This day could stand some improvement. With such a start under her own roof—the accident on the downstairs carpet, out of milk halfway through breakfast—Natalie Brinkman would need to summon her best resolve to fend off all the bothers likely waiting outside the house. This being one of the days she was compelled to drive, normally cheery Natalie was beginning to feel a faint tremble in her core, not unlike those vibrations coming up from the floorboards yesterday, confirmation that the heavy equipment operators were moving earth again beyond the woods.

She changed the subject in her mind, prompted by her father’s still-comforting baritone. “Nat, drown out that negative thought with a positive one,” Daddy was always saying, having gotten hooked on Norman Vincent Peale’s message of positive thinking in the ’60s and never gotten unhooked, even at the end.

A quick trip to Frank’s, that was all. But then Natalie remembered her last business in the car, and her encounter with that bug-eyed monstrosity at the blind curve. Decades of driving with her parents and on her own without incident, and out of nowhere, as if planted by runaway circus clowns, this fun-house mirror-within-a-mirror appeared at the end of the lane. No doubt the newcomers, the here-afters, as Frank liked to call them, had pestered the highway department, pleading safety concerns. What was it about people that they needed to see their reflections in everything?

The morning sun filtered through the lace curtains in the living room, warming the wide-planked pine floors and illuminating shafts of air like some Old Masters still-life. Natalie absently took it in as she worked a lint roller on the sleeves of her yellow cardigan before pulling open the front door. Glancing back, she called out, “Best behavior, please!”

Although its original forest green paint job had long since faded to bleached pea, the family Jeep was still dependable. Natalie descended the winding lane, past the handful of homes across the way whose lots, like hers, had been carved out of the woods generations ago, and past the Ellerslie farm on her side of the asphalt, with its well-kept barn and fencing, and matching trio of white-topped silos. To the casual observer, not much had changed in the neighborhood since her father had driven home in the new Wagoneer 35 years before. A teenager then, Natalie still remembered him pulling in the driveway to surprise them, horn honking, the shiny vehicle kicking up gravel like an eager puppy, her mom, having emerged from the kitchen, smiling uncertainly, as if she never quite knew what to do about her husband. “A big vehicle for a big man,” Natalie remembered her mother saying, unsure if the remark was offered with admiration or something less charitable.

The Ellerslie dairy farm was one of the few in the county still being worked, thanks to Mr. Ellerslie’s son, who somehow carried on the milking business, as well as the neighborly tradition of bringing over summer corn, tomatoes and other produce from his wife’s expansive garden. After old-man Ellerslie passed, the boy had taken to leaving the produce in bags on Natalie’s side porch and not paying a visit. Just as well.

Truth was, it had been some time since Natalie had spoken with any of her neighbors. Although she walked every day, her preferred route was behind the house to the woods. She seldom ventured down the lane on foot, and in the car, when she did see people in their yards, she smiled but never stopped.

At the bottom of the lane Natalie ignored the new safety mirror as she turned hard right and made her way up the hill. In the wide valley to her left, newish townhomes and single-family units spread out in an orderly formation as far as the eye could see. Their presence felt like an occupying force. Along the ridgeline, adjacent to what Natalie thought of as her woods, though she didn’t own any of it, raw earth had been newly exposed. Colorful pennants flapping in the breeze surrounded a construction trailer and a billboard with an image of a gleaming two-story, with text declaring “Affordable Luxury From the Low $400s.”

~

Frank peered up from his newspaper, re-focusing over the tops of his cheaters. “Would you look at what the cat dragged in.”

Natalie had never minded his good-natured provocations. Frank could tease in the same way her father had. The two men shared little in common physically, as Frank was lean and angular, but both had a welcoming way about them and a natural friendliness that drew people. It was a quality that could not be learned. You either had it or you didn’t, and the worst part about not having it was the knowledge that you never would. Still, Natalie had come to understand that not being a “people person,” as her father described himself, had its benefits.

“Fancy sign,” she said, gesturing to the parking lot. “It certainly makes a statement.”

