In anticipation of dinner, Winchester was stationed beside his bowl, and when I came into the kitchen, he greeted me with an enthusiastic wag of his tail. He knows it’s his bowl, because it has his name on it. W-I-N-C-H-E-S-T-E-R, in big orange letters. When I pour his dog food into it, he assumes his flat-basset position with his belly on the floor and a possessive paw on either side of the bowl, counting the kibbles as they cascade past his nose. Then, still prone, he gets down to business immediately and with serious purpose. He growls as he eats (to discourage interlopers), dispatches his dinner quickly, then licks the bowl inside and out. Bassets live for mealtimes.
We feed Mr. P (aka Pumpkin, because he’s that color) on a shelf in the pantry, out of Winchester’s reach. This cat is a crafty, battle-scarred old tom who showed up on our doorstep starved and sore-pawed and captured Caitie’s heart. I tried to talk her into a kitten instead, but she shook her head.
“He’s just like me when I first came to live here,” she said, clutching him defiantly. “He doesn’t have any family. He needs somebody to adopt him. He needs me.” When he heard this, Mr. P turned up his purr another notch. He’d been on the lam long enough to know that he had lucked into the deal of nine lifetimes.
While the dog and the cat were making short work of their dinners, I got out the makings for a green salad and put rice into the rice cooker. The rice would accompany the Moroccan chicken and carrot main dish that had been simmering in the slow cooker all day. I lifted the lid and sniffed the blended aromas appreciatively. Lemon, cinnamon, coriander, cumin. Perfect. All I had to do was ladle it into a large bowl and let people help themselves.
I had set the table and was just finishing the salad—romaine, mushrooms, red onion rings, chopped tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, diced celery, and hard-cooked eggs—when the kitchen door opened and McQuaid came in. My husband is a big man, six-feet-two and broad-shouldered, with dark hair, pale blue eyes, and a knife scar (a relic of a run-in with a druggie when McQuaid was with Houston Homicide) across his forehead. A craggy-looking guy with a quick grin that never fails to light my fire.
“Hey, China.” He came up behind me and nuzzled the nape of my neck. He spoke with his lips against my skin. “Caitie is out there with a hair dryer, blow-drying two damp chickens on the picnic table. You know about this?”
“I know.” I turned into his arms. “You should have been here when the rooster got his bath. Cursing in chicken language. Wild wing-flapping. A tsunami of epochal proportions.”
McQuaid kissed me. “Sounds like a helluva party.” He chuckled and let me go. “Sorry I missed it. But them’s the breaks.” He opened the fridge, took out a bottle of Lone Star, and nimbly blocked Winchester with one foot. (Winchester makes a beeline for the fridge whenever it’s opened, hoping to snatch an unwary slice of leftover pizza.) He popped the top of his beer and gave the table settings a curious glance. “One, two, three. Four and five?”
“Brian.” I began slicing the last hard-cooked egg. “And Casey.”
There was a silence. “Ah,” McQuaid said thoughtfully. “I think I knew that. But I forgot.” After a moment, he cleared his throat and started again. “Casey is a lovely girl, really. And smart as the dickens. I don’t blame Brian for being smitten. Just takes some getting used to, that’s all. Makes me feel old, I guess. My little kid with a live-in, when he’s hardly old enough to vote.” He swigged his beer. “I hope they’re being . . . well, careful. Taking precautions, I mean.”
“I’m sure they are,” I said cautiously. “Both of them are serious about school. And Casey is premed.” Which meant, I was sure, that she knew more about the birds and bees than I did at her age. (Not much of a comparison, actually, since I knew next to nothing.)
“Right. But accidents happen.” He said this with a sheepish twist, and I remembered that he had once told me that Brian had been an accident. McQuaid’s first wife, Sally, had not wanted children, and after Brian was born, she had announced that her little boy would be an only child. To make her point irrevocably clear, she’d had her tubes tied—without discussing it with McQuaid.
“I imagine they know what they’re doing,” I said in a reassuring tone, putting the salad bowl on the table. Our son Brian had brought his girlfriend to see us several times since they’d moved in together. McQuaid was absolutely right. Casey was as gorgeous as a fashion model, with an athletic figure, satiny dark skin, and very short black hair that accentuated the angular contours of her face.
“I had it cut really short so I don’t have to fool with it,” she’d told me the last time they visited. “Between tennis and my classes,” she added ruefully, “I have more than enough to keep me busy.” That was an understatement. Casey is at the University of Texas on a tennis scholarship, which adds hours of practice and competition to the heavy load of her academic program.
McQuaid turned the frosty beer bottle in his fingers. “Do you suppose they’ll be together this time next year?”
The question was unanswerable, but I knew what had prompted it. McQuaid was wondering if Brian and Casey were considering marriage. And what he would say if the subject came up.
“I can’t even guess,” I said honestly. “They’re young and living away from home for the first time. They’re exploring their freedom. But they’ve both got years of college ahead of them.”
“I just hope the boy remembers that,” McQuaid said, and swigged his beer again.
I didn’t say “He’s not a boy,” because I knew
