Sunday, Thomas started out what he hoped would be his new daily routine. He had turned down an invitation from Lisa for breakfast, though he'd agreed to come eat with them that evening. No, today, he had his own fish to fry, and he would give his son's family some breathing space, or at least as much as the Cuddys would allow them. Besides, he didn't want to face Rachel this morning and her interrogation for his plans that day. Young as she was, there would be far more days without her than with her at the stable, but no point in rubbing her nose into it.
So he started out with a solitary breakfast, then took a long walk, still testing various options for his daily route. Back home, he put on his boots to go with an old, soft, well worn pair of blue jeans, and then he headed out to the stable.
Ember was still very alert today, more so than usual. The new surroundings weren't yet home. He knew how she felt: Change, even if good, was still different, and she lacked the understanding of what was going on that he had. From her point of view, someone had simply uprooted her and stuffed her in a semi for two days.
He double checked that she had polished off her morning grain, which she had, and that she wasn't running a temperature after her trip and still had no heat or swelling in her legs. Then, after a good grooming, he saddled up. The first half hour he spent up in one of the outdoor rings, letting her look around but reminding her that she still had to listen to him here. After she had relaxed enough that he felt like they were tuned into each other, he headed out for a very short loop on one of the trails, not going far at all but giving her a preview. The good things from the former life would still be in the new one.
"It's going to be an adjustment," he told her softly, "but I'm still here. And Rachel will love getting to know you. Not that she's going to be riding you, but some day, we'll ride together." He laughed, picturing a small pony trotting beside the long-legged mare. "We'll make it work somehow, Ember. If we get too far in the lead, we can just wait."
Both horse and rider were much more relaxed when they got back to the stable. As he dismounted, he paused while running the stirrups up so that they wouldn't catch on anything while dangling empty at her sides. One of his stirrup leathers was starting to show a little wear. Nothing dangerous yet, but he'd probably better replace it before it got that far. Stirrup leathers took a lot of pressure, especially during mounting.
Another weekend rider arrived as he was giving Ember an extra long grooming with extra carrots, and they fell into conversation as they worked on their horses on adjacent sets of cross ties. When he left the stable twenty minutes later, he had both a new friend and a complete critique of all the tack shops in the area.
One in a shopping center in Trenton had been advertised as having the best prices but still good merchandise, and he drove in that direction instead of heading back to Princeton. Budget was, at the moment, a bit of a consideration. As he'd told Greg back in Lexington, he was drawing two retirements plus Social Security, and normally his income was far over his outflow, but this had been a very expensive month. Shipping Ember had cost him $1500, and the moving van bringing his furniture cross country had been more than that. Plus the downpayment and closing costs on his new home, which had required dipping into the savings he'd built up for years. At the moment, he was carrying a new mortgage, too, but as soon as his much larger house in St. Louis sold, which he owned outright, he could pay the new one off plus make a nice profit. Things would be fine in a few months, and he had more funds in savings available now if needed, but he was certainly glad that not every month in his new life was going to carry the bills of this one.
He found the tack shop and, of course, spent far more time there than required for his errand. No horse person could resist thoroughly browsing around a tack store. Armed with new stirrup leathers and with a horse book (it was on sale, he justified), he checked out.
It was almost noon now, the large shopping center getting busy with weekend traffic. He walked toward the BMW, then stopped with a smile mixed with concern. A black kitten sat in the parking lot between lanes of cars, back turned to him, licking itself. Emily, absent from his thoughts for an hour or two at a time now when his attention was caught by life, flooded back in. She always had loved black cats, stating that contrary to belief, they actually represented good luck.
"Better move, little fellow," he called. "That's a bad spot to pick for a bath."
The kitten turned at his voice, and Thomas' smile vanished. The right front paw was impossibly twisted and dangling at an angle nature never intended, and the kitten's yellow eyes were wide with pain and terror. The small animal bent his head again, licking futilely at the paw and flinching as he did so.
"Here, kitty, kitty." Thomas slipped into stealth mode, moving forward slowly. "Easy, boy. What happened? Did you get run over?" The kitten ran painfully before he made it halfway, dodging under a nearby car.
Keeping a close eye on the car, which didn't have any others around it, Thomas stopped at the BMW, throwing the tack shop sack into the back seat and then retrieving his winter driving gloves from the glove compartment. Putting them on, he returned to the other car and bent over.
