I looked at Theo, who was typing something on his phone, a mild smile on his face. He was so happy, clearly, and even more so to share all of this news and future with me. I, however, felt anything but as, while he still texted, I pulled out my own phone and opened the calendar. I scrolled past the current month, into August, flipping past days until, on Saturday the eighteenth, I found what I was looking for. Leave for school, I’d entered way back when my first orientation materials had arrived. Before Luke and I’d split, before Theo, before my father had returned. It felt like an entire lifetime ago. But sitting there next to Theo, facing A Future I Hadn’t Quite Expected, I knew that not only was it closer than ever, but I suddenly felt more ready than ever to meet it. It only took a moment to count the days: twenty-three. Now, I just had to figure out what to do with them.

19

THE NICE THING about a job like mine was that, because total chaos was never more than a phone call away, you could always be busy if you wanted to. I appreciated this especially as July folded into August. My own problems might have been too much to deal with, but I was more than happy to deal with someone else’s.

“The whole thing started,” the woman in the tennis skirt was saying as she led me downstairs, “because we love to grill out. When we’re here at the beach, it’s pretty much all we do for dinner.”

“Right,” I said, as we walked across the game room, past a dusty pool table and some beat-up leather chairs.

“So the first night,” she continued, walking over to the back door and slowly easing the curtain aside, “we made this great grouper with a lime sauce. It was tangy, citrusy. Truly amazing.”

I nodded, glancing down at my notes again. The request form, filled out by Rebecca, said only Outdoor issue. Which could have been anything. It was like choosing Manager’s Special for your lunch: you really had no idea what you were going to get, only that, most likely, it would be good.

The woman was peering through the glass of the door now, looking first one way, then the other. “After dinner, we came out to clean up and noticed this sweet-looking kitten under the stairs, mewing at us.”

Uh-oh, I thought.

“We’re animal lovers,” she explained, peering out again, “and the poor thing seemed so hungry. So we threw him a little bit of fish, then went inside and pretty much forgot about it.”

“Until . . .” I said.

“Until the next time we tried to use this door, and this happened,” she finished, flipping the lock and jiggling the handle. She kept the door closed. A moment later, she gestured for me to come take a look.

At first, there was just a gray cat, sitting at the base of the grill and staring at us. Then, another, tabby colored, crawled under the steps to join it. Followed by a fat brown one with a bum ear. When a fourth approached, mewing loudly, I dropped the curtain.

“First question: Has anyone been scratched or bitten?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “No. We haven’t even opened the door. Where are they all coming from?”

“They’re beach cats,” I told her, writing this down next to Outdoor issue. “Feral and hungry. Like seagulls, but much worse. Give them food once and they never leave.”

She lifted the curtain again. I didn’t want to look, but couldn’t help myself. At least ten cats were now milling around the patio, and when they saw motion, they all turned at once. I shuddered.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“All you have to worry about is not feeding them again. We’ll handle the rest.”

I started towards the door, already pulling out my phone to find the number for C.A.R.E.—Colby Animal Rescue and Education—the organization that did its best to trap, spay, and neuter the large population of feral cats in town. Run out of someone’s garage, it operated on a shoestring budget, with just a few cages and two very brave women. I’d already had to call them twice this season, even though every packet I handed out at check-in had a page about not feeding the animals. Even the cute ones.

“I guess grilling is out of the question for the time being,” the woman said, as we got back to the landing.

“I’ll get someone here as soon as possible,” I said. I reached into my folder, searching around until I found a voucher for a dinner for two at Finz. “But tonight, why don’t you go out on us. Hopefully by tomorrow everything will be fine.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s so nice! Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” I told her.

Another satisfied customer, I thought, as I walked back to my car. This was why I’d been working pretty much whenever I could lately. I needed distractions, problems I could easily solve. Wild cats were never ideal, but now, I’d gladly take them.

It had been about a week since Theo’s big news at the Pavilion, and things hadn’t gone exactly as planned. At breakfast the following morning he was not offered the job, as he’d envisioned. Instead, Clyde asked for his help going through the work that had been in storage and piled up in a shed behind his house. In typical Theo style, he did not see this as a setback. Instead, he explained to me, it was Clyde’s way of trying him out, testing his mettle, before handing over the real prize. That would happen a few days from now, at the press conference/cocktail party he and Ivy had planned before their split to celebrate the end of filming and the tour announcement. Between now and then, all he had to do was make himself indispensable, bond further with Clyde, and cement his standing as the most knowledgeable about the work, other than the artist himself.