Sugar Birds by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

Author:Cheryl Grey Bostrom [Bostrom, Cheryl Grey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2021-08-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22 ~ CELIA

Blanket

“What do you mean, ‘cut a cat’?” We were driving home from the lake through floodplain. Fields of pasture and young corn rolled to the foothills, with the westerly swirling the sunlit grass like cake batter.

“Castrate him. That tom at Eppings’. Good mouser, but Loomis just got rid of the last litter. Doesn’t want the place overrun with barn cats.”

“You know how? Why can’t Jack take care of it?”

“Loomis won’t pay him for that. Nothing to it, anyway. Jack showed me on a bull calf at the dairy.” And then he was off, describing the process in detail far too vivid for my tastes. I was glad when sleepy little Marmot, population 894, interrupted his monologue, and he pointed to a bakery fronted with peeling, multipaned windows. I caught the aroma of fresh bread pouring through the screens. No reason to go home early. We still had a couple of hours.

He ordered two apple fritters, which the clerk slid into a white bag. I’d asked for a cinnamon twist, but I guess he didn’t hear me. Cabot handed them to me and ordered a maple bar. He bumped the second bag against the fritters in a toast. “For Pam,” he said.

“Pam?”

“My mom. You won’t mind if we drop it by her house. I’ll be quick.” The jamb bell jingled, and he held the door. “A few blocks thattaway.” He thumbed toward a side street.

“You always call her Pam?”

“I do.”

Two minutes later, we pulled up in front of a freshly painted white bungalow with a brown asphalt roof and a deep green, weedless lawn. Not a tree or flower in the yard, but the place was tended, tidy. Someone peeked through closed drapes covering a picture window, then snapped them shut again.

“Wait here,” he said. “Three minutes, max.” He took the maple bar from my lap and went inside.

Cabot had a mother, and he took her doughnuts.

I could barely claim half of that equation. The pain flared as I waited for him. For three months, the day Mother left had been scorching me. I leaned my head against the side doorframe and remembered. Precisely.

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