Page 75 of A Forgotten Mistake

I look over at the loaf in question who is currently loafing right where I’m trying to work. Lucy Fur is there as well, looking at him with pure hatred and disdain. Her tail is flicking back and forth, but she’s like two feet from him, as though she doesn’t have the entire house to glower about. It’s fascinating how much anger is in her heart. It kind of reminds me of how I feel when forced to deal with humans.

“Margarine, you’re in the way.”

“Maybe if you stopped calling him Margarine, he’d listen,” Gabriel says as he kneels down and coos to the cat. “Come here, Butter. Who’s a sweet boy?”

I am one hundred percent sure he even leans away from Gabriel.

“I cannot feel any love for something that doesn’t love you,” I comment as I start boiling the water for some noodles to add to the dish.

“He’s a shelter kitty. He needs time to adjust,” Gabriel says, but I think he’s had plenty of time to start looking for a new forever home.

Gabriel wiggles a toy in front of Margarine, who still refuses to acknowledge any part of it. Gabriel doesn’t look upset or offended in any way. He loves anything and everything that cat does. “So after we’re finished eating, we’ll drivepastCameron’s place, that is all.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What are we going to accomplish by driving past? Do we just like wave to him all ‘Hey, I know you have a woman in your possession somewhere lol.’”

“We don’t ‘lol’ about people being abducted.”

“No, we just slowly drive by and wait for hours just in case we can wait long enough for her to get murdered. Then we’ll show up in the morning and snap our fingers in an ‘Oh darn, if only we were here yesterday’ way.”

Gabriel sighs because he knows I’m right. He’s also now lying on the floor, very much in my way as well, but doing his absolute hardest to tame the stoic beast.

“Like… I know you’re right, but I also know that we have to do things legally, which makes this whole thing difficult,” he mutters.

“I’m always right.”

“I know! That’s why it’s such a pain. I wish we could do whatever is best for the victim, but we can’t, or we could jeopardize everything when we do catch the culprit.”

“I’ll just threaten the judge, then.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure that’ll work out better than I ever imagined,” he teases.

When I nearly step back into him, I say, “You’re as bad as the cat. Stuff is starting to get hot, so roll over there.” I try rolling him with my foot to get him out of the way. He willingly rolls back a bit while grinning up at me, and I’m tempted to dive back down on top of him and say “Fuck it” to the noodles. He grabs the rug the cat is on, and since the cat is happy as can be not using his own legs, Gabriel ends up dragging the cat acrossthe kitchen with him. Lucy Fur smacks him a few times as he cruises on by, but the creature is not at all disturbed by the rug ride or the beating. It’s fascinating how little he cares. Maybe when you’re half shaved and ugly as fuck, there’s little left to care about.

Once dinner is set, we head to the table where Lucy Fur sits on her own chair and Gabriel cuts up a piece of shrimp on a plate for her. When he catches me looking, he stares at me like he’d just love for me to challenge this before he gets Margarine his own plate as well.

It’s the first spark of life Margarine has ever shown as he licks the plate clean. Lucy Fur delicately eats hers while growling up a storm, like she thinks the loaf is going to extend his legs for something other than finding his food bowl and taking a shit—which he only does right after I’ve cleaned the litter box.

“Oh my god… this is delicious.”

“If you moved in with me, you could have this every day.”

“I already get this nearly every day,” he reminds me, so really… it was a weak threat.

I twirl a noodle around my fork. “That case Matthew was talking about…”

“About the girl whose parents were killed?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to look into it?” he guesses.

“Am I allowed to?”

He eats in silence for a moment, making me think the answer to that is a pretty clear no. “I feel awful that something which should have been so innocent for a teenager has now changed her entire life,” he says. “She’ll probably always feel guilt over it… and if he went so far as to kill her parents, what would keep him from taking her now? From ruining her life even more?” Gabriel trails off. “It’s a shame she couldn’t be given closure.” His eyes drift up to catch mine. “Tell me… before you do it.”

I hesitate, unsure how I should answer this. “Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. I just do,” he says.

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