“I saw an ad for him in town. Some family was giving him away because their kid’s allergic, and I thought, why not? We could use something cute and fluffy around here,” Mrs. Keller says from behind them. “I’ve always loved cats. Had them growing up, but Nicholas isn’t an animal person. He’s warmed up to him, though. Look how happy he makes Suzy.”

“I love Tiger,” Suzy repeats gleefully as its purrs turn into a vibration, a motor. She hugs the cat to her again.

“And hearing that from Suzy doesn’t get old. What a relaxed kitty he is, right?”

It gets up from Suzy’s lap and stretches, claws arching out of its paws. It stalks over to Annie and rubs itself against her leg, its tail swishing. Annie steps back, bristles, her leg itchy from its touch.

“You’re not allergic, are you?” Mrs. Keller sits on the floor, letting the cat crawl into her concave lap. Suzy crawls after it, nestling herself against Mrs. Keller’s rib cage poking out from her satin pajamas. She isn’t wearing a turban, and her head glows in the natural light, blue and translucent like a snow globe. Annie wants to shake it, see her brain rattle inside.

“No, I’m not allergic.” It would be easier to say she were, wouldn’t it? But what if she got thrown out instead of the cat? Suzy, Mrs. Keller, and the creature sit there, the three of them a sordid Virgin with her infant Christ and perhaps a fuzzy lamb. A painting Annie saw in her grandmother’s house years ago, the light dancing atop their heads. The image is too perfect, so picturesque, and Annie knows nothing on Earth can look this sacred unless it’s a harbinger of something else, a bad omen from the Devil himself, as her grandmother would say.

Ever since that night when she was spited, scratched by the dying cat she was trying to help, Annie has hated them, their tiny, mean eyes. Their lack of loyalty. Annie can’t understand them; she can’t give them love and expect love in return.

Tiger is a Trojan horse and Mrs. Keller is at fault for bringing it into the home.

Only Mr. Keller asks Annie about her holidays, stopping her in the hallway as she’s picking up toys. He’s in his bathrobe, his eyes vacant, his breath sour. “They were fine. Not too eventful. How about yours?” she says nonchalantly, accidentally squeezing a stuffed octopus too hard, its squeak echoing through the hall.