“Digital,” Frank said proudly. “Don’t you love it?”

Natalie did not love it. She much preferred the original hand-painted sign on the front of the building, which said “Frank’s Convenience” ever since the “Mart” panel blew off during the 2012 derecho and was never replaced. Now, in stark contrast, there was a computerized box on the pole where once a neon Esso sign lit up the night. Large orange letters on a black background flashed FRANKS, with no apostrophe, as if passersby were being instructed to consider hot dogs.

“You remember Denny Richardson from the bank? One of his boys sells this stuff and has been bugging me for months. They just put it up yesterday.” Frank produced a small keyboard device from under the counter and adjusted his glasses. “You control everything from this,” he said, rubbing the tips of his fingers together as if preparing to crack a safe.

“Suppose I want to advertise a sale or feature a new local beer,” Frank said, appraising the keyboard warily. “I just type it in.” As if to convince himself, he began to backspace delete FRANKS and then hunt and peck until turning the screen toward Natalie:

OPEN WHENEVER

I DAMN WELL PLEASE

Natalie noted the blocky, upper-case script, then walked to the double doors and checked the sign. “It says OPEN W-H-E,” she recited helpfully, “and everything is blinking really fast.”

Frank made a mental note to call the Richardson boy. “And I can make it go red, white and blue on the Fourth of July. It’ll pay for itself when I sell the place.”

“You’ve been selling the place for 20 years,” Natalie replied, causing Frank to grin. That, in turn, made Natalie smile and instinctively put her hand over her mouth, the exchange as clear a demonstration as any that these two were birds of a feather, as people used to say, here-befores who for better or worse had stayed put, had chosen lives of sheltering in place and through casual but long acquaintance had come to believe they knew everything there was to know about each other.

“What’s on your shopping list today, Missy?”

Frank was the only person who referred to Natalie by the childhood nickname given by her mother. Natalie’s father preferred “Nat,” a nod to her tomboy ways. Alice Brinkman, hoping to foster the feminine side of her only child, thought Missy more appropriate, invoking it for all occasions. As in, You get up those stairs and into that bathtub, Missy, and clean that grime out of your hair. Or, I’m sorry, Missy, but you know we can’t have pets because I’m allergic.

“Milk is what I need,” Natalie said, “but since I’m here I might as well pick up food and litter. You have any more of those 40-pound bags?”

While Frank checked the stock room Natalie retrieved three gallons of milk and on impulse two boxes of Friskies wet variety pack, “Fish-A-Licious Shreds, Prime Filets & Tasty Treasures,” 64 cans in all.

The bell above the double doors jingled and two women entered, engrossed in conversation as they strode purposefully toward the back of the store and the glass doors that held refrigerated beverages, frozen foods and ice cream. Natalie guessed the women to be in their early 30s. Both wore black leggings, sneakers, and baggy sweatshirts—one gray, one blue—and both had their hair pulled back in ponytails that swayed in unison as they walked.

“Yoga people,” Frank whispered. “They come in for fancy water.”

Sure enough, the women arrived at the cash register, still chatting, carrying plastic containers the size of fire extinguishers.

“The little girl was on her way home from school,” the blue sweatshirt was saying to the gray sweatshirt, “and she was just taken. Capitol Hill no less. It’s got to be a neighbor, right?” She produced a credit card from somewhere, though she carried no purse. “I am so relieved we got out of DC.”

“Frank,” the blue sweatshirt said, “did you know you’re having a signage issue?”

“It’s new,” he answered sheepishly.

The woman nodded, seeming, despite her relative youth, to understand the technological limitations faced by the elderly. Her companion, noticing Natalie’s purchases, had a query of her own.

“Excuse me, I’ve been around cats all my life, and the thinking now is that canned food has way too many additives.”

Having had a chance to observe the women, and given the fact that she had just watched them pay dearly for what she drank from the tap for free, Natalie felt something akin to sympathy. “Where do you live, dear?” she asked.

“Ridgewood,” the woman said. Seeing no recognition on Natalie’s face, the woman added, “One of the new communities. We moved from the city last year.”