The kitten was up against the far tire, eyes glowing. The animal hissed at him. Thomas dropped down to the ground. "Easy, now," he said, using the same voice he did when Ember was spooked by something. "I'm just trying to help you. Easy, boy. Or girl or whatever you are, but you don't mind if I call you boy for the moment, do you?" With infinite patience, he advanced under the car one slow inch at a time, never stopping the stream of conversation. At the same time, he kept an ear out for car doors, but his height came in handy here. He was climbing under from the driver's side, and with his legs and feet sticking out, someone would have to be blind to miss seeing him as they got into the car.
Another inch gained. This kitten wasn't feral, clearly. He was in pain and terrified and having a very traumatic day, but the soothing voice was having an effect, and Thomas was on the same level now instead of looming overhead. The black kitten shrank back against the tire as Thomas came on, but he didn't try to run until the last second, and by then, Thomas was close enough to catch him on the grab. The kitten hooked into the gloves with teeth and claws, but Thomas hung on. He was trying to be aware of the bad paw, but he could adjust grip in a minute; the most important thing right now was not to let go. He knew if he lost his captive now, he'd never make it close enough a second time.
Thomas crawled backwards out from under the car and was just scrambling to his feet when a slightly familiar voice came behind him. "Are you all right?"
Finishing standing, he turned around to meet air. Looking down farther, he found himself face to face with all 5 feet 1 inch of Dr. Ruth Patterson. "Do you know where there's a vet?" he asked urgently. He held out the kitten, which had stopped trying to claw free and was simply limp, waiting for doom to fall. Thomas could feel the animal's racing heartbeat even through his gloves. "He has a broken leg. I think a car hit him."
Sympathy flooded her green eyes. "Poor little kitty. There's an emergency animal clinic about a mile away. Here, let me drive, and you can keep hanging onto him."
Thomas nodded. "I'm afraid as soon as I ease up, he'll bolt. He's terrified." Patterson lead the way to her car, and Thomas tried to shift his grip to avoid the bad leg. He couldn't see any blood on a quick visual scan, but it was obviously broken, possibly dislocated, too.
They reached Patterson's car, and as she opened the passenger's door, the limp kitten came to life. With a yowl, he tried to take flight. Thomas held on with an effort, but the kitten was scrambling now, every inch of him struggling for freedom. He yelped again as he banged his paw in his battle.
"Easy." Thomas tried to settle him down, but the kitten was frantic. Pattersom grabbed a blanket from the back seat of her car. "Here." Thomas did his best to hold the kitten out while Patterson wrapped him. They wound up with a blanket burrito with only the head sticking out. Powerless to resist now, the kitten went limp again, and Thomas got in the front seat while holding the blanket. Patterson shut the door on him and broke into a light, graceful run for the few steps around the front of her car.
The drive was made mostly in silence other than mutual comforting words to the kitten. The emergency clinic was reassuringly close, and Patterson came around to open the car door again and then the door to the building. Thomas passed the wrapped kitten to the attendant behind the desk. "He's got a broken leg. He was in a parking lot, and I think he got hit by a car."
"Poor little guy. Wait a minute." She disappeared into the back. Reappearing shortly without the kitten, she sat down at her computer. "They'll check him out. So this isn't your kitten?"
Thomas sighed. Damn it, Emily, I was just thinking of being on a budget for a few months. He could almost hear her laughing at him. Only last night, he had been considering getting a pet, something to give him a little company at home, and she had always said that pets found the people they needed rather than vice versa. "I guess he's my kitten now. Or she. I was too busy holding on once I grabbed him to check under the tail."
"We'll throw in that info free of charge," the receptionist joked, smiling at him. "As long as there's no collar or microchip, he's available to whoever will cover his bills."
"Definitely no collar. I couldn't have missed that. You'd better scan him for a chip, just in case. I'll check the lost and found sites, too. No houses nearby, but I guess he could have been just lost in a parking lot."
"We always scan them for chips anyway." She opened up a new file on her computer. "May I see your driver's license?"
Thomas took off his gloves, taking a moment to inspect his hands, with Patterson and the receptionist leaning in for a second and third opinion. The kitten hadn't broken the skin anywhere in his struggles. Pulling out his wallet, Thomas gave her his new license from New Jersey, which he had just gotten on Thursday, as well as his cell phone number.
"Do you want to wait here, or should we call you?" the receptionist asked after entering everything in the database.
Thomas considered, and Patterson spoke up. "I'll buy you lunch," she offered. "It comes free with a rescued kitten. Special offer, this week only."
He chuckled. "Now there's an invitation I couldn't refuse. Just call my cell phone when you know what he's going to need," he said to the receptionist.
