“Now,” he said sternly, setting the kittens inside the stuffed-shirt hamper they still preferred as a resting spot, “you gotta behave if you want treats.”

Three days ago he might’ve chastised himself for engaging in the absolutely ridiculous process of negotiating with these two tiny terrorists, but by this point he’d abandoned all pretense of normalcy within these walls. This wasn’t even that high on the list of weird shit he’d done over the last few days. Other examples included: borrowing two shallow dishes (decorated with the painted faces of characters from The Wizard of Oz) from Mr. and Mrs. Salas to help the kittens eat more comfortably; accepting a gift of three PVC pipe scraps from Jonah, who’d been right on in assuming that the kittens would like to crawl through and climb over them; drinking craft beer with Benny in the backyard while putting out carefully spaced out “food incentives” for the deadbeat mom cat; and following the directions provided in another note—this one, hand-delivered, with a shy smile—from Emily Goodnight, who had advice on which of his three plants should be kept out of reach with cats in the house.

This didn’t even count all the times he’d thought about going up to Nora’s apartment.

Go up there and knock, the static part of his brain would think. Take the kittens. Make her laugh like that again.

Ask her why she’s stayed away.

Ask her why she’s given up.

Of course that had to be the static talking, because what did he care if she’d given up? In fact, her giving up—no sabotage, no scheming, no nothing—was great. Her giving up meant he was getting back to normal. This morning, in fact, he’d called up the pervert veterinarian himself, who’d all but owned up to blowing smoke the other day—the mother cat coming back had always been a long shot, especially since the kittens had obviously been weaned early, even before Nora and Will had found them. Probably, Dr. Taylor had said, she’d simply moved on, and that meant Will could do the same, rehoming the kittens or placing them with any one of the area rescue operations he’d already spent a bunch of time looking up.

With that done, there’d only be the apartment left. Any minute now, Sally no-longer-Abraham—who’d checked on Will’s progress every few days, even on her vacation—would arrive to look over his almost-finished product, and once she gave him the thumbs-up, he’d list the unit for rent. In two days he’d be back at work, a newly free man, and he wouldn’t have the time to think about these kittens or Donny or his neighbors or Nora Clarke.

It would be so normal.

“I’m serious now,” he said to the wide-eyed kittens, when Sally’s knock came. “Don’t embarrass me.”