Bad Luck, Baby

2 - Bad Memories

"Kitty? Hey, little guy," I called, following the cat into the depths of my dad's house. "Where'd you go, now?"

As cute as it was to have a random cat make itself at home, my obsessive anxiety was a less welcome guest. It always showed up as soon as something unexpected happened.

What if the cat peed or pooped somewhere? Isn't the smell of cat pee hard to get rid of? What if it had fleas, and the house got infested? What if it had rabies, and that's why it was acting weird? I mean, isn't it weird for stray cats to just run into people's houses?

I stopped in the hallway and forced myself to think a rational thought.

"It doesn't have rabies, Ellie," I muttered, sneering at myself. "It's just a hungry stray. Like you."

Continuing down the darkened hallway, I called to it in a high, soft voice, wrinkling my nose and trying not to sneeze.

Honestly, a hint of cat pee would likely go unnoticed among the stale scents of a house abandoned for months. It would have stayed abandoned longer, too, if my dad's lawyer hadn't tracked me down and told me he was dead.

Halfway along the hall, I paused.

At the end, near the base of the stairs, the door to my dad's study stood ajar. I was sure I'd shut and locked it the last time I was here; it was my least favorite room in a house full of rooms I hated.

Of course the cat would go in there.

"Kitty?" I pushed the door open and flicked on the light, peering into the cluttered gloom within. It looked the same as I remembered it, the last time I saw it as a kid.

A large walnut desk sat beneath a dirty window, dusty drapes hanging to either side, shelves of books spanning floor to ceiling on every wall, and exotic rugs covering the hardwood floor. A comfortable leather reading chair occupied one corner, along with antique side tables, and green–shaded lamps. There were also a number of strange instruments on stands, including a large brass telescope, and a weird globe crisscrossed by lines that made no sense.

Unlike when I was a kid, however, and like nearly every other room in the house, it was also full of boxes and crates, stacked head high, and dust cloths covered the furniture, giving the room a ghostly vibe.

"Kitty?" I called again, shivering. The room was freezing—so cold I could see my breath. I'd think the A/C was broken, except that the house doesn't have A/C. "Come on, now, kitty. You can't stay."

My voice came out soft, barely above a whisper, as if even then I feared my dad would catch and punish me. I'd always been terrified of entering his study, though except for the fact he'd warned me not to, I couldn't remember why.

According to my mom, he hadn't even known I existed, until I was about five. Then he showed up out of the blue and demanded a paternity test. When it came back positive, he demanded custody, too.

It was a losing battle, luckily. My mom was my mom, she wasn't an addict or an abuser, and she wasn't his wife—or even his girlfriend. Meanwhile, the sum of his contribution to my life so far was a shot of sperm.

Still, he'd been persistent and unrelenting, and since the court saw no reason not to, they'd given him rights: weekdays with mom, weekends with dad.

I came to dread the weekends.

It's not like he hit me, or anything. It was just that, for as much as he insisted on having me here, it seemed he couldn't care less about being my dad. We didn't play catch, or go to baseball games (not that I'd have wanted to), or eat junk food, or even watch TV (all things my friends with separated parents told me they got to do).