“And what are your cats’ names?”

“Just the one now,” the woman answered. “Samantha, but we call her Sammy. She’s still a kitten.”

“I bet she’s a love,” Natalie said.

The woman smiled. “We had to put our little Bubbles down before we moved. She was so old.”

“That’s the hardest thing,” Natalie said softly. “To be responsible for that.”

Later, as Frank helped Natalie load the Jeep, he asked, “How’s everything up at the house?”

“They’re building on the other side of the woods like there’s no tomorrow,” she said.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Frank replied. “Ellerslie owns most of that land, and he’s not likely to sell. It’s his privacy, too, remember. And it’s not like he needs the money.”

“If you say so, Frank.”

“Hey, so what’s the count on furballs these days?”

He always asked.

Driving home past the new construction, the thought occurred to Natalie that if you let yourself, it would be easy to become one of those what’s-the-use people who throw up their hands. Daddy was always cautioning against that. “A good attitude is better than a million dollars,” he liked to remind her. Even on the day of his accident all those years ago, the day he fell on the metal stairs off the shop floor, he had managed to stay upbeat, joking that he would have to write himself up for a safety violation.

Dutch Brinkman was unusually energetic for a man of his size and seemed to bound everywhere he went. He had spent his entire career at the plant, working his way up from night shift on the production line to shop steward to supervisor, and after more than 30 years, to the position of chief safety inspector.

Natalie heard about the accident while she was processing a new employee. She had gone full-time in the HR Department after high school, having worked there summers in her junior and senior years. Although her father said Natalie was her own person and could do whatever she wanted with her life, no one was surprised that she seemed to be following in his footsteps.

At the hospital, Dutch explained that he had “landed funny.” Under the weight of his 290-pound, 6-foot-5-inch frame, the fall had shattered his left ankle. Two nearby employees both said they heard the crack of bone.

The orthopedic specialist performed surgery immediately, which required a metal plate and titanium screws. Outside the recovery room, the surgeon explained to Natalie and her mother that the repair would only knit properly with bedrest for a minimum of six weeks. That meant after they got him home, the leg must remain elevated, and no weight-bearing activity for the man who was incapable of sitting still. Crutches to get to the bathroom, but otherwise flat on his back.

“You might as well put me in the hospital,” Natalie’s mother told the surgeon. “He will surely drive us crazy.”

There was some talk of renting a hospital bed for the downstairs living room, but Dutch would have none of that. “I’m no damn invalid,” he grumbled. He wanted his own bed, and he got it, although it was hell getting him up the stairs.

Gus Pedersen, Dutch’s regular doctor, childhood friend and fellow volunteer firefighter, put it to him this way: “Unless you want to limp for the rest of your life, park your ass and shut up about it.”

To everyone’s surprise, Dutch was a model patient. Maybe the pain meds mellowed him, or it was all the favorite meals his wife was preparing. “The man never met a plateful of anything he didn’t like,” Natalie’s mother was fond of saying.

It was a busy time for Natalie. She worked the day shift at the plant and was enrolled part-time at community college, where she was in her second semester pursuing a general business degree, encouraged by her father, who never got around to college. On the days she didn’t have classes, Natalie helped her mother in the kitchen, then set up the TV tables and ate upstairs with “the patient,” as her mother had begun referring to Dutch. After dinner, when she didn’t have homework, Natalie and her father would play cards or watch TV.

One night during his fourth week of recovery, after Natalie had cleared the dinner plates and was shuffling the deck for a game of rummy, her father leaned forward from his propped-up position in bed and asked with uncharacteristic seriousness, “How’s your mom doing?”

Natalie was startled by her father’s tone and sensed she was being drawn into matters that should not concern her. The question and ensuing conversation had taken on even more significance over time, having come to represent for Natalie a turning point. Two weeks later, her father would be gone without warning, and her mother, thunderstruck by his death, would never be the same.

“All of this has been a strain on your mom,” Dutch had said. “Having to sleep downstairs, being at my beck and call every minute, seeing me damn near helpless. I know she has her moods sometimes, but this feels different. Have you noticed?”

