Free Cat in Glass by Nancy Etchemendy

age of six, that I had survived the worst life had to offer. Now, as I returned the mad stare of the glass cat, it came to me that I was wrong. The world was a much more evil place than I had ever imagined, and nothing would ever be the same again.
    Delia died officially in the hospital a short time later. After a cursory investigation, the police laid the blame on Freddy. I still have the newspaper clipping, yellow now, and held together with even yellower cellophane tape. “The familydog lay dead near the victim, blood smearing its muzzle and forepaws. Sergeant Morton theorizes that the dog, a pit bull terrier and member of a breed specifically developed for vicious fighting, turned killer and attacked its tragic young owner. He also suggests that the child, during the death struggle, flung the murderous beast away with enough strength to break its neck.”
    Even I, a little girl, knew that this “theory” was lame; the neck of a pit bull is an almost impossible thing to break, even by a large, determined man. And Freddy, in spite of his breeding, had always been gentle, even protective, with us. Simply stated, the police were mystified, and this was the closest thing to a rational explanation they could produce. As far as they were concerned, that was the end of the matter. In fact, it had only just begun.
    I was shipped off to my aunt Josie’s house for several months. What Father did during this time I never knew, though I now suspect he spent those months in a sanitarium. In the course of a year, he had lost first his wife and then his daughter. Delia’s death alone was the kind of outrage that might permanently have unhinged a lesser man. But a child has no way of knowing such things. I was bitterly angry at him for going away. Aunt Josie, though kind and good-hearted, was a virtual stranger to me, and I felt deserted. I had nightmares in which the glass cat slunk out of its place by the hearth and across the countryside. I would hear its hard claws ticking along the floor outside the room where I slept. At those times, half awake and screaming in the dark, no one could have comforted me except Father.
    When he did return, the strain of his suffering showed. His face was thin and weary and his hair dusted with new gray, as if he had stood outside too long on a frosty night. On the afternoon of his arrival, he sat with me on Aunt Josie’s sofa, stroking my cheek while I cuddled gladly, my anger at least temporarily forgotten in the joy of having him back.
    His voice, when he spoke, was as tired as his face. “Well, my darling Amy, what do you suppose we should do now?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. I assumed that, as always in the past, he had something entertaining in mind—that he would suggest it and then we would do it.
    He sighed. “Shall we go home?”
    I went practically rigid with fear. “Is the cat still there?”
    Father looked at me, frowning slightly. “Do we have a cat?”
    I nodded. “The big glass one.”
    He blinked, then made the connection. “Oh, the Chelichev, you mean? Well … I suppose it’s still there. I hope so, in fact.”
    I clung to him, scrambling halfway up his shoulders in my panic. I could not manage to speak. All that came out of my mouth was an erratic series of whimpers.
    “Sh, sh,” said Father. I hid my face in the starched white cloth of his shirt and heard him whisper, as if to himself, “How can a glass cat frighten a child who’s seen the things you’ve seen?”
    “I hate him! He’s glad Delia died. And now he wants to get
me
.”
    Father hugged me fiercely. “You’ll never see him again.I promise you,” he said. And it was true, at least as long as he lived.
    So the Chelichev
Cat in Glass
was packed away in a box and put into storage with the rest of our furnishings. Father sold the house, and we traveled for two years. When the horror had faded sufficiently, we returned home to begin a new life. Father went back to his professorship, and I to my