Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run 2)

“I’m living with Charlie now.” At Clive’s head tilt, he added, “Charlie Matheson? Who I was with when you—”

“I know who he is, son. He’s your fella, then?”

“Er. Yes?”

“You asking me?”

“No,” Rye said. Then, because he hated the idea that Clive might think he was ashamed, he clarified. “Just running fella through my dustbowl-to-contemporary-speech translator.”

Clive let out a full-bellied guffaw that turned heads in the diner. After the tension was broken Rye felt a lot more comfortable.

“So tell me about this thing you’re doing with Granger’s house.”

“I’m turning it into a cat shelter.”

Rye excitedly told Clive all about it, and about his plans for the shelter and about the catch-and-release program he wanted to start, to spay and neuter local cats who clearly enjoyed being outside cats, so they didn’t have more kittens. Clive let Rye lay out the whole plan, listening attentively and eating his bacon and spinach omelet.

When Rye ran out of steam, Clive nodded once, a soft expression on his face.

“Your granddaddy woulda liked that just fine. He had a cat. Years ago. Thing just showed up on his porch in the middle of the night, yowlin’.”

“What was its name?”

Clive snorted.

“Dirt Road. Granger called her DeeDee for short. She was a dusty little thing with a gray belly and brown paws and face and a lighter brown back. Granger said she looked like ten miles of dirt road, all crying and starving. He took her in and washed her off, fed her. Kept saying she would just stay for one more night, but she never left. Granger was a softy, really.”

An image fell into Rye’s head of his grandfather’s cat running around the house just as Marmot had. Leaping and scratching and getting into trouble. Curling up in his grandfather’s lap the way Marmot curled up in his. Granger’s shaking fingers stroking the cat’s soft back as a fire crackled merrily before them. What comfort his grandfather must have taken from her, when he had little interest in communing with others.

The ghost of a whole life suddenly unfurled itself for Rye in a way that he’d never been able to picture before. And with it came a pang of sadness that he would never know the man who lived there. The man who had given him the gift that had changed his life forever.

* * *

For a guy who’d renovated his own house into the design equivalent of khakis, Charlie was shockingly creative when it came to ideas for the kitty castle, as he’d been calling it. The cat ramps had been Rye and Charlie’s design project for the last two weeks, and they must’ve drawn them a hundred different ways—googling plans, watching videos, and dreaming wildly. to Rye’s great surprise, the biggest problem turned out to be reining Charlie in.

That was something Rye had learned since they began planning: Charlie might’ve been ruthlessly practical by default, but when Rye gave him an opportunity to do something impractical, he leapt in with both feet and gloried in doing it.

He’d proposed an elevator that sank when a cat stepped into it, depositing them on the floor and then rising again when empty. He’d proposed steps that swung out from one platform and reconnected to another when a cat pushed a lever. He’d proposed a machine that projected holographic cats for the real cats to chase.

Tonight, after Rye told Charlie about his breakfast with Clive, Charlie pulled out yet another iteration of the kitty castle. He pushed the notebook toward Rye proudly.

“It’s a windmill, like at a mini golf place, and the blades cover the tunnel entrance until the cat spins it out of the way! Also they can just spin it to play.”

It was honestly one of the more adorable things Rye had ever witnessed—the design and Charlie’s enthusiasm for the project. But he had to get it back under control.

He put his hands on Charlie’s shoulders and moved his face in front of Charlie’s. Charlie, thinking he was going in for a kiss, closed his eyes in happy satisfaction.

“Why,” Rye said, touching the tip of his nose to Charlie’s, “are you trying to kill me?”

Charlie’s eyes opened.

“Huh?”

“Baby, these plans are amazing. They’ve all been amazing. But I’m not letting you spend a ton of your own money on this build. Everything you’re drawing is way out of budget.”

Rye took a moment to marvel at how responsible and business savvy he sounded, talking about budgets.

“But, but,” Charlie spluttered. “But it’s my money.”

And that was a full-on whine.

Already, the ramps had become a labor of love for Charlie, beginning as a seed that Rye had planted and growing into a project that found him in his woodshop at all hours of the day and night, testing things, trying things.

Rye kissed Charlie. He’d intended it to be a quelling kiss, but he found himself hauled onto Charlie’s lap and kissed quite thoroughly.