The Bone Bed

the door shut with my hip as Sock’s nails click over hardwood from the direction of the living room. Benton isn’t here. I can feel Shaw tense up inside the towel as Sock appears along the hallway, and I can’t properly greet him.
    “We have a visitor,” I talk to our rescue brindle greyhound, who has a graying muzzle and is never in a hurry. “And you two are going to be friends.”
    I turn on lights as I pass through rooms, and inside my kitchen of cherry cabinets and stainless-steel appliances I set down shopping bags and shut Shaw inside the pantry so she doesn’t wander off or hide. I take Sock out to the backyard, where my rose garden has lost its last blooms and the stained-glass window in the stairwell is backlit and vibrant. I apologize to Sock for getting home so late, and I know from e-mails that the housekeeper last let him out at five and gave him several treats. But he hasn’t been fed, unless Benton took care of it, and I feel like a negligent mother.
    Sock is a lean, long-legged silhouette sniffing his pointed nose, moving like a shadow through the yard with its stone wall that neighborhood children like to climb over, and he has his favorite spots where there are no motion-sensor lights. Then he follows me back inside, and I feed him and pet him and begin to fill a sink with warm water as I gather towels and wonder where Benton is.
    “I haven’t had a cat in a while,” I talk to her as I retrieve her from the pantry and she purrs. “And I know you aren’t going to be happy, but try to think of it as a spa.”
    I pull a chair out from the kitchen table and place her in my lap and clip her claws.
    “Well, it seems you’ve had that done before, but maybe not a bath. Cats hate water, or that’s what we’re told, but tigers like to swim, so who knows what’s true.”
    I put on rubber gloves and lower her into the warm water, lathering her with flea shampoo and finishing with oatmeal, and she looks at me with her big, round eyes and I start to cry.
    I don’t know why.
    “You’re quite the sport.” I rub her with a big, soft towel. “I’ve never seen a cat that’s such a good sport.”
    I wipe my eyes.
    “You’re more like a dog.” I look at Sock, who is in his bed near the door. “Both of you orphaned rather much the same way.”
    I cry some more.
    “The people you were with aren’t around anymore, and then I bring you home with me and I realize it’s not the same.”
    I can’t begin to imagine what animals remember or know, but Shaw may have been Peggy Stanton’s best friend and saw who killed her and can’t tell me. She can’t tell anyone. Now this mute witness is inside my house, sprawled out on her back on top of a towel, in a position no dignified cat would ever be in. I close the pocket doors and look in the freezer for what I might warm up, and I’m not interested in any of it. I open a bottle of Valpolicella and pour a glass, and decide on fresh pasta with a simple tomato sauce, and I return to the pantry. Shaw is by my feet.
    I retrieve cans of whole peeled tomatoes and melt salted butter in a saucepan and add an onion sliced in half. She rubs against my legs, purring.
    “If Benton were here we might grill Italian sausage outside,” I say to the cat. “Yes, it’s cold and wet, but that wouldn’t stop me. Don’t look worried. I won’t. Not out there in the dark all alone.”
    It enters my mind that Machado hopefully has left, and I remember to reset the alarm, and I boil salted water. I set the coffee table in the living room and turn on the fire, and I drink more wine and try Benton several more times. His phone instantly goes to voicemail. It’s now close to one a.m. I could call Machado, but I don’t want to ask him where my husband is. I could call Douglas Burke, but hell would have to freeze over first, and I turn off the stove. I sit in front of the gas fire with Shaw in my lap and Sock snuggled next to me, both of them sleeping, and I drink, and when I’ve drunk enough I call my niece.
    “Are you awake?” I ask, when Lucy answers.
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “This is voicemail. How can I help you?” she says.
    “I know it’s late.” I hear someone in the background, or I think I do. “Is that your TV?”
    “What’s going on, Aunt Kay?” She’s not alone, and she’s not going to tell me.

twenty-seven
    I WAKE UP WITHOUT THE ALARM AND FOR AN INSTANT don’t know where I am or who’s in bed with me. Moving my hand under the covers, I