“Here you go,” I said to Pink as I poked her into the soil beside the little trailer door. “Don’t cause any trouble back here, okay?”

Chapter Eight

The Thanksgiving sign I’d made for the cat room door said DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS (AND THAT MEANS YOU!) in big bold letters.

Michael opened the door slightly more than a crack so that Mother Teresa could squeeze out.

Horatio tried to slip out behind her. “Sorry, boy,” I said as I grabbed him by his fancy collar. “No plate lapping for you this year. But we’ll work on you-know-who for next year, I promise.”

“Clean up on aisle fourteen,” I yelled after Michael and Mother Teresa as they disappeared in the direction of the dining room.

I shut the cat room door. I made a beeline for the kitchen and dumped the pile of dirty plates I was carrying on the kitchen counter. I began filling tiny dishes with cat food. John came out, placed his pile of dirty dishes next to mine, started spooning dog food into Horatio’s monogrammed stainless-steel dish.

I reached over to pick some stray food out of John’s hair. “So, your mashed potatoes were a big hit.”

“Your family is certifiable,” he said. “And don’t think for a moment that I’ve forgotten who initiated that food fight.”

“That was not a food fight in any way, shape or form,” I said. “The Hurlihy family is far too sophisticated for food fights.”

John picked some food out of my hair.

I smiled. “It’s like we’re chimpanzees eating each other’s lice.”

John grinned. “Thank you for that lovely image. I have to admit your family’s Thanksgiving is a lot more fun than mine is. Right now, my parents are having turkey Lean Cuisines and cranberry juice on their his-and-her TV tables, watching their favorite television shows and asking each other what just happened—”

“You said your sister was going there for Thanksgiving.”

“My sister and her family are probably sitting in the dining room by themselves, wondering why the hell they drove all the way to Tampa.”

“They are not,” I said.

“Okay, it’s not quite that bad.” John shrugged. “The truth is I think my parents have always been kind of a self-contained unit. I mean, they love their kids and their grandkids, but they don’t really need us. What they love most is their routine—grocery shopping on senior-discount Wednesdays, a walk on the beach on Friday mornings, their bird-watching group on the first Thursday of the month, an all-day jigsaw puzzle on Sundays. It throws them off when they have to deviate from their schedule, even for holidays.”

After a big fight not that long ago, I’d followed John to Tampa and met his parents briefly. They seemed nice. Okay, nice-ish. Okay, kind of boring.

“Promise me,” I said, “we’ll never end up like that.”