’t that nice,” Kat said. “If nobody has anything nice to say, everything wraps up quite quickly. From what I’ve heard, his heirs are more interested in his estate than remembering him.”

  “That’s sad.” Wendy paused in her sandwich prep to take the kabobs out of the oven.

  “Pretty typical for families, isn’t it?”

  “I guess when there are siblings. Makes me glad to be an only. You’re an only too, aren’t you?”

  * * *

  Kat’s ears were ringing, and the bread shook in her hand. So did the knife.
Glad it was the last loaf on the tray, she carefully sliced it and handed both roll and knife to Wendy.

  “Are you okay?” Wendy asked. She placed a hand on Kat’s shoulder.

  “Fine,” Kat said. This wasn’t the time, was it? She could distract herself. “Do you need any help with those skewers?”

  “If you really don’t mind, you could arrange them circling the edge of this tray working your way toward the inside. Then squeeze some fresh lime juice on them and a sprinkle of chopped parsley that should be in the fridge unless Cory swiped that, too.”

  Assembling more long sandwiches, Wendy went back to the topic. “Not that either of my parents is likely to leave me anything. They have no property. I always wished I’d grown up with more, a big house, more money, but it taught me about work ethic, you know?”

  “That’s something to be proud of. You take your work seriously. Not everyone does. Cory seems more interested in fame than the spinach.”

  “Speaking of that. It looks like I’m going to have to grab the cucumber myself. Be right back.”

  Kat had finished arranging the skewers and found the parsley garnish. Wendy swooped back in with the tray of vegetables. “Barely enough for the sandwiches! I feel like I’m improvising in the backcountry here!” She finely diced the cucumbers and completed the sandwiches.

  “Backcountry?” Kat prompted to keep Wendy on the blessedly light topic.

  “I was a camp cook near Yosemite one summer. There was this time I nearly screwed up a breakfast forgetting I needed my eggs for French toast. It’s freezing in the morning before the sun comes up, so I always hated working with the eggs. The last of my five mornings cooking, I had to break a dozen eggs, and my hands were numb with the cold. I threw in the green pepper and was just about to shake in the garlic salt for my scrambled eggs when I realized my mistake.”

  “Oh, no! You didn’t have other eggs?”

  “Nope. I had to fish out all the green pepper. Thought I’d get frostbite that morning. I should be thankful this is an easier fix.” Wendy had ten long sandwiches assembled with the cucumber, ready to be cut. “But my assistant should be in here to take these as I get them sliced and plated. Where is he!”