Apparently no one else had seen her. If they had seen it and were secretly hiding it from her, well, that was just mean. But she knew they couldn't orchestrate that kind of cooperation. Pink hearses were the stuff of gossip and they all thrived on gossip as much as the weak coffee and vending machine snacks. Charlotte began to convince herself that the whole experience was just a dream; she couldn’t have seen a pink hearse in the parking lot. No normal person would drive a funeral limo ...

I stood there in my front yard, waiting. My hands were restless, and I jammed them in my pockets. I hated waiting, but I wasn't there alone. The cat waited with me. Not my cat, but one that could be blamed for a lot of my problems. Dumb cat. "Max, when is she coming?" I asked the cat. The early summer air was crisp but still. Soon the grass would shrivel up in the heat. A furry nuzzle against my ankle was his only response. He took a stance next to me, and I felt his fuzzy haunch on...

I stood there in my front yard, waiting. My hands were restless, and I jammed them in my pockets. I hated waiting, but I wasn't there alone. The cat waited with me. Not my cat- just one that had, if I wanted to look at this selfishly, been the root of a lot of my problems. Dumb cat. "Max, when is she coming?" I asked the cat. A furry nuzzle was his only response. Yeah, he could understand me. I suppose she'd sent him as a watchdog, er, cat, when she wasn't around. The details were...

Charlotte stood in the front yard, hands jammed in her pockets, with twilight falling around her. A charcoal cat purred and licked one paw, letting her know he could wait all day. Listening was one of Max’s skills, and that was why Em had sent him. “I’ve decided to accept.” She held her breath, and waited for the sign that she'd been heard. Only a few seconds passed before the gentle explosion of light. Charlotte had grown accustomed to the quick bursts, people appearing suddenly as if from t...

Some days Charlotte wanted to wear her sunglasses while at work. The bright clashing hues made Pet Palace look like the Taj Mahal as decorated by kindergarteners. As Charlotte arrived one such morning, half asleep and clutching a grape Slurpee, she took off her sunglasses and found the store empty. They were supposed to be doing inventory before the store opened. Gibbons would be firing people for sure if they all skipped out. It was not unexpected for one or two of them to be running late, b...

The creaking door woke her. She heard the shuffle of feet and heard the a pop as someone flicked the light switch. The florescent lights flickered, then shone at their full strength, which was a sickly pale green. Charlotte shielded her eyes with the damp cloth. She couldn’t tell what time it was. The clock on the wall had been broken for weeks, and nobody cared enough to fix it. “Randall? I thought you’d forgotten about me. How long have I been back here?” “Sorry, it’s not Randall. And I did...

Chapter Seven Every third Saturday was adoption day at the store, and the city shelter brought in dogs and cats in hopes that they wouldn't have to take them back at the end of the day. Mr. Gibbons had put Charlotte on adoption duty right after she began working at Pet Palace. He said it was because she had a talent for finding homes for the animals, but the truth was that he refused to associate with the strays or anyone who would want them. He preferred to stay in his tiny windowless office...

Months passed, and her mother stopped mentioning the therapist during her weekly phone calls. Charlotte arranged most of her visits to coincide with Joanna's bridge nights and pilates classes for good measure. Her attention turned back to Addie, where both Addie and Charlotte knew it belonged. One November morning, Charlotte awoke to a change. The image of the girl had not missed a single night since the summer, and the absence of the dreams was almost as jarring as the appearance of them had...

Dave didn’t ask for any directions as he drove through town and in to the next, so Charlotte slunk down in the passenger seat and watched the scenery roll by. Dave fiddled with the radio, never settling on one station for more than a song or two, and finally pulled into the parking lot of a tiny diner wedged between a dry cleaner’s and a barbershop. The college town was littered with coffee houses cloned after the same original full of Victorian knock-offs. But this place refused to conform t...

She climbed into her car, a second-hand four-door her father had found in a newspaper ad. There was almost always a week’s worth of trash in the floor of the passenger’s side, but it had been cleaned while she was at camp, and a tropical scent lingered. It was a cloudy Thursday morning, and she lowered the windows to invite the coolness in. The overcast sky fit her mood perfectly. Her destination was so familiar she was practically driving on auto-pilot. She knew every dip in the road, every ...