Jackson set the cat food on the floor and then went about opening a can of gumbo for himself. “Tomorrow morning bright and early, you are going home. I’ll miss you, but Miz Lucy would want you catching mice at her place and getting to know your new owners. This was just a temporary home until they could get here. You’ll have three people to spoil you, and no dogs to pester through the screen door. If you don’t like it over there, you can always run away and come back, but sneak up to the back door so you don’t have to fight with Tex.”

While his soup heated, Jackson cut a couple of thick slices of Italian bread from a loaf and laid them on a plate. Uncle D. J. had liked gumbo, both from a can and homemade, and they’d had it at least once a week. They would work all day in the shop, sometimes only exchanging a few words about whatever project they were working on, but supper had been their time to visit. That was when he’d learned that Uncle D. J. had fallen in love when he was a young man, and that only a few months before the wedding was to take place, his fiancée had been diagnosed with cancer and had died six weeks later.

He poured his soup into a bowl and carried his supper to the table. He sat down in the same chair he’d used since that first day all those many years ago when he had come to visit his uncle, and he bowed his head. After a moment of silence, he opened his eyes and raised his head.

“I always liked it that neither of us said anything out loud when we said grace,” he told the cat, who was now sitting in one of the other three chairs. “Seemed more personal that way.”

After he’d eaten supper, he took a long, cool shower. He dressed in a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a tank top, got a beer out of the refrigerator, and sat down to watch a couple of episodes of Longmire. Waylon jumped up on the sofa beside him, turned around several times, then curled up next to his thigh.

Jackson fell asleep sometime in the middle of the second episode and woke with a start when the theme music began playing at the end. He turned off the television and headed to his bedroom, with Waylon right behind him. “You better enjoy sleeping on the foot of my bed tonight, old boy. Those people over there might put you in the garage at night, and you’ll have to spend the nights alone.”