Patterson knew Trenton well, obviously, and she took them to a corner grill nearby. "Wonderful hamburgers here," she advertised as she pulled in. "Plus great grilled cheese sandwiches, which are my favorite."
They placed their orders and then picked a booth. "So, Thomas Thornton," she said, studying him across the table. "You're looking a lot better than you did last time I saw you."
"That wouldn't take much." The hospital look was only marginally better than the post explosion rescue look.
"How's your move to Princeton going?"
"It was going fairly smoothly until Friday night. Did Lisa tell you yet what happened Friday night?" She sat there looking steadily at him. "No, of course you aren't going to answer that. This conversation is going to get complicated. You probably know all about me already, but you won't be able to admit it, so most of what I say is just reruns for you."
She shrugged. "Without saying what I have or haven't been told in sessions, I like reruns. At least with some shows. I enjoy finding a show that's worth watching over and over. What happened Friday?"
Her sincerity was warming, and he could catch a glimpse of humor behind those eyes. This situation amused her as well as catching her interest. "I was baby-sitting, and Lisa's parents abruptly turned up. They didn't know about me yet, so it was a surprise to all of us, especially them."
At that moment, his cell phone rang, and he pulled it out. It was the animal clinic. "Hello?"
"Mr. Thornton?"
"Yes."
"This is Dr. Grace at the emergency clinic." The vet's voice was tight with shielded anger, and Thomas sat up a little straighter, waiting. Patterson, across the table, watched his expression, obviously feeling stuck outside the communication loop herself for the moment.
"How bad is the kitten's leg?" Thomas asked, already switching framework mentally from accident to intention. Had he been hit with a baseball bat instead of run over by a car?
"It's a bad fracture dislocation. The whole joint blew apart from the socket. But he wasn't hit by a car. That's not an impact injury; it's a torque injury, and it's one I've seen three times before, with eyewitnesses to what happened on two of those times. That kitten was thrown, Mr. Thornton. Somebody grabbed him by the paw and flung him as hard as they could using the paw as a handle, and the force of flinging him shattered the shoulder joint."
Cold fury filled Thomas. "Does he have any other injuries? Old or new?"
"He has badly bruised ribs across the left side. Now that's an impact injury. He probably crashed into something like a wall or the ground when he was thrown. Other than that, no old injuries I could find, and we checked him out thoroughly. He is a little underweight, and he has fleas. But I don't think he's been actively mistreated physically before this, and judging from the swelling and inflammation reaction, this is a very fresh injury. It happened today." The vet sighed. "Probably chewed up an Ipod cord that had been left out in plain sight dangling or didn't use a litter box that hadn't been cleaned in a week. Something that knocked somebody over the edge, and they threw him out. Literally."
Thomas was thinking. "Could it have been from a car? He panicked when we started to get into the car to take him to the clinic. He wasn't even fighting as hard as that when I caught him a minute before. I was wondering then if he associated cars with the pain."
"Definitely could be from a car. One of the other identical fractures I've seen, that cat was thrown out of a car that stopped for a second and just had the door open and the cat tossed out before they gunned it."
"Is it fixable?" Thomas asked.
"Yes. Fortunately, he's also young, so he'd heal more quickly. We'll have to pin the shoulder socket back together, and then the leg will be splinted for several weeks to protect the joint. After it heals, we'll have to remove the pins in a second procedure. I think he'd have a minimal limp if at all within a few months, certainly a useable leg. Estimated cost would be $2200."
Thomas flinched. "Go ahead," he said. "How old is he, by the way?"
"Roughly four months. We can do the surgery this afternoon. He'll need to stay for a day at least to make sure he's adapting to the splint and getting around all right walking on it instead of the leg. But if nothing goes wrong, he could be picked up late tomorrow afternoon."
"All right. Give me a call once you finish the operation and let me know how he's doing." Thomas hung up.
"It was intentional?" Patterson asked. She'd been watching his expression as well as listening to his half of the conversation.
He nodded and filled her in. She looked furious herself by the end of his report. "People. Sometimes they make me wonder if there's hope."
"Yes. But then after meeting people like those, I usually run straight into others who have a heart, and I remember what most of them are like."
She smiled across the table at him. "Yes. There are more good ones than bad, I'm convinced. But the bad ones still jolt you when you run into them by just how unfeeling they can be. I also have to worry about future actions with something like this. Cruelty to animals is the foundation a lot of times for cruelty to people." She waved a hand at the food, which had come while he was on the phone. "We'd better eat it while it's hot."
