Free The Cat Sitter’s Cradle by Blaize, John Clement Page B

there
     to help pick up the pieces when the world comes shattering down.
    She said, “I’m sorry, I’m a total mess. I just love him so much. He’s the sweetest
     thing I’ll ever know.”
    “It’s okay. We all have our moments.”
    She stepped back and looked at me. “Please don’t tell anybody about this.”
    “Becca, if you can’t talk to your mother, maybe your stepfather could help.”
    Her pale cheeks flushed with rage. “Yeah, right. Guess what? We’re rich! Do you have
     any idea why my brother had to get a job at that stupid golf club?”
    I shook my head.
    “Well, I’ll tell you why, because my stepfather talked my mother into completely cutting
     him off when they found drugs in his room! What do you think they’ll do to me when
     they find out about this? You have any idea what will happen if the press finds out?
     My stepfather would probably kill me! ‘Sonnebrook Heiress in Pool Boy Scandal.’ I
     can just see it now!”
    “Honey, they’re going to find out sooner or later.”
    The anger fell from her face, and her eyes welled with tears. “I know.”
    While she cried some more, I held her in my arms and looked around the bathroom in
     all its glory: the tank with its quiet world of fish floating about in peaceful bliss,
     completely unaware of the human drama just on the other side of the glass. The mermaid
     looking coyly over her shoulder, staring into the distance, her expression frozen
     forever. The golden toilet, the crystal chandelier, and all the angels flying about.
     It suddenly seemed so odd to spend so much money on a room where basically waste gets
     flushed away. Like throwing money down the toilet, my grandmother always said.
    Hugging always makes me think of my grandmother. She was quick to give me a smack
     on the butt when I deserved it, but whenever I needed a little tender loving care,
     she was just as quick to snatch me up in her arms and hug me back to myself.
    There’s no better medicine than that.

 
    8
     
    Tanisha is the Martha Stewart of biscuits. I don’t know what kind of magic she works
     back there in her kitchen, but her biscuits have a special power over me. They’re
     the second-most-delicious thing in the world, the first being her bacon. As Tanisha
     puts it, “So good you wanna smack yo momma!” I eat one of her biscuits just about
     every day of my life, but I only allow myself bacon on very special occasions. I was
     sitting in my regular booth at the diner, thinking about ordering another biscuit,
     when Judy put a side of bacon down on the table and said, “Well?”
    “Well wuth?” I asked, my mouth full of biscuity goodness.
    “Oh, please. You don’t order bacon unless there’s something big happening. What is
     it?”
    I sighed. Judy could read me like a book. “I’m just a little nervous is all. There’s
     a lot going on.”
    She slipped her notepad in her apron and sat down opposite me. “Let’s hear it.”
    I sighed. “Okay, but you can’t tell a living soul.”
    “Got it.”
    “Okay. So yesterday morning, right around sunrise, I was walking along the nature
     preserve with Rufus and we ran into Joyce Metzger, she was—”
    Judy interrupted. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there, Don Juanita. Who is this Rufus
     and what were you doing with him at sunrise?”
    “Rufus is a dog! He’s one of my clients, I was walking him.”
    She looked disappointed. “Oh. Okay, go on.”
    “We found a woman in the bushes. She had just delivered a baby.”
    Judy’s jaw fell wide open.
    I said, “I know. A young girl, eighteen or nineteen. She doesn’t speak English, and
     I’m pretty sure she’s here illegally.”
    “What the hell?”
    “Yep, that’s how my day started yesterday.”
    “Was she okay? What about the baby?”
    “They were both fine, considering what they’d been through, but she was terrified,
     and she didn’t want to go to the hospital. She was living in a cardboard box hidden
     in the brush, so … we took