Persian Penalty

“Well, I think we solved the mystery of the reviews.” Charles set Paisley on the floor so he could wrestle the doorknob with both hands. “I think it’s stu—Oh, there it goes,” he said when the door finally popped out.

“Jeez. For a minute there, I thought this was her way of getting rid of us.”

Octo-Cat sniffed hesitantly around the room, his tail almost a bristle brush of aggravation. “I wish she would’ve,” he snarked. “This place smells awful.”

“Hush, you,” I admonished with a scowl.

“Whatever,” my spoiled kitty shot back. “This one will be my bed.” He hopped up on the bed farthest the door and promptly laid out, stretching so as to take up as much of the mattress as possible.

I rolled my eyes, but he was too busy enjoying the soft bed to notice.

“Can I go out?” Paisley asked, scratching at the doorframe.

“Stay close,” I warned before sliding open the glass door that led out to the beautifully manicured property. “You don’t want to run into that mean kitty again.”

“Yes, Mommy! I will, Mommy!” she called before taking off at full speed once more.

Charles took me in his arms. “Alone at last,” he said, giving me a slow, lingering kiss.

“Kill me now!” Octo-Cat yelled.

Yup, this would definitely not be a romantic weekend. Not unless we got our cat his own room, and I just didn’t have that in the budget, unfortunately.

6

“Knock, knock.” Sharon’s singsong voice floated into our room a short while later. I turned and saw her standing outside the glass sliding door that separated our bedroom from a short walk down to the lake and its sandy beaches.

Charles yanked on the handle to open the door, and I rushed out to give her a big, fat hug. Once we’d given each other a good squeeze, I pulled back and studied her face for any hints as to what she’d learned about my missing grandmother.

She simply raised a finger and shook it at me. “First let’s get this picnic situated, and then we can dish.”

I followed her eyes toward a nearby pair of Adirondack chairs with a small wooden plank table nestled between them. On the table sat a beautiful wicker picnic basket. When Sharon said she’d be bringing dinner, I had assumed she’d pick up a pizza or something easy. I hoped she hadn’t gone to too much trouble, considering I’d already called in a huge favor from her, and our acquaintanceship was hardly even a week old.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” she said as if reading my mind. “It’s just my newly famous lobster rolls and bisque. I’m staying away from desserts of all sorts after what happened to our poor Junetta.”

I nodded stoically. It wasn’t Sharon’s fault that someone else had placed poison in her pie, but clearly the affront had taken a toll on her all the same.

“Lobster rolls!” Octo-Cat cried before zipping through the door. “No way I’m missing this!”

Paisley came surging forward from places unknown to chase after him.

“So just a light meal then,” Charles quipped as he closed up our room and then plucked the basket from the table.

“Oh, you!” Sharon trilled and hit him playfully on the chest. She wasn’t kidding about her attraction to him. Thankfully, I didn’t feel even the slightest bit jealous. I knew Charles’s heart—and his future—were all mine.

The three of us walked down to the beach, both animals circling back to follow close at our heels.

“Where’s Chessy?” I asked, remembering how inseparable Sharon had been from her fluffy white cat when last we met.

“He’s staying back in the RV. I just could not get him to agree to the harness today, and he’s not well-behaved like your Octavius. He’d run away in a heartbeat if he could. That little man of mine has an adventurer’s heart, let me tell you.” When Sharon chuckled, her billowing duster cardigan and loosely wrapped pashmina twirled around her hips and thighs.

“Well, at least one cat around here has some sense,” Octo-Cat muttered, presumably referring to that Persian from earlier.

“Mommy, that mean cat won’t bother us again, will he?” Paisley barked.

I shook my head, unable to answer in mixed company. I really liked Sharon, but she was a gossip and a future reality star. If she got word of my special abilities, they’d no doubt become front-page news at some national rag before even a full day could pass.

We reached the beach, and Sharon slipped out of her sandals, sighing happily as her painted toes sunk into the sand. “Still a bit early in the season, but, oh, it’s nice.”

