“Because I stumbled in here thinking about coffee, and then I realized we don’t have coffee. Or anything else for that matter. And he was up there plotting our demise, so I thought I should keep an eye on him.” She turned to look at Olivia, who looked . . . like she hadn’t spent the night on the couch in a sleeping bag. Every hair was in place, her skin was dewy, and her eyes weren’t remotely puffy. “How do you even look like that?”

Olivia tilted her head and blinked. Like a doll. Like a weird robot doll. “Like what?”

“My hair’s snarled, and I look like the walking dead.” She pulled at the bun she’d twisted her hair into the night before. Half of it was hanging around her face. She may or may not have drooled, and the constant waking during the night ensured the skin beneath her eyes was shadowed.

“You don’t look like the walking dead. Maybe the walking wounded.”

“Thank you, therapist,” Chase drawled, noting it was the exact description her mother had used weeks earlier. Chase had never thought about herself in that way.

Olivia looked at the cat. “Doesn’t look so mean, does he?”

“I think that’s his ploy.”

Sure enough, when Olivia moved into the kitchen past Chase, the cat arched his back and issued a panther growl. “Yeah, so let’s open the back door and shoo him out.”

“Uh, you can do that. I’ll watch from back here,” Chase said, stepping back, rubbing her upper arms.

Olivia looked at the door and then the cat, who had settled back down into a sitting position. The thing looked calm, but his tail told a different story. It lashed back and forth in an age-old warning to back the eff off. “You know, why don’t we make ourselves presentable and go into Redmond to get our supplies? I’ll leave the window cracked. Hopefully by the time we return, we’ll have electricity, hot water, and no cat.”

“That sounds better than fighting this cat, because I think he would win.” Chase left the kitchen doorway, grabbed her bag, and riffled through to find her heaviest shirt. She’d slept in her jeans because they were the warmest thing she had. She grabbed a flannel shirt and tugged it on as a jacket. Then grabbed her jacket and pulled it on, too. She combed out her hair with her fingers because she’d forgotten a brush and took her toothbrush to the half bath. Minutes later she emerged looking not much more than presentable. Which might be good since they were going to be around people. Maybe no one would recognize her dressed in modern bag woman chic.