Page 198 of The Final Cut

I sit to Delia’s left because someone needs to balance the table, and also because if anyone decides my sister looks like an easy target, I want him to have to look past me first.

Sonny sits beside me.

She has said almost nothing since she arrived, which is extremely alarming from Sonny and therefore probably proof of the apocalypse. She came in after receiving the edited version of events, which included Cal is alive, I am not in immediate danger, and please do not panic.

She panicked on a professional level. Then she came.

Now she wears sunglasses, a sundress, and the expression of a woman who has walked into a criminal matriarchy before noon and decided that everything was fiiiine but the food better be good.

Homer prowls beneath the table on his little black leash, regarding the restraint as a personal insult against both his freedom and his ancestors. He has already flopped onto his side twice, refused to move for three minutes, attacked a chair leg, and attempted to climb the hem of Delia’s dress. The white cross in his orange fur catches the sun every time he rolls over to prove gravity has wronged him.

Sonny watches him drag himself dramatically across the tile.

“I’ve decided your cat is a performance artist.”

“He’s processing trauma.”

“He’s orange; he doesn’t know what trauma is.”

“He’s orange; he is the definition of trauma.”

Delia looks down as Homer stretches one paw onto her bare foot and digs in one needle claw. She doesn’t move him. Her mouth curves faintly.

“He really does look like her.”

“Our cat?” I ask. “Looks like who?”

Delia nods. “Mr. T.”

I frown. “Mr. T was a boy.”

Marisol’s fork stills over her plate.

Then she looks toward the open terrace doors, where Deacon stands just inside the house with Nash and Ever, pretending not to listen and failing because no man in my life respects conversational privacy.

“Oh,” Marisol says softly. “Deacon didn’t tell you?”

I turn.

Deacon’s face goes blank in a way I immediately distrust.

“Tell me what?”

Homer bites his leash and growls. Deacon says nothing.

Marisol sets her fork down. “The cat was female.”

I stare at her. “Mr. T?”

“Your father named her before anyone knew better. Orange females are less common, so he assumed. By the time we found out, he refused to correct it because you both already answered to the name.”

Delia’s eyebrows pull together. “She was a girl?”

“Yes.”

I look down at Homer, whose entire personality suggests gender matters far less than crimes. I pick him up and start inspecting, wondering if Homer’s actually a boy cat, after all. “Okay. That is upsetting on several levels, but why would Deacon know that?”

Deacon’s jaw grinds. “Mari⁠—”