Pulling on the handle to be sure the lock was engaged, she turned and glanced down the street. Finley's was one of several small shops just off Sarasota's the main shopping district. There was a small combination deli, grocery and ice cream shop next door, a drugstore and souvenir shop the next door down, and a fairly exclusive dress shop next door to that. This little row of shops was far enough off the main drag to have the marginally lower rent of the slightly less desirable location, but close enough to get the benefit of the foot traffic from the more expensive shops. It was an ideal location as far as Sarah was concerned.

There were several nice restaurants and bars in the area, and there were usually enough people around, even late in the evenings, that she didn't feel uncomfortable when she left the store after dark to walk home. Tonight, though, it seemed unnaturally quiet, with no couples walking down the sidewalk arm in arm, no groups of laughing teenagers exiting the ice cream shop. It was eerily quiet, as a matter of fact, and dark, with no moon in the sky.

She thought she saw a shadow in the distance by a row of parked cars that might have been the man from the bookstore, but with no moon and only the streetlights for illumination, she couldn't be sure. It didn't matter anyway--what was she going to do, call for help because a guy was a little offbeat and wasn't dressed like a regular tourist?

Sarah had a Volkswagen beetle--a chartreuse one--that she drove to work occasionally, but parking was such a pain and her little house so close that she almost always walked to work. She had today, but as she turned toward home, she was wishing she could jump into a car and slam down the lock buttons. Oh well. No sense dwelling on the impossible. She settled her bag more firmly on her shoulder and set off for home. It was only a few blocks.

She could hear the ocean lapping at the beach on the other side of the street, but apart from that, the night was almost completely silent. A few streetlights cast a watery yellow glow onto the sidewalk, and she counted them by habit, her ritual as she walked home each evening. There were seven of them on her way home; lucky seven. As she passed below the third one, it flickered, buzzed for a moment, then went dark with a hiss, making her gasp. Nice dramatic moment, Sarah thought. The perfect finale to the bookshop scene. Well done," and imagined giving a standing ovation to whoever, whatever, orchestrated events like this. Surely there must be someone, things like that were just too perfect. She shook her head, and wondered if the man was still back there, or if he had gone home or gone somewhere, back from wherever he had come.

She felt a little prickle on the back of her neck, as if someone watched her, but she refused to give in to the temptation to turn around and look. She felt like a child, haunted by a spectral "boogie man," and she had a sudden impulse to pick up her skirts and run for home.

She didn't run, but she definitely hurried the last block, wrapping her hand firmly around the keys in her pocket so she would be ready to stick the house key in the lock as soon as she cleared the porch. The house was dark--she'd forgotten to leave a light on again. Feeling along the wall for the switch that turned on the lamp inside the door, she nearly fell as something streaked between her legs and out the front door.

"Dinah!" she shouted. "Dinah, get back in here!" The cat didn't come back, though, and since she was as black as the night, there was no way Sarah would be able to find her in the dark. "Fine, stay out there, then," she said, and closed the door.

Dinah was her cat, as opposed to Sophie, who she thought of as the "office cat." The two had never met, and she doubted they ever would, although she had briefly entertained the idea of co-mingling them--taking Dinah to work some days, and bringing Sophie home sometimes to sleep in the bed with them. But she never had. It would have been easy enough, but she didn't really want to upset either of them, and she had a feeling they wouldn't get along. Sophie was getting on in years and Sarah thought of her as she might an elderly aunt--sedate, solemn, easily disturbed by changes in routine. Dinah, on the other hand, was young, only a little over two years old, and still possessed of the exuberance and belief in invulnerability of the young.

She'd shown up on Sarah's doorstep a few weeks after she'd moved into the house; Sarah had nearly stepped on her as she'd gone out for the mail early one morning. The tiny black kitten lay curled in a ball on the doormat, and when Sarah stumbled over her, only looked up with hopeful eyes and a tiny "Mew?" She had lived with Sarah every since, keeping her company during the long dark nights, and occasionally escaping, as tonight, to prowl the scrub and seagrass at the edge of the beach.

Even though Sarah doubted there was anything out there big enough to carry off a cat, she didn't like having Dinah outside. Not that there was anything she could do about it now. She could call her until she was hoarse, but she knew she wouldn't come. Let her have her adventure. She was sure she'd find her curled up on the doormat in the morning.

* * *

Dumping her bag on the floor inside the front door and kicking off her sandals, she padded into the kitchen in her bare feet. She opened the refrigerator and took stock, pulling out an apple, a brick of cheese in a plastic bag, and a half-empty bottle of white wine. Tucking the wine bottle under her arm, she found a box of crackers and a wine glass in the cupboard, then carried everything into the living room, where she put it on the little wooden table beside her favorite chair, a chintz covered upholstered one that sat in the corner by the back door. She had her special little corner built there: the chair and a needlepoint footstool, a small round table beside the chair with a lamp, a stack of books on a shelf underneath, and an afghan flung over the back of the chair for the nights when it seemed like too much trouble to get up and go to bed. She needed to stop doing that--one of the many things. She needed to start going to bed "at a decent hour" (as her mother would say) instead of falling asleep in the chair with a book in her lap. She took a bite out of the apple.

She also knew she should have a "proper" dinner, as her mother would also say, but that was both the blessing and the curse of living alone--she seldom took the trouble to cook for herself, and since there was no one else there to cook for, either, well, cooking just never got done. She remembered when she loved to cook, what seemed like a lifetime ago. She had studied cookbooks and pondered ingredients, and enjoyed creating beautiful meals. She still tried to have things that were pleasing to look at--the apple and cheese and sparkling glass of wine were at least aesthetically pleasing, if not completely nutritious--but she no longer worried about making actual meals.

Maybe once or twice a week she would eat in a restaurant with a friend or someone from the store, but more often than not it was crackers and cheese or a frozen dinner from the stash in the freezer, and inevitably the glass (or more) of wine. The wine helped to keep the demons at bay and helped her sleep, and she felt only a little guilty for needing it. Someday she'd stop, but not today, not now. She knew it was bad for her--maybe not physically, but emotionally, psychologically. She knew that she used it to dull her memories, but she figured as long as she confined it to her evenings at home and didn't take to keeping a bottle in her desk at work, she was okay. She understood what she was doing, and while it made her feel weak, well, she was weak, she could admit it. Until she figured out another way to handle her problems, she would keep self-medicating. She didn't fool herself that it was harmless, but it was the least of her worries for now.

Feeling a little chilled despite the warm evening, she decided a bath might warm her up. She carried her wine glass into the bathroom and set it on the counter, then lit a short candle in a porcelain dish that she kept on the sink. As the tub began to fill, she stripped off her clothes and poured a little lavender-scented bath oil into the water, then slipped naked into the tub and closed her eyes.

* * *

Sarah woke with a start, shivering, the room dark, the bathwater cold around her. The candle had burned out, and the wine stood undisturbed on the counter. She couldn't remember the last time she'd fallen asleep so easily, but, she thought, she could have chosen a more comfortable spot! She briefly considered refilling the tub with hot water, but she didn't know how long she'd been asleep and thought she might as well get out and try to get some sleep in an actual bed. As she stepped out of the tub, she narrowly missed stepping on Dinah, curled up on the bathmat, sound asleep.

"How'd you get back in?" she asked the cat, sleepily, but Dinah didn't answer.

Rubbing herself with a towel to try to get warm, she padded into the bedroom, got into bed, pulled her grandmother's quilt over her, and fell back to sleep.

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