He held her a long time and didn’t say anything. After a while she turned away and blew her nose, ashamed to have made a scene. She didn’t want to get out of the car, she didn’t want to look at the house anymore, it hurt too much. He touched her chin and turned her face back to him, wiped a tear away, and kissed her lightly on the cheeks and eyes. When he started the car he drove slowly on up the hill, in the direction she and Alice used to walk—up the winding street toward the Cat Museum, letting her look at the familiar neighborhood. After several blocks, at the top of the hill, he parked beside a sprawling cluster of white walls and twisted oaks. Memories of the Cat Museum came back to her all at once, so powerfully she might have really returned to the days of childhood.
The museum’s grounds crowned the hill. The red tile roofs of its white stucco buildings were patterned by the trees’ lacy shadows. Some of the buildings were low, some were two-storied. McCabe had tied existing houses and out-buildings together with garden walls and roofed walkways. On beyond the museum cluster rose the Victorian roofs of the neighborhood. She got out slowly, looking.
The iron gates stood open, and she slipped through as eagerly as she had hurried through as a child. She almost thought if she turned, Alice would be behind her, as if the two times had warped together. A cool breeze touched her, and she breathed in the sun-warmed scent of lilac.
Within the gardens, the galleries opened one to another, their white walls set at angles. She wandered, looking in through wide french doors. Sun and shadow swept across the sculptures, each on its individual white stand: a rearing stone cat, a black marble cat tumbling to catch its tail, a bronze cat hunting, a tangle of jade cats playing. Beyond the sculptures, paintings hung against the white walls, well placed, and of every school. She had a sharp memory of Alice walking away through an arch carrying her drawing pad, her long, straight hair swinging bright in the museum lights.
Where a series of sculpture shelves climbed to a niche beside a skylight, a gray cat slept. Other cats wandered the galleries and gardens. She wondered if McCabe had come here as a cat, leaping the wall at night to enjoy the vistas he had created.
When they got to work, Braden posed her in a walled garden where a window reflected two fighting bronze cats. He worked quickly, with charcoal. Then she posed beside a marble cat mirrored in the dark waters of a fish pond. As he worked, cats sauntered past her, rubbing against the sun-warmed sculpture stands. A white cat raced by, wild with play, and fled over the wall. Two striped cats chased along the top of the wall. Set into the garden walls were clay plaques inscribed with quotations. She remembered sounding out the words when first learning to read. Now, during her rest she wandered, reading them. Above a recessed bench were the words from one of the pages Mag had hidden under the dresser:
But this version was different, and not complete; the human part was left out. She thought about Bast’s Amulet and wondered if Timorell had had it when she came up through the tunnel into the streets of San Francisco. Surely, if Timorell had been wearing it the day of the earthquake, Siddonie would have taken it.
Or maybe Timorell and McCabe had secured it where Siddonie wouldn’t find it.
She wondered if the Amulet
Braden finished four sketches quickly and put his pastels away. “That’s enough—you’re pale. Do you feel all right?” He took her hand. “Let’s go get some lunch.”
She nodded, walking close to him. She was comfortable with him, as if they had always known one another.
Well, at least they had known each other longer than Braden suspected.
As they passed through the gates she was startled to see Braden’s neighbor of the flowered dresses stepping out of her car in a burst of red and orange poppies. On the other side, Wylles was getting out. Melissa drew back, but the boy had seen her.