He picked up the burger. The conversation between bites drifted back to his report of Friday, but then he firmly turned the subject. "This isn't fair, you know. Both of us realize that you already have most of the story on me, and it's only professionalism that keeps you from admitting it. Don't waste time denying the fact. But all I know about you is that you're Lisa's psychiatrist and that your husband's last words to you were to remember to go to the bank."
She had to concede the point. "You're right; that seems a bit lopsided. Assuming hypothetically for the moment that it's true. All right, I'll give you the basics on me. I'm 56. I know I look younger, but that's hair color. Grant me a few vanities here and there."
"We all have a couple hiding in us," Thomas agreed, but he recognized the faintly wistful look in her eyes, still present but at a distance of years now. It wasn't vanity that made her color her hair but some memory. He wondered if her late husband had admired the color of it. It was what Thomas automatically categorized as plain bay, or would be if she had a black mane and tail to go along with it and meet the technical definition of bay. Not Ember's red tones, nor the rich mahogany of dark bays, but a medium muddy brown. But he'd known several nice horses who were plain bay, and it did go well with her startling green eyes.
"I've been a practicing psychiatrist since I was 36. Second career; I was a school teacher before that. My husband was a firefighter, and he died 18 years ago." She stuck the second fact onto the first quickly, not really wanting him to ask why she had switched careers, he could tell. But Thomas had sensitivity as well as curiosity. He left the question alone for now, instead asking where she had gone to medical school and if she had always lived in New Jersey
The information exchange proceeded throughout lunch, Patterson carrying more of it with good grace. She was interesting as well as articulate, and Thomas found that he was enjoying himself. She gave him a lift back to his car at the shopping center afterwards, and as he started to get out, she handed him a card with her information. "Please let me know how the kitten is getting along. And how you're getting along. Remember, firsthand reports beat secondhand ones every time."
He was smiling as he got back into his car and she pulled away. "Well, that was interesting," he said to the world in general. The world, if listening, was silent. He turned on the ignition and headed for his new home.
He told the extended family about the kitten that night, not going into personal details of the lunch conversation but being sure to throw the fact of meeting out there for Lisa to absorb. "Ruth Patterson was the woman I met in the parking lot. She gave me a ride to the emergency clinic and then bought me lunch."
She considered that, not disliking it, in fact liking it after she thought for a minute. The confidentiality concerns did obviously cross her mind, but she then relaxed, apparently thinking she could trust them both by now. "She's a cat person," she said.
"She certainly had her vet locations down pat. Very helpful."
Rachel was stuck back on the important central fact to her of the kitten. "Somebody threw him?"
"Yes, Rachel. Somebody threw him."
"Is he okay?"
"He will be. He had surgery this afternoon to fix his leg, and he's going to have it wrapped up for several weeks, but once it heals, they think he'll be fine."
"Does he have canes?" Abby asked.
"Canes?" Robert asked.
"Crutches," Greg translated. "We met a boy in the park several weeks ago with a broken leg, and Abby was fascinated."
Thomas had to smile at the image of a kitten on crutches. "No, Abby. He's going to have his leg in a special splint. The splint will have the leg inside it so his weight goes on the splint when he walks, not on his paw. But a kitten couldn't use crutches."
"Who did that to him?" Rachel asked.
Thomas shook his head. "I wish I knew. There are bad people in the world, Rachel. More good ones, but there are some bad ones." He could tell that all of the adults present were thinking of John House.
Rachel stiffened up indignantly. "I'll throw him." They all smiled at the fired-up toddler, and she took offense. "It's not funny!"
"No, it's not," Lisa reassured her. "We know that, Rachel."
She settled down quickly under the assurance, unable to hold a grudge long. "What's his name?" she asked.
Thomas had been thinking about that. "Jetsam," he told her. "But we'll call him Jet for short."
"Jetsie?" Abby repeated the strange word.
"Jetsam. It means something somebody threw away."
Rachel was annoyed again. "You don't throw away cats!" she stated.
"You're right, Rachel, people shouldn't. But some people do."
"Can I see Jet?"
"Not right now, Rachel. He's in the cat hospital."
"Tomorrow? I wanna see Jet."
Lisa stepped in. "I'm sure you'll see Jet sometime, Rachel, but probably not tomorrow. He just had surgery today. He needs a few days to start feeling better."
Rachel accepted that explanation, even if reluctantly. "Poor Jet."
"I think the food should be just about ready." Lisa stood up to go into the kitchen, and Thomas, in the recliner, came to his feet. Robert and Susan were watching him closely, analyzing. He gave them a friendly smile, which seemed to throw both of them off, and they immediately pretended that they hadn't been studying him at all as the family headed for the dining room table.