“She hasn’t said anything to me, if that’s what you’re asking,” Natalie replied. “The only thing I see is her trying to feed you back to health.”

“Promise me you will look after her,” Dutch said. “Make sure she’s ok.”

Natalie promised, without any idea of what that meant.

“As jails go,” Dutch said, back to his buoyant self, “this isn’t a bad one. But I’ll be up and about before you know it, and things will get back to normal around here. Now deal those cards, Nat, and tell me what you’re learning at college.”

Natalie did as she was told, earnestly considering her father’s request. “You might be interested in an experiment we talked about in psychology class,” she said. “About how people fill in the blanks.”

“Not following,” Dutch said, organizing his cards.

“The subjects were given a series of circles to look at, and some of the circles had gaps in them, missing sections. But the subjects perceived even the incomplete circles as being whole. In their minds, they filled in the missing parts.”

“And this is interesting why?”

“It’s called the principle of closure. Supposedly it’s a survival instinct. Early  man’s brain used it to fill in the shapes of predators from a distance, even without knowing for sure it was a mountain lion or whatever, which gave them extra time to get away.”

Natalie tried to gage her father’s blank reaction. “I’m not explaining it the best way,” she went on, “but what I find so interesting is the idea that people see what they want to see. Our minds fill in the missing parts because we want things to be complete. We want to see the full circle.”

Dutch said, “When I hear the term ‘full circle’ I think of karma, like what goes around comes around. You believe in karma, Nat?”

“I guess so.”

“Do good and good things come back to you,” he said. “And when you think good things, you do good things.” Satisfied he had made his point, Dutch said, “Here’s another question for you: What are the boys like over there at college?”

Natalie had no idea how to discuss such a topic with her father, but there was a boy she had been thinking about. He sat next to her in accounting class. They had spoken only once. Kevin seemed reserved, but Natalie allowed herself to think they could become friends. Sometimes she was surprised to find herself casting ahead to a future with Kevin in it, which was silly because she barely knew him.

A week after he had secured Natalie’s promise, Dutch developed night sweats and fevers. The fear was a bone infection at the surgery site. Antibiotics were started intravenously. Dutch was allowed to remain at home because Gus Pedersen agreed to monitor him several times a day, and because no one wanted to be responsible for getting the big man down the stairs in his weakened condition.

The fevers subsided after a few days, but when Alice Brinkman walked into the bedroom that Tuesday morning, the breakfast tray in her hands crashed to the floor when she saw her husband slack-jawed and the color of wax paper. The doctors would conclude that Dutch had died from a heart attack unrelated to his surgery or subsequent complications. Maybe his heart failure was brought on by the strain of the infection, or the fact that he had been laid up all those weeks. Natalie wondered if her father had a premonition about his death, which would have explained why he was so serious the night he insisted that she look after her mother.

“At least he passed in his own bed,” Gus Pedersen said, as if that should be a comfort.

Dutch died in the middle of March as the forsythia had begun to show their blossoms. He was two weeks shy of his 51st birthday. By the end of that spring, Alice Brinkman began complaining of fatigue and headaches, and while there was no real diagnosis, when she took to her bed, the same one her husband had died in, everyone seemed to agree that a rest would do her good.

~

When Natalie returned from Frank’s, she paused at the mud room door, checking her purse for the treats she always kept handy. She carefully unlocked the door, sliding in sideways to keep the opening as narrow as possible. She used her foot to check that the cat door was working properly, allowing entry from the outside but magnetically locked on the inside to prevent exits.

“There’s my new friend!” she said brightly, as if speaking to a child. She bent down and extended her hand so the gray tabby curled up on the deep windowsill could smell the morsel on offer. The response was a disinterested yawn.

“Aren’t you the clever one, warming yourself by the window,” Natalie said, slowly moving forward with her still-outstretched hand. “Another day or two and you’ll be able to join the fray.”

Below the window was a long, wooden bench built into the wall. On the floor beneath the bench, where the family’s winter boots and yard shoes once resided, was a food dispenser, a water bowl, and a variety of cat toys.

