Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) Read Free Page A

when the next portent of disaster
loomed before us.  I’m not a superstitious person, but when a scrawny black cat
appeared out of nowhere and started limping across the road directly in front
of my path, I felt a kind of doom spread through my body, starting at the
temples and working its way down to my feet.  Had it been any other weekend, I
probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but there was no denying the
feeling of dread.
    For starters, I’d never been a cat person.   An enormous
Siamese had adopted me the year before, and even though I’d actually grown fond
of him, I didn’t extend the affection to other cats.  This one was dragging his
back left leg, taking all kind of effort just to get across the street.  I
couldn’t tell if the leg was a new injury or an old battle wound, but he was
taking so long to cross in front of my path that I had to slow to a stop to
avoid hitting him. 
    “Why are you stopping?” Oliver asked, wiggling in his seat,
trying to see what I was looking at.
    “There’s a cat,” I said.
    The cat actually looked up and made eye contact with me, as if
to make sure that I saw him and wasn’t going to hit him.  I waited.  He moved
in slow motion.  I waited some more.  And then, no sooner had he finally gotten
across and stepped a front paw onto the sidewalk than there was a huge jolt, the
sound of crunching metal, and my Suburban lunged forward.  The timing was so
incredible that for a split second, I actually considered that the black cat
had hexed us. 
    Oliver and Max started screaming, Morgan started crying, and in
the faint background over the commotion in the car, I was pretty sure I heard a
cat yowl.  I looked in my rear-view mirror and the woman who had hit us was
sitting with her hands on the side of her head with a stupid expression on her
face, making no attempt even to get out of the car.
    “Is everyone okay?” I asked, trying to hide the shock in my
voice.  “Oliver, Max, you guys okay?” 
    “What was that?” Oliver asked.
    “The moron in the car back there hit us,” I told him.
    The baby was in a rear-facing seat so I couldn’t actually see
her, but by the way she was wailing, I figured she must be fine.  No way could she
cry that loud if she was really hurt.  I got out and went around to her side of
the car to check on her and that’s when I saw the cat lying on the sidewalk. 
He hadn’t made it out of the street before the impact, and there was a tire
mark on his hip.  Damn it to hell .
    “Hey, buddy,” I said, squatting down and running my hand over
his dirty fur.  I couldn’t tell how badly he was injured, but it was obvious
that he’d been in bad shape before I hit him.  There were bald patches in his
fur, the membrane was sticking out around his eyes, and he just looked old and
tired.  Oliver opened the car door, took one look at the cat, and burst into
tears.  I unstrapped Max, then the screaming baby, and I bounced her up and
down on my shoulder trying to get her to stop crying. 
    Max joined Oliver and looked down at the cat.  “Mean Daddy.” 
    The moron still hadn’t bothered to get out of her Volvo.  I
walked the screaming meemie back to the car and shouted through the closed
window, “Get out of your car!”
    Her eyes got big and she shook her head no.  Unbelievable.
    “Then open your window!” I said, mouthing the words in case she
was deaf and dumb.
    No response. 
    I threw my free hand in the air to express my exasperation and
stomped off to the Suburban to call the police.  They arrived shortly
afterwards to find a screaming infant, a sniffling 5-year-old, a cursing
2-year-old, a dying cat, and the woman responsible for it all, locked up tight
in her car. 
    With the officer’s arrival, the moron decided it was safe to
come out.  The locks popped up and she squeezed her large frame out from behind
the wheel and waddled over to where we were. 
    “What happened here,” the officer asked me.
    Before I