Page 56 of It's Always Sonny

“I forgot about that!” I say, chuckling. “You lost it. Grounded them for weeks, right?”

“As I should have! I thought it was lead paint!”

“Was Germany the house with that stray cat?”

“That’s the one.” Mom grabs a wipe and some baby oil from Lauren’s bag and uses it on Max’s face. The other kids laugh and squeal. Everyone’s cheeks are rosy from the cold front coming in, and I wonder how we’re going to deal when it hits freezing. All of the accommodations have heat, at least, but I don’t think we’ll have another impromptu game night.

Of course, there’s not a bingo square for it anyway …

“You loved that cat,” Mom said. “Our neighbors had that big, friendly dog, and you never had time for it. It was always about that cat for you.”

I chuckle. “That’s true.”

“What was so special about it? It was meaner than a two-headed snake.”

I haven’t thought about the cat in years, but Mom isn’t wrong. It was a runty, scrappy, black alley cat with a big scar across one eye that was permanently puckered. And she was mean at first. She swiped at me more times than I could count. But one day, she climbed the tree outside my window, as she had so often, but Anthony and Gabe had broken the branch she always used to get down. The cat was stuck. I ran outside and climbed up to get her down. She scratched me, but I grabbed her anyway, hung from one arm, and got us both down safely. She darted away the second I touched down, and I didn’t see her for days. I thought she vanished.

But a week later, I was eating a Popsicle on the front steps of our house on the base, and the cat came right up to me. She jumped on my lap and I stroked her fur.

When she purred, I was a goner.

“I don’t know,” I tell Mom. “The dog was too easy.”

“So it was the challenge?”

I look up at Parker clutching the rope above her like the lifeline it is. She’s at a switching point, and her body language is screaming to get off while Daniel is talking to her. Giving her a pep talk, no doubt.

“No,” I say.

“Then why?”

I think about the way she purred on my lap like it was the first time in her life she’d ever been happy. “Because she was always so careful. It was like she was terrified of making a mistake, and the one time she got caught messing up, she lashed out because she was so afraid of what would happen.” I look at my arm, running a finger over the memory of scratches that have long since healed. “I wanted her to know she was safe to be loved.”

Mom pulls me in for a side hug. “You’ve always been so intuitive. The people in your life are lucky to have you.”

A sound from overhead interrupts us. Daniel is yelling to the ropes instructor. I look up and my heart stops.

Parker has passed out.

Her body is slumped, her hands dangling by her sides, her legs off the rope. The harness is holding her, but she needs blood to her brain, now.

I’m on my feet instantly, sprinting for the ladder up to the course. My knee shrieks in pain, but I don’t care. I can’t care. Daniel and George are already pulling her safely to the landing, but I push past everyone else and am on the landing when they unhook her and bring her down.

Anthony—my metabolic scientist brother—is on the course above us. “Make sure her feet are higher than her head so the blood rushes back in. I’ll be right down.”

“I’ll call Helen!” Mom yells. Helen, Uncle Bruno’s wife, is a pediatrician.

“I’ll call Victoria!” Sienna says. Cousin Victoria is an ER nurse.

The course instructor lays Parker’s head down and props her feet against the guardrail. I remove her helmet and put my hands on either side of her ice-cold face.

“Wake up, PJ,” I say urgently. She already has a Snow White look to her, but I’ve never seen her face so white. All the color has drained out of it, and she looks so ashen, I’m struggling to breathe. I pat her cheek. “PJ. Please.”

This can’t be happening. She has to wake up.

“Parker,” I urge, patting her cheek again. I shake her shoulders. “PJ, wake up! Wake up, baby!”

Her head tips to the side and her eyelids flutter, and the movement kick-starts my heart.

---