Natalie sat on the bench and gently stroked behind the tabby’s ear. He not only allowed it, he began to purr. “That’s a good boy,” she said in a sweet, sing-song voice. “You are such a very good boy! And a welcome addition. We just need to make sure you don’t have any nasty fleas or ticks and you’re in tip-top shape.”

Like most in her charge, the tabby had simply shown up, poking its way into the mud room and discovering a meal. He might have been a barn cat, maybe a stray. It didn’t matter where he had come from.

Natalie opened the kitchen door, making sure the gray tabby did not enter. “Have we behaved?” she called out in a firmer tone to all those lounging in the kitchen from floor to nearly ceiling. At least a dozen cats gathered underfoot, while others perched on chairs and countertops. A white, rust, brown and black calico observed the proceedings from atop the refrigerator. Natalie hung her purse on one of the chairs around the oak table in the kitchen and leaned over to kiss the all-gray who had taken up residence there. She then made her way around the room, giving kisses and caresses to all who would accept them.

A black and white tuxedo jumped down from the counter near the stove as Natalie approached, raising up on its haunches and languidly stretching its front paws before sauntering off.

She checked the rest of the downstairs rooms, giving attention to all those scattered about. At various spots around the house were tall, Seuss-like contraptions she had constructed from wood and carpet remnants that served as scratching posts and sleeping cubbies.

Natalie had also built the food station in the kitchen, a three-sided rectangular trough fashioned from two-by-fours and linoleum flooring, lined with rubber inserts made from cut-up car floormats. The trough held bowls for water and milk, and plastic serving trays she bought by the dozen from The Dollar Store. The trays were always filled with kibble, and supplemented with wet food and other items she prepared herself, because everyone ate at different times, and Natalie believed they were mostly self-regulating when it came to meals, although there were more than a few overly large members of the family.

If Natalie remembered to close the pocket doors, the living room was off limits, to protect her grandmother’s lace curtains. And upstairs, the door to her parents’ bedroom always remained shut. Otherwise, the cats had the run of the place.

It was not the day to clean the litter boxes, but Natalie checked the garage anyway. She was a determined housekeeper, vacuuming at least once a day and regularly dusting and disinfecting tables and countertops. She was also a meticulous caregiver, brushing coats and checking for any signs of illness or distress. As far as she could tell, even with the occasional accident, the house did not have an animal smell, but there could be no independent verification of that because no other human had been admitted after her mother died nearly a decade ago.

That was a benefit of not being a people person. Natalie didn’t need anyone’s company or their approval, didn’t seek their endorsements, didn’t suffer their judgments.

Before leaving for her walk, she mixed a fresh batch of trail mix, then climbed the stairs and stood outside her parents’ bedroom, listening for a few seconds before gently opening the door and leaning inside. At the foot of the bed, a white Siamese was asleep, its breathing labored and raspy. Natalie observed for a few seconds and then withdrew.

She thought of Kevin from accounting class, how she had stopped him, put her hand on his arm as he rose from his desk to turn in his final exam. Blurted out that her dad had died and her mom wasn’t doing well. His surprised, almost panicked look, hearing such intimate details from someone he didn’t know, managing only “sorry” before looking away and quickly moving down the aisle.

Natalie never returned to college. As her mother’s condition deteriorated, Natalie took a leave of absence from the plant and then quit outright. Her father’s savings and life insurance policies were more than enough to support them.

That first year of her mother’s illness, Natalie coaxed and prodded her into getting up for a portion of every day. There were times when Alice ventured into the kitchen, but she never stayed away from the bedroom for long. Sometimes she sat in a chair and watched TV or tried to knit, but she seemed to lack the will for anything beyond being angry at her husband for dying. “Everything was always about him,” she would say.

In those early days, when her mother could still be left alone, Natalie volunteered at a local veterinarian clinic and rediscovered her passion for animals. As a child she had always loved cats and dogs even though she wasn’t permitted to have any.