Charles and I followed suit and padded after her with our bare feet as Paisley splashed around in the ebbing surf and Octo-Cat trotted after us from several yards up shore, refusing to get anywhere near the water.

“It’s like one giant litter box out here,” he mused. “It would be perfect if not for all the water.”

We stopped at an old wooden dock with a paddle boat tethered to either side. Sharon traipsed to the very end and then sat with her legs dangling toward the water.

“I hope you don’t mind, I made some supper for the critters, too.” She opened up the basket and handed me a lobster roll wrapped snugly in wax paper.

“Oh, yeah.” Octo-Cat quivered, his eyes growing comically wide. “Come to papa, you delicious little thing.”

I opened the savory-smelling package and set it on the dock in front of him, but Sharon reached over me and scooped it away before my gluttonous cat could manage so much as a single sniff.

“Almost lost your sandwich there!” she said breathlessly, then dipped her hand into the basket and pulled out a much smaller parcel. “This is for Octavius.”

I popped the lid off the small Tupperware container and set it down beside me, trying to keep my expression neutral.

“What fresh torment is this?” he snarled and stared daggers at both me and Sharon.

Paisley skipped over and stuck her snout in the mush Sharon had prepared for Octo-Cat. It appeared to be canned cat food slathered on a special type of cracker.

“Seafood medley on my own special snack biscuit recipe. Chessy loves it.”

“Chessy doesn’t have a choice, but I do.” Octo-Cat lunged at Sharon, causing her to drop the lobster roll she’d just narrowly saved from him before.

He grabbed it between those sharp, greedy teeth of his and took off running. Paisley used that opportunity to gulp down the specialty cat sandwich. Charles laughed, while Sharon looked like she was going to cry.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. “I’m much more of a bisque girl myself. I can’t wait to try yours.”

And with that, her eyes grew bright again. She talked me and Charles through the process of developing her new recipe as she ladled out a serving for each of us.

I listened to every single word, taking slow, contemplative spoonfuls into my mouth. The soup was rich and creamy, filling my stomach perfectly without the help of an added course.

I was grateful for the hot meal but had a hard time following the conversation when there was only one topic I wanted to discuss with Sharon.

When she finally paused to take a bite of her own meal, I saw my chance to get us back to the reason we’d all gathered there that night.

“So about my grandmother…” I started, then bit my lip and waited.

7

Sharon cleared her throat as she wrapped up her uneaten lobster roll and placed it back into the picnic basket. “Oh, sorry. Did you want this?” she offered with an uncharacteristic flush on her cheeks.

“Is it really that bad?” I choked out. Suddenly my chest felt heavy with the weight of an unknown shame. I’d asked for Sharon’s help because I was bursting with curiosity—not because I actually expected her to find something terrible about my missing family member.

Charles scooted along the dock until our hips were touching and then wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I’m sure it’s nothing too big,” he reassured me.

Sharon cleared her throat again. “Wellllll.” She twisted her hands in her lap and refused to meet my eye, instead gazing out across the lake as the gentle ripples reflected the sunlight.

“Please just tell me,” I begged. My stomach threatened to give up the bisque that I’d just filled it with. “I need to know,” I added softly. “Please don’t make me wait any longer.”

Sharon nodded; a tuft of her short blonde hair caught the breeze and flickered distractingly. “It took me a while to find out much of anything. She’s changed her name, you see.”

“Oh, so she remarried?” Charles asked brightly, drumming his fingers against my upper arm. “I mean, that’s probably to be expected seeing as it’s been about sixty years.”

“Her first name,” Sharon corrected.

At the same time, I said, “She and my grand-dad were never married. He was a McAllister. She was a Jones.”

“She still is a Jones,” Sharon murmured. “She was born Marilyn. Then went by Mary for a spell, and now she’s Lyn.”

“So she switched up her nickname? A lot of people do that, right?” Charles reasoned, always so optimistic. I honestly didn’t know how he did it.

“Actually, she switched up her legal name. It took some digging to find all those iterations belonged to the same person.” She paused and drew in several deep breaths.

