Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“A circus, huh?” I asked, taking her backpack and hanging it by my door. “Well, we better be on the lookout for acrobats and tigers.”
“There’s one!”
Ava pointed at Nacho just as he came scampering over from somewhere in the back hallway, his fluffy orange tail flicking back and forth. The cat wasn’t scared of anything, not even a kindergartner, and he trotted right up to Ava and arched against her leg.
“This is Nacho,” I told her as she bent to pet him. She didn’t smile like most kids would when having their fingers running through silky fur. She didn’t say awww or giggle, either. No, she wore the same look of indifference I was used to her showing in class.
Now that I’d been around her father a few times, it was easy to see the apple didn’t fall far from the tall, thick, muscular tree.
Still, even this was an improvement over where she’d been at the beginning of the school year. Will had hired me to work with her after school in the first semester, as she had lost her confidence to speak once she was in a class with twenty other students.
I learned quickly that Ava just needed a little patience, and, honestly? Indifference. She didn’t want the baby talk and the nonstop attention. She didn’t need cookies for a job well done or an over-the-top celebration.
“He’s soft, isn’t he?” I asked.
Ava nodded, and it wasn’t long before my other two fur children joined us.
“This one is Pepper, and that one is Coconut,” I told her, signaling to each of them.
Pepper was a gray striped tabby and the skinniest of the three, no doubt the runt of his litter. He had more energy than any five-year-old I’d ever taught.
Coconut, on the other hand, was standoffish and untrusting of everyone — even me. She curled her tail underneath her as she sat beneath my sewing table, a full ten feet away from us, her bright blue eyes narrowed and assessing Ava.
I didn’t mean to become the stray cat mom. It just sort of… happened.
Pepper was the first. I saw him on the side of the road on my way home from work one day, and when I’d taken him to the local animal shelter, they’d told me that if I left him, he’d be put down.
The memory of that still made me angry and upset today, but then again, I understood. They were overrun. They didn’t have space.
And so, he became my first baby.
Nacho showed up at my back porch a few months later, meowing for food with his fur matted and gunk in his eyes.
I’d no sooner taken him in before Coconut appeared in my backyard, although she’d stayed distant for weeks before she’d graced us with her presence inside. I’d left food for her on the porch and made sure she had water, too.
It took two weeks for her to let me close enough to pet her.
Then, when the temperature dipped below sixty one night — a rarity in Tampa — she’d croaked a meow at me when I opened the door and sauntered inside like she already owned the place.
Now, I was a certified cat lady at the ripe old age of twenty-six.
“Do you have any pets?” I asked Ava.
“No. Daddy says cats are assholes and dogs are too much work.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my laugh. I was fairly certain her daddy wouldn’t approve of that language, but I was also pretty sure he didn’t know how to filter himself around her. She probably didn’t even know asshole was a “bad word.”
“He’s not wrong,” I told her. “You hungry?”
Ava nodded, standing from where she’d been scratching Nacho behind one ear. The fact that she wasn’t trying to pick him up by the neck told me she had more restraint than most of the children I taught.
“I’ll make us a snack,” I said, nodding toward my abandoned artwork on the coffee table. “Any chance you can help me with that? I started it the other night, but I’m not very good at painting.”
Just as she didn’t like baby talk, I learned early on with Ava that she also didn’t respond to what I referred to as my “teacher voice.” Where I was usually sing-song sweet and peppy with my kids, Ava responded better when I spoke to her like an adult. She liked an even, emotionless tone.
I couldn’t imagine why.
An image of her father crossed my mind as Ava sat on her knees, picking up the paintbrush and wetting it in the cloudy glass of water before she wiped it over one of the dry paints. We’d experimented with watercolor last semester, and I was impressed she remembered just what to do.
She then promptly started painting all over the place, no care for the numbers or lines on the butterfly image.