Natalie was a natural with all kinds of animals and learned a great deal from the vet, an older woman she admired. During the three years she worked at the clinic, Natalie earned her vet tech certification and was given many responsibilities, along with an hourly wage the vet insisted she take. Natalie learned how to declaw, though she was opposed to it. She regularly assisted the vet with neutering. She administered medicine, was able to diagnose ailments common to household pets, and could euthanize when she had to. She was especially good at comforting grieving owners who were forced to put down a cherished pet. “Best kitty ever,” she would say.

Though doctors could find nothing physically wrong with Alice Brinkman, she never recovered. When she began to require more care, Natalie hired home nurses, but Alice always found a way to drive them off. Eventually, Natalie was forced to give up her job at the clinic, but not before she brought home three black kittens with white paws that had been left in a cardboard box outside the vet’s door. Natalie did her best to corral the rambunctious trio downstairs, but when her mother discovered the invaders and strongly objected because of her supposed allergies, Natalie asked, “How could that possibly matter now?”

The solution was to keep the bedroom door closed at all times.

~

The sun was slanting through the bare treetops on this late-March afternoon as Natalie made her way up the sloped backyard toward the woods, adjusting her shoulder bag and taking note of the peonies, tulips and azaleas she would soon delight in tending to. This was the month both her parents had died. Her father would be gone more than 30 years.

The air turned cooler as she entered the same wooded path she had taken as a child. She decided to bake a chicken later and serve it with applesauce for the special dear in her parents’ bedroom. For many years now, Natalie had elevated the ones who didn’t have much time left. They were treated to home-cooked meals and extra love in the privacy of that room, where they could pass into the next world peacefully, and, if mercy required it, with Natalie’s help.

When she reached the far edge of the woods, Natalie could see the idle yellow bulldozers, the garish pennants surrounding the construction trailer, and across the road, the townhouses stacked up like cord wood.

She had taken care of her mother for nearly 20 years. She had kept her promise. Natalie tried not to think about the past. Better to take each day as it came and not carry around too many opinions about what was right and what was wrong and what was fair. She had learned with age that opinions were too easily subject to change. How ridiculous it had seemed when Gus said it was a blessing that her father had died in his own bed. Now she understood the value of being in a place of comfort when the end comes.

No, best not to dwell on things. And yet, lately there was a question that would not leave her alone, one that posed itself unbidden whenever she imagined she might be satisfied, or even happy. It was the same voice she heard when she was a child and had those terrible nightmares about religion, the voice demanding, if God made everything, who made God?

Now the voice asked, does anyone get to choose their life, or is choice an illusion? Natalie wondered if it was possible to know the difference. But she was no longer a child, and she was no longer afraid. Her answer, sometimes imploring, sometimes defiant, was a question hurled right back into the void: Did she not love? Was she not loved in return? Was her circle not full?

It was getting late. Starting back from the edge of the woods, Natalie reached into her shoulder bag for the trail mix, her own blend of silver vine, honeysuckle, valerian root and catnip. She seeded the path all the way home.

~

In the fenced backyard of a corner townhome near the road, a young, orange tabby napped outside on a chair as his main human, three-year-old Brittany, played with chalk on the concrete patio while her mother cleaned just inside the open slider. When mom turned on the vacuum, the tabby’s fur stood up. He leapt instinctively. In two strides he gained the yard and in three more went airborne, landing momentarily on the charcoal grill before pushing off effortlessly with his muscular back paws and balancing ever so briefly atop the six-foot privacy fence.

“Look, mommy,” Brittany giggled as her best friend disappeared over the fence, but her mother was busy.

Orange tabby was amazed at the new world he now beheld, scarcely knowing where to turn. To the tall grass swishing in the breeze as he slipped by? The decorative boulders by the community entrance? To that odd hum emanating from the yellow-striped pavement beneath his feet? And then the vehicle whizzing past, and the dart across the road, and now all these trees. And what was this? This wondrous scent, this intoxicating smell, this luscious, energizing sensation drawing him on, further and deeper into the woods, toward his new forever home.