What was coming next? I almost couldn’t stand the anticipation, no matter how brief my wait.

“Luckily—or perhaps unluckily,” Sharon continued with a sigh, “she was in the papers a lot, your grandmother.”

Charles tensed at my side, tightening his grip on my shoulder. “Why?”

“She’s lived a troubled life,” Sharon said with a grimace. “She’s done a few rounds in prison. A few in the psychiatric ward. Seems to be a bit of a bad egg.”

I stumbled to my feet. Perhaps Sharon wasn’t the friend I’d thought she was. That was my fault for trusting a near stranger with something so important.

“What? Why? Why would you say that?” I demanded, feeling outraged on behalf of a woman I’d never even met. Sharon was saying my grandmother was a bad egg, and well, we were from the same nest.

“I don’t know. The records are sealed, but I could see she got picked up once every few years. Did small amounts of time in prison, until suddenly they started sending her to the asylum instead.”

“Not guilty by way of insanity,” Charles murmured.

“Also, it’s not called that anymore,” I added spitefully.

“Sorry, I guess I’m a bit old-fashioned, and I know that’s not always a good thing. I don’t mean to make you feel bad, hunny bunny,” Sharon said, softening my reaction to her harsh choice of words. But then she said, “I don’t think you’re crazy, even if your grandmother is.”

I turned toward Charles with wide eyes. “Do you think she’s dangerous? Is that why my grandfather kidnapped his own child? To keep my mom safe?”

He shook his head slowly but didn’t glance up to meet my gaze. “I wish I had the answers for you, but there’s only one person we can really ask.”

“I found her number,” Sharon said, pulling out a business card that she’d kept tucked in her jeans pocket. It had Sharon’s info on one side and another number scrawled with a failing ink pen on the back. She handed the card to me, and I read the string of numbers over again and again. I didn’t recognize the area code, suggesting she probably moved around a fair bit, too—or had at least moved somewhat recently, even before she’d arrived in Maine.

That checked out, since the seagulls had eyes on her in the Blueberry Bay area but then lost her temporarily when she moved to Katahdin.

Just where had she lived before? And how many different places had she ended up over the years? I knew she’d lived in Larkhaven, Georgia, when my mom was born and caught up with Nan in New York when Mom was a pre-teen. But where else had she journeyed these long years apart?

“It’s a California area code,” Charles informed us. “A couple counties over from where I grew up.”

“I wonder when she lived there,” I said, turning the card over in my hand with a frown. There was so much I didn’t know about this person—this stranger. Even though we shared some DNA, I knew absolutely nothing about her. Was I crazy for pursuing this?

“Are you going to call her?” Sharon prompted, nodding toward my hands.

I took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. Yes, maybe I was a little nuts, but I’d never considered that a bad thing before. “I’ve come this far. No sense in giving up now.”

I misdialed twice before I finally got it right, and then the phone rang twice, three times… seven, eight. Nobody answered, not even the voicemail service.

“Now what?” I asked Charles as tears threatened to spill. I kept pumping myself up, only to be let down. All that adrenaline coursing through my veins didn’t just go away. I stayed keyed up for hours after each near encounter with my grandmother. I had to meet her—and soon—for my own sanity.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find her,” he promised.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Sharon said gently as she struggled to her feet and opened her arms to invite a hug. “I really wanted to have good news to give you.”

“It’s okay,” I said, hugging her once more. I couldn’t be mad at her. Not about this. Not about anything, really. It was just so hard to keep my emotions straight given how many highs and lows I’d experienced lately. I needed…

I wasn’t sure what I needed, but I had to figure that one out for myself.

“I appreciate the help,” I told Sharon, then turned to look at Charles as well, “but if it’s all right with you, I think I need some time to sit alone with my thoughts.”

8

Charles and I escorted Sharon to her car before returning to the B and B via the main reception area.

Millicent still sat in that same chair, eyes glued to the pages of her book. I don’t even think she noticed us come through—something I was grateful for.

