Stray

Rain slicked the pavement like oil as I ran, each breath searing my lungs. Three years of running—from creditors, from mistakes, from the look in my mother's eyes when I told her I'd make something of myself—had taught me that movement was the only thing keeping me ahead of the debt collectors' calls and my own disappointment.

The lightning strike that knocked out power to half of Chicago was the only reason I ended up at Marcus's door at 2 AM. We hadn't spoken since the funeral, since I'd said something unforgivable about his wife, about how she'd brought this on herself. He'd opened the door anyway.

"You're soaked," he said, but he stepped aside.

His apartment was exactly as she'd left it. The same cat—a surly tabby named Buster that had once scratched my face for trying to pet him—sat on the windowsill, watching me with amber eyes. Buster was older now, grayer around the muzzle. I'd forgotten how much time had passed.

"He still remembers you," Marcus said, pouring whiskey into two glasses. "Sometimes he sits by the door like he's waiting."

"For her?"

"Maybe. Or maybe for the days when we were all still friends."

We drank in silence as another flash of lightning illuminated the room, casting our shadows huge and distorted against the wall. I thought about telling him why I'd really come back—that the cancer wasn't just taking her, that the life insurance wasn't enough, that I'd needed to borrow against the business she and I had started together, the one that collapsed six months after she died. I thought about explaining that I wasn't running anymore, that I'd come back to make things right.

Instead, I watched the cat jump down and cross the room to brush against my leg, his purr like a small engine in the quiet.

"She wouldn't want you to be alone," I said finally.

"No," Marcus agreed, staring into his glass. "She wouldn't want you to be running forever either."

The storm broke around dawn. I stayed.