Beauty & the Beasts Read Online Free

“Well.” Her customary briskness returned. “I was simply wondering if a summer visit would be convenient for you. Perhaps in July. I thought I might stay several weeks.”
    Madeline turned her back on the customer. Severalweeks? They hadn’t spent more than a week in the same house in the past fifteen years! Not that they argued or did anything else dramatic; it was just that they had little to say to each other. Or too much, which amounted to the same thing, as none of it could be said. Not if they were to maintain their pretense of a normal mother-daughter relationship.
    “Several weeks?” Madeline said, letting no more than faint surprise sound in her voice. “Is this a special occasion?”
    “No, not really.” Gloria Howard hesitated. “I just thought…well, we see so little of each other. And I’m not getting any younger.” This last was said lightly, as though she meant it as a joke, but Madeline heard the loneliness underlying her mother’s usual attempt to hide any real emotion.
    “Is there something wrong?” The strength of her fear caught her unprepared. What if her mother had cancer or a heart condition? What if she was dying? Madeline edged around again to keep her face averted from the customer who was browsing her way through the store. “Are you sick?”
    “No, no, nothing like that. I’d enjoy seeing you, that’s all.” Her mother’s voice cooled. “But if you already have plans…”
    Madeline was being let off the hook. All she had to do was say, Yes, I’m afraid I do. Then make something up. Suggest a shorter stay. Or that they meet at a nice resort, like Rosario in the San Juans, for a pleasant weekend as they’d done before.
    But the sharp fear and the thought, What would I do without my mother? had left a residue, an achethat made her feel like crying. The words “Oh, I’m sorry,” wouldn’t come.
    “Mom, I have no plans,” she heard herself say. “You’re right. It’s been ages. July would be great.”
    “I’ll let you know exactly when I’ll be arriving.” Back to normal now, her mother sounded as if she were concluding plans for a business meeting. “And of course, I’ll bring my allergy medicine.” A pause. “How many cats do you have now?”
    After a brief mental review, Madeline decided not to mention the six kittens currently in her guest bathroom. They’d be gone before July. “Seven. Only one more than last year.”
    “So long as I can keep them out of the bedroom…”
    It was all Madeline could do to hide her irritation. “You know you can. Mom, I’d better go. I have an appointment.”
    Leaving Lily to handle the last hour and close up the store, Madeline hurried out to her Subaru station wagon, parked in one of two slots behind the building.
    Several weeks. Dear Lord. She started the engine with an unusually vehement roar. How was she going to survive?
    The drive took her about twenty minutes, which gave her plenty of time to brood. A year before she had bought her first house ever, in White Horse, a small town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Today she turned off the highway before she reached the town limits and followed a narrow, winding country road to the shelter.
    Where the gravel drive turned into an opening in a split-rail fence, a discreet hand-painted sign showed a black-and-silver tabby curled around the words Ten Lives. The shelter itself, housed in a large 1950s rambler, was hidden from the road by a stand of alders clothed in silver-green leaves that rippled in the breeze.
    Madeline parked in front of the detached garage beside Joan’s van, which had the same tabby painted on the side. No unfamiliar cars, thank God; she’d cut it close, arriving only five minutes early.
    In fact, she was just closing her car door when a canopied pickup pulled in and stopped right behind her station wagon. Wearing brown cords and a khaki shirt, Eric Bergstrom climbed out slowly. She guessed he was no more excited about meeting her again