“I know I shouldn’t say this, but I can’t wait for this whole thing to be over,” I murmured to Charles as he fiddled with the lock and key.

“You can say and feel however you want, Ang. It’s all perfectly understandable,” he assured me with a sad smile, continuing to struggle with the doorknob.

Octo-Cat moaned. “I could open that thing ten times as fast, and I don’t even have opposable thumbs.” He and Paisley had rejoined us on the walk to the parking lot, and neither seemed any worse for the wear—which probably meant that mean old Persian was off troubling somebody else for the moment.

“Be nice,” the little dog yipped. “He’s doing the best he can. Right, Mommy?”

“Well, clearly UpChuck’s best isn’t quite good enough, is it?” came the cat’s snide reply.

I pressed my fingers into my temples and rubbed. “Ugh. I thought we’d moved past that horrible nickname.”

“What?” Charles asked with a furrowed brow.

“Here. Let me help,” I said rather than answering his actual question.

I took over and struggled for a couple moments before finally wresting the lock open. Another couple—old and married from what I could tell—came down the hallway and entered their room with no problem.

“I bet that was the room we were supposed to have,” I whispered to Charles. We both rolled our eyes.

The door eased open, catching me by surprise when it finally gave way.

“Took you long enough!” Octo-Cat said, heaving a dramatic sigh as he entered the room. “Seriously, humans. What are they even good for?”

I walked in behind him and was surprised to feel a chilly wind rush past.

“Charles, I thought you closed that.” I said, flopping over on the bed nearest the door, since Octo-Cat had made it clear none of us were to mess with his bed.

“I thought I had,” he said, going over to secure the sliding door once again.

I could hear a soft swish as he flipped the lock latch back and forth. He opened and closed the glass door a few more times before turning back to face me.

“That’s odd,” he muttered.

“What is?” I asked, sitting up and petting Paisley as she climbed into my lap.

“This latch system doesn’t work.”

“So the door just slid open on its own?”

He nodded before coming over to join me on the bed. “Seems like it. I guess we can jam something in there to hold it before we go back out again.”

“Isn’t it kind of weird that one lock works too well and the other not at all?” I asked, quirking my head to the side.

Charles sunk onto the bed next to me and pulled me into his side. “Not weird. Just a simple coincidence. Now you said you needed some time alone with your thoughts. Did you mean alone together or alone alone?”

“Would it be all right if I had just a little bit of time to myself?” I asked with an apologetic grimace. It was strange how I’d been craving his company all week, and now that we were finally together, I needed to ask for space. It was nothing against Charles, of course. But Sharon had dropped a doozy on me. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to tell me over the phone.

My fiancé pressed a firm kiss into my hairline. “Tell you what, you get some rest, and I’ll head out to see if I can make some sense of Bravo’s directions. Can you text those to me again?”

I breathed a happy sigh of relief. “That would be wonderful. Thank you for understanding. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and brought up the notes app. I’d recorded the seagull’s guidance there, and now I copy-pasted it into a fresh text for Charles.

Initially, Bravo had said he would take me to my grandmother, which I thought meant he’d be joining us for the trip.

Nope.

He actually meant he would take us there with his words. One thing I’d learned in all my conversations with animals is that every single species had a different way of viewing the world. I had the least experience with birds, given their flighty nature, but I figured between me, Charles, and the pets, we’d be able to find our way.

I pushed the button to send my text, and Charles’s phone pinged a couple of seconds later.

He cleared his throat, then read aloud. “‘Follow the water until the air begins to chill. Stop at the green dumpster with the good fries.’ The good fries? What’s good to a seagull? Oh, here we go. ‘Follow the scent of fish several leagues until you reach a tan building with loose trash can lids. The dogs to the south have been restrained, so eat all you want. Short hops from here through the human encampment. Approach in a zigzag to avoid floodlights and bad air. Cross the dead river and find the target amongst the stick-colored domiciles with pink sentinels standing guard…’ Seriously?” he asked with a chuff once he’d gotten to the end. “None of this makes any sense.”