In the succeeding pages, she found no further mention of the sculpture. Braden had come in; the two men sat at the other end of the office deep in conversation. She felt unnerved to see him talking comfortably with a Netherworlder: how strange that the two worlds kept pushing together, flowing together. She had thought of Braden as totally removed from the realms of the Netherworld, but now that separation seemed less severe.
Wednesday, January 12:
Tim’s husband saw her on the street yesterday. He could see that she was pregnant and he thought the child was his. She told him it is not, that she is not his wife anymore, not in her eyes. She was in a rage when she got back to the apartment; she did not like having such anger while she carried the child. She made spells to drive the anger away.
Thursday, February 16:
Our baby was born at one o’clock this morning in a small hospital in Marin County. We were concerned about Tim going into a hospital, but Rhain knew some people, a doctor we could trust. And I was in the room, whispering spells to keep her and the baby from changing. Tim’s labor was relatively easy. Our child is the most beautiful little girl, with lovely calico hair. A nurse said her hair would turn the right color soon, not to worry. We laughed about that. We named her Melissa. Melissa McCabe. Tim made a quick recovery; we were out of the hospital and back in the apartment the next afternoon. When Alice came to visit she was ecstatic with the baby. Melissa took to her, reaching for her with a little mewling cry that startled Tim, but it was only a human baby cry. Of course Alice doesn’t suspect.
Melissa turned forward to the last two entries.
Wednesday, August 9:
Something is happening—the common street cats sense it. All morning they have been out on the streets, acting strangely, searching restlessly for places to hide, then moving on. Dogs run the streets nervously. The earth is trembling, though so far only we and the animals can feel it. I am afraid for Tim and Melissa. I will not leave them.
Saturday, August 12:
The trembling was three days ago. My nerves are like hot wires, and not only with fear of the physical damage. I cannot help but equate the earth’s trembling with forces of evil, as my grandfather believed.
But this is not the Netherworld, and the trembling has settled now; I will work on the Marin house today only because Tim insists.
The empty pages that followed should have been filled with their lives together, with their love, with their baby growing up, learning to walk and talk, learning to live as McCabe and Timorell did, both as cat and as human.
She imagined too vividly her father falling from a rooftop, twisting, fighting himself, then hit by falling bricks. She tried not to see Timorell sprawled under the fallen bookcase in the wrecked apartment. She was trembling with pain for them, wanted to weep for them.
When Rhain rose, she said, “I must give the journals back.”
“It is only a formality. They have been safe here for a long time.”
