Bright morning light streamed through the bedroom window, waking Ben from his dream. Sitting up, he rubbed his toes in the plush Berber carpet before standing and slipping on a terrycloth robe.
A thin, scratchy yowl greeted him as he walked into the kitchen. He froze. It sounded like Kafka, his beloved seal-point Siamese.
He had to be hearing things. Kafka was dead.
Back at the old house, stressed by events, Ben had accidentally run over his cat in his
driveway. The accident was the final straw for a shaky marriage. His wife had left, taking his
daughter, Cathy, from him.
Shaking off his malaise, he made coffee and toast and took them out onto his patio. Passing through the sliding French door, he scanned the yard, imagining what he’d do with it one day—and froze.
Sitting among the scruffy weeds, amid brown patches of bare dirt and raggedy sunflowers, he saw a small, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl of about three, maybe four.
“Cathy?” he called.
It looked like her. Exactly. She was the spitting image of her mother.
Except that Cathy was gone and the horrible accident, his own fault, that took her from them also destroyed his marriage. His wife had moved on. So had he.
And yet, there she sat, staring at him with a dirty, tear-stained face.
Frozen, he stared back and watched as the girl opened her mouth and let out a thin, scratchy yowl. She sounded exactly like Kafka.
He stared at the little girl, knowing now that the past moves with you.
You couldn’t even leave its sounds behind.
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