Free Leaving Blythe River: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde

say that.” She unmoored her feet suddenly and marched into the kitchen. Picked up the carton of half-and-half and held it up like an accusation. “Half-and-half? And you still mean to tell me you’re not trying to steal my cat?”
    “No! Not at all. I just thought he was hungry.”
    “She.”
    “Right. Sorry. She.” Silence. Ethan swallowed hard. “It was all I had.”
    “I knew she’d been going somewhere. Coming back fatter than ever. Today I decided to follow her. See who had the gall to be feeding her.”
    “I just thought . . .”
    “You thought what?”
    “I thought if he said he needed food, he needed food.”
    “Wow, you really don’t know cats.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “What do you know? Anything?”
    Ethan felt his mouth drop open. He didn’t—couldn’t—respond.
    “Oh . . . I’m sorry,” she said. “That was over the line, I suppose. I just get a little ticky regarding my animals. Don’t like anybody to get between me and what’s mine. But, hell. You’re just a kid.”
    “I’m seventeen,” he said.
    “You don’t look anything like seventeen.”
    “And you don’t look anything like seventy.”
    It had been intended as a defiant comment. A way of standing up to her. And that was exactly how it came across. But the moment it came out of Ethan’s mouth he wanted to grab hold of it and drag it back in.
    Don’t poke the bear.
    He waited, watching her face and shaking.
    A huge sound burst out of her, and it startled Ethan. It took him a second or two to realize she was laughing.
    “So I been told,” she said. “So here’s the best I can say to make you feel better: When you get to be as old as I am, looking younger than your age is not such a raw deal.”
    She strode three steps through the tiny kitchen and picked up Mirabelle, who strained to get down again and finish her treat. Rufus bolted in to clean the bowl.
    “If my cat comes around here again,” Jone said, leveling him with that withering gaze, “you tell her she’s too fat as it is, that she eats fine at home, and to get her butt back where it belongs. And next time you talk to our neighbor who you think is so very nice, you tell him the answer is still no.”
    She stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
    Ethan looked at Rufus, who looked back. The dog was licking stray half-and-half off his nose.
    “Whoa,” Ethan said. “Sam was right. She’s worse than Rebar. I wonder why he thinks she’s so beautiful and wonderful, then?”
    Still, if anybody understood how love could do strange things to a poor guy, it was Ethan.

Chapter Eight: Alone

    The day his father disappeared
    Ethan’s eyes flickered open.
    There had been a moment—an all-too-brief moment—every morning upon waking for the last three months. This was one of those moments. Ethan had been studying the art of making it last, but it was a lost cause. As soon as you acknowledge you’re in the moment, you’re out of it.
    When in it, his heart was not shattered, nor were his nerves. There was nothing haunting him from behind, nothing dark and shadowy down the road. No betrayals in the past or grizzly bear possibilities in the future. If not for the fact that it lasted less than a second, there would be nothing to be said against that moment. It was perfect. Except it was too short.
    Then it passed, and the truth of his life settled into his stomach like a clamp. It always felt like something had grabbed his stomach and was holding it too tightly. Painfully tightly. He pictured the sensation as one of those claw-foot traps people use to catch bears. But maybe he just had bears on the brain.
    Because it wasn’t really a trap holding his belly, because it was him doing the holding, it always made him feel tired.
    It was the first day of summer vacation. He allowed that thought to come in and join all the others.
    Ethan sat up and looked out the window. There were no shades or curtains on the window, because none were needed. There was