I hadn’t missed her use of the past tense when she’d said worked. “Newspapers are going through tough times,” I said. “I don’t want to pry, but I do care, and-”

“Yes, I lost my job. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. Show me the rest of this place. Daddy talked so much about the plans, the lake, and… you. Since I have nothing but free time now, I thought I’d find out about his life before he died.”

I heard the catch in her voice, and it dawned on me that though my grief over losing John had begun to ease, hers might only now be kicking in.

She turned and pointed across the hall. “Is this your bedroom?”

“Yes,” I said.

In the master bedroom, all three cats lay on the king-size bed. This time, they didn’t run off.

Kara stopped a few steps into the room and whispered, “How Daddy loved those cats.” She approached them and held out her hand. Merlot stood and arched his back to stretch and then sniffed her fingers. He rubbed his head along the side of her hand. Cats know when a person needs comfort, and Merlot was great at offering affection whenever I was upset or troubled. He was doing the same for Kara now.

She petted him for a few seconds, but then the photograph on my bureau caught her eye-the last picture of John and me, taken on one wedding anniversary when we’d visited Ireland.

She walked around the bed and picked up the photo. Though her back was to me, I heard her say, “I don’t have this picture.”

She lowered her head, and her shoulders began to shake with sobs.

I went over and rested a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened and continued to hold the framed picture tightly. At least she didn’t step away from my touch.

My search for information concerning the professor was forgotten. For the first time since I’d married John, Kara and I talked about him-for two solid hours. But she was still as standoffish as she’d been during every holiday or vacation we’d shared together while she was in college and after. Plus I was stuck with my original assessment that she had only begun to grieve her enormous loss. She’d worshipped John and had trouble with my marrying him from the beginning. I tried over and over again to befriend her, made her gifts, called her, sent her cards, but I could never break through the wall she’d built between us. But that didn’t mean I stopped trying. Oops. Except for the last year and a half. Yes, I’d allowed my own grief to consume me, had cut myself off from the world.

During our conversation, I’d managed to get Kara to eat a tuna sandwich. I didn’t ask, just made us both one and put hers in front of her. When she would come home for college semester breaks, usually with two or three friends, I could put anything to eat in front of her and it would be gone in fifteen minutes.

Now, between bites, words poured out of her like a stream that had been dammed up since her father’s death. But she never made eye contact with me. That wall remained between us.

When she finally seemed to be finished talking, at least for the time being, I asked whether she’d like to visit my new foster children. One thing I was certain about Kara-she did love animals. She’d had a little mutt for a while but had to find him a home when she moved to a place where pets weren’t allowed.

Soon we were down in the basement sitting next to where Dame Wiggins and her brood lay on the quilt I’d brought down last night. And since I left the door open, Chablis joined us. Her wish to visit these strangers had finally come true.

I told Kara about the suspicious death and what had led up to it, but she was so taken with the kittens, I wasn’t sure she heard a word. And though I expected a hissing face-off between Wiggins and Chablis, it didn’t happen. Chablis took her time getting close, and just as I finished my story about the events of the last three days, my cat did something that totally amazed me. She curled up on a corner of the quilt near Wiggins’s tail and began to groom her new-found friend.

“This shouldn’t happen,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Kara stroked Wiggins’s head.

“Not so much as a hint of a catfight-but then Dame Wiggins is probably the most unusual cat I’ve encountered, and Chablis is as gentle as Mercy Lake at dawn. Dame Wiggins did lead me to her litter, while most cats would have done just the opposite. This pretty calico seems to have a keen sense of what’s safe and what’s not.”

“Dame Wiggins? What a funny name. She obviously understands that Chablis is no threat,” Kara said. “But I could have told her that right away. Chablis is a sweetheart.”

I smiled. “She is that.”

My cell phone rang for the second time today, and I saw Tom Stewart’s caller ID after I dug it out of my pocket. I answered with “Hey there. What’s up?”

“What’s up is that I’m at your front door, but no one’s home. I wanted to talk to you about last night, and I even brought coffee,” he said. “Where the heck are you?”

“I’m home, just didn’t hear the doorbell. I’ll be right there.” I closed the phone and looked at Kara. “A friend of mine is here. Do you mind if we visit?”

She never took her eyes off the cats. “No problem. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay here with the kittens.”

I smiled at Kara and went upstairs. A minute later, I let Tom in, and as he handed me a latte from Belle’s Beans, he said, “Whose car is that in your drive?”

“Kara Hart. John’s daughter,” I said.

“Oh. He had kids?” Tom said.

“Just Kara,” I answered. I didn’t talk about John with Tom, didn’t really talk about him or Kara with anyone.

Merlot and Syrah appeared, and they sauntered up to Tom and began sniffing his jeans for traces of Tom’s own cat, Dashiell.

He handed me his coffee and knelt to pet them. “Kara came loaded, that’s for sure.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Her car is packed to the roof with stuff,” he said.

“Really? Maybe Mercy is on the way to wherever she’s headed,” I said.

“Mercy isn’t on the way to anywhere, Jillian. It’s a destination.” He rose and took his coffee. “Let’s talk about last night. I want to hear all about this latest mess you’re involved in straight from the horse’s mouth.”

We went to the living room, but I was still processing that one little sentence.

It’s a destination.

Tom Stewart sat across from me in my living room while I related yet again all that had happened in the past few days. Tom is a great listener. Maybe working in security and doing PI work helped him hone those attentive skills, or maybe it was his former job as a police officer-the job he refused to talk about. I can’t fault him there, since I’m tight-lipped on certain subjects myself.

But I was surprised when I finished telling my story. He didn’t start questioning me about the professor but rather said, “What’s with the daughter?”

“Kara? She lost her job. She’s a reporter, and I guess no one is reading the newspaper anymore,” I said. “But what about the professor and-”

“What newspaper?” he said.

“The Houston Press.”

“How old is she?” he asked.

“Twenty-eight. No, twenty- nine. Seems I lost track of a year there,” I said. Had I even sent Kara a birthday card the year John died?

“You were a stepmother to someone only twelve or thirteen years younger than you? How did that work out?” he said.

No one, not even John, ever asked me that. “Kara was a challenge. I tried. I’m still trying.” But was I a lot like Kara? In protection mode? I had kept Tom at a friendly distance after we’d met last fall. I knew he wanted our relationship to be more than platonic, but I wasn’t ready then. And what about now? I still wasn’t sure.

“So Kara is-”

“Right here. What about me?” Kara said.

I wondered how long she’d been standing behind the breakfast bar that separated the living room and kitchen.