When he opened the door it took his brain a few seconds to process to the truly outrageous tan Sally was sporting; it looked like she’d spent her entire trip with a foil-covered trifold of cardboard under her face. She beamed her extra-white-looking smile at him and went in for a hug like they were long-lost friends, but abandoned him quickly with a shriek of delight once she caught sight of the hamper.

Will sighed, because he knew what was coming. Even Marian Goodnight had cooed and cuddled over those kittens for a good twenty minutes when she’d made an excuse to drop off a package he’d missed in the vestibule. The fact of the matter was, the fucking things were cute, even when they were trying to tear holes in his new slipcovers.

Not that it seemed to matter to Nor—

“What did you name them?” said Sally, who had turned the bottom of her oversized T-shirt into a hammock and was now settling the kittens into it.

Will cleared his throat. “I didn’t name them anything.”

Sally looked up at him with wide eyes, the whites of which, like her teeth, seemed newly bright against her tan. Will hoped for her sake Dr. Abraham hadn’t seen this; he felt very strongly about sun-protection factors.

“How could you not name them?”

“I’m not keeping them. Probably the shelter will name them.”

Sally gasped. “My ex-husband must be rubbing off on you!” she exclaimed.

“I found three good ones,” he said quickly, because God. He was not getting to be like Gerald Abraham, was he? “No-kill. Lots of volunteers. Foster homes, that kind of thing.”

“You should be called Quincy,” Sally said to one of the cats, as though Will had not spoken. “And you, you look like a Francis.”

“Would you like to have a look around?” asked Will.

Sally stared dreamily at the kittens and nodded.

Once they got started, Sally rallied. The kittens sat quietly inside her makeshift hammock while Sally praised his progress, asking the kinds of questions that let him explain exactly how much work he’d been doing for all the days and nights he’d been stuck in here. He’d taken all her advice; he’d focused on making it clean, on making it neutral, on making it simple. He could hardly believe the transformation, even though he’d made it happen himself.

“Now in here,” he said, gesturing for Sally to go ahead into the front bedroom, “I still have to empty out the closet, but it’s mostly—”

“Oh, this is where you found these babies, right?” She swung her T-shirt hammock gently.

Will nodded, a dangerous, filthy static-signal kicking up at the edges of his brain as he remembered what it’d looked like, to see Nora get on all fours to investigate. He sent a silent, grudging apology to Dr. Taylor. Who was he to judge?