She could hardly bear to think about those three little children drowning before he could reach them, before he could race from the restaurant where he worked, through New Orleans ’s chaotic, flooding streets, battling the surging waters to the school that had been, he’d been promised by city authorities, completely floodproof and safe. He arrived as the building collapsed beneath pounding waves and surging debris, the top floor of the classroom imploding, drowning more than two dozen children-little children huddled in a refuge they’d been assured by grown-ups was secure against any storm.

Setting the letters aside, she snuggled down beneath the comforter, trying to dispel the coldness of spirit that filled her far deeper than the chill of the stormy night. Softly, she could hear the waves breaking on the shore, a strongly aggressive high tide, but not waves of hurricane force; not here on the Pacific.

Yet even as that thought comforted her, a sharper gust of wind and rain moved suddenly across the rooftops, rattling the widows.

But this was only a minor winter storm, nothing like the violence of an East Coast hurricane.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, she’d tried to reach Donnie, but she’d had no phone number or address. She’d tried through the rescue units, through the Red Cross and Salvation Army and the police, but had been unable to obtain any information. For over a year she’d tried, and then this fall, when Donnie called her, the shock of that phone call had sent her heart pounding.

He had followed up with a letter, and then two more. And now here he was, under her own roof, and safe.

But, Cora Lee thought uneasily, life was never safe.

Nor was it meant to be. Anything could happen, any life could take a disastrous turn, just as any sea could turn violent. Even the tamer Pacific could flood the land, she supposed, under the right conditions. Listening to the heavy waves of the full tide, she wondered how far up the sand they were breaking tonight, and she imagined them lapping up onto the street, at the end of Ocean Avenue where the asphalt ended at the sand beach. But not here, she thought stubbornly, willing herself into a sense of security, yet at the same time wondering perversely if, in the distant future, the seas would indeed take back the West Coast.

That was the way the world worked, she thought sleepily, in gigantic cycles of change.

But that would be centuries from now, she thought as she dropped away into sleep; everything about the earth was ephemeral, each in its own time and cycle, nothing on this earth was meant to be forever.

Except, Cora Lee thought, our own spirits. Our spirits never die, they simply move on beyond the earth’s cycles, to a realm we can’t yet see. And in the deep, windy night Cora Lee slept.

T HE GRAY TOMCAT lay on his back, his four white paws in the air, his sleek silver body stretched out full length across the king-size bed, forcing his sleeping human housemate to the edge. Clyde Damen’s left arm hung over the side, his knuckles resting on the cold hardwood floor; all night Joe Grey had been nudging him away from the center; all night Clyde had unknowingly given, inch by inch, to the tomcat’s stubborn possession. Now, as Joe lay contentedly snoring, pressing his paw against Clyde ’s shoulder bidding for ever more space, suddenly he jerked wide-awake and flipped right side up, intently listening.

The sound was soft.

It came from the roof above. The rhythmic thumping of an animal racing across the shingles.

The next instant, the running paused. He heard a small window slide open just above him. Then the familiar flapping of his plastic cat door that led from his rooftop cat tower down through the ceiling onto a wide rafter in the next room of the master suite.

Whoever had entered was now inside the house. Cat or raccoon, poised on the rafter above Clyde ’s desk in the adjoining study.

No strange cat came into Joe’s personal territory without serious damage. A raccoon or possum entered only at risk of its life.

The flapping of the cat door slowed and stilled. Then a hard thump as the intruder dropped down from the rafter onto Clyde ’s desk. Joe crouched to leap, his gray fur bristling, crouched to do battle when he saw her…

Her yellow eyes were huge as she leaped from the desk, her dark, fluffy tail lashing and switching as she came racing into the bedroom and hit the bed leaping over Clyde wild with panic and fear, talking so fast that he could understand nothing. Before he could make sense of what she was trying to tell him, she was off the bed again in a froth of impatience and back onto the desk, where she hit the speaker button, shouting into the phone.

“A dead man, dead with a shot in his head in the plaza under the Christmas tree and a little child in his arms scared and crying. Hurry! Oh, hurry, Mabel, before the killer comes back! Tell them to hurry!” And even as Joe leaped to the desk beside her, hearing the dispatcher’s familiar voice, they heard the first siren leave Molena Point PD, and then the beeping of a rescue unit careening out of the fire station. Kit’s eyes were black with fear, she trembled against him crying, “The child, Joe. The little child…”

“Tell me on the way,” Joe said as he sailed to the rafter. Together they crowded out Joe’s cat door and through his tower to the roof-where Kit bolted away, Joe racing after her across the shingles, down to Clyde’s back patio wall and up again to the two-story wall that separated their patio from the shopping plaza.

When the plaza was originally planned, both Clyde and the tomcat had fumed because the wall proposed along their back property line would block their view of the green hills that rose to the east of the village and hide the sunrises they both enjoyed. Clyde had said the wall would destroy property values along the entire street, but that hadn’t happened.

With Ryan Flannery’s innovative design and construction, their scruffy backyard had been transformed into a handsome outdoor living area, a private retreat clearly defined and sheltered by the white plaster wall along which Joe and Kit now raced, at last dropping down onto a roof of the plaza shops. Kit never stopped talking, blurting out the details of the dead body in such a garble that Joe had a hard time making sense of what she was trying to tell him. For a moment he saw the plaza as it had been late that afternoon, hours earlier, when he and Kit and his tabby lady, Dulcie, had sat atop the wall watching the procession of white-robed carolers come up Ocean Avenue from the Community Church, gliding regally in their long robes to the little park across from the plaza. In the last rays of winter sun, they had stretched out on the roof tiles enjoying the Christmas carols, and the Christmas tree that rose beside them, its decorations a bright feast of color, the rocking horse and oversize toys richly painted. But now, just after midnight, the little park was dark and deserted, and the lights of the tree shone even brighter-though not as bright as the red strobe lights that pulsed atop the rescue vehicle that had backed in among the gardens, and the half-dozen squad cars parked at the entry to the plaza-and all across the shadowed gardens, uniformed cops moved fast, the beams from their flashlights swinging into shop entries and in through shop windows, picking out rich wares and searching the shadows within.

The ambulance stood with its back door open facing the Christmas tree. A stretcher stood on the sidewalk. Both were empty.

“So where’s the victim?” Joe said, studying Kit. “You said there was a body under the tree, and a clinging child.”

“It was there! And the child was there. Maybe in the ambulance?” Kit said hopefully, crouching to peer deeper in through the van’s open door.