At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks Page B

was staring didn’t stop her from crying, and she sniffled again. “I’m just sad,” she explained.
“Can I get you anything? Pastrami? Tomato soup?”
She blinked through her tears, as if trying to figure out if she’d heard him right. “Why on earth would you think I want pastrami?”
“No reason,” he said. Sliding closer, he slipped his arm around her. “So you’re not hungry, though? No strange cravings?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I just feel sad.”
“And you don’t know why?”
All at once she broke down again, big heaving cries that left her shoulders shaking. Jeremy felt his throat constrict. There was nothing worse than the sound of a woman crying, and he found himself wanting to comfort her. “There, there,” he murmured. “It’ll be okay, whatever it is.”
“No, it won’t,” she blubbered. “It’s not going to be okay. It’s never going to be okay.”
“What is it?”
It took a long time before she was able to regain some semblance of control. Finally, she faced him with red, puffy eyes.
“I killed my cat,” she announced.
There were a lot of things he’d expected her to say. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by the changes in her life, for instance. Or maybe, in the surge of hormones, she had found herself missing her parents. He had no doubt her emotional outburst had to do with the pregnancy, but this was not the sort of comment he could ever have anticipated. All he could do was stare.
“Your cat?” he asked at last.
She nodded and reached for another tissue, talking through her sobs. “I . . . killed . . . it.”
“Huh,” Jeremy said. Frankly, he didn’t know what else to say. He’d never seen a cat around her place, never heard her talk about a cat. Didn’t even know she liked cats.
Meanwhile, she went on, her voice still raspy. He could tell by her body language that she’d been hurt by his comment. “That’s . . . all you can . . . say?”
He was at a loss. Should he agree with her? You really shouldn’t have killed the cat. Should he empathize? That’s okay. The cat deserved it. Should he support her? I still think you’re a good person, even if you did kill that cat. At the same time, he was frantically searching his memory, trying to figure out if there actually had been a cat, and if so, what its name was. Or how on earth he’d gone this long without ever seeing it. But in a burst of inspiration, the perfect response leapt to mind.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened,” he said, trying his best to sound soothing.
It seemed to be exactly what she’d needed to hear, thank goodness, and her sobs began to subside. Again, she blew her nose.
“I was doing laundry and emptied the dryer to add the next load,” she said. “I knew he liked warm places, but I never bothered to check inside before I closed the door. I killed Boots.”
Boots, he thought. Got it. The cat was named Boots. Still, it didn’t make the rest of the story any clearer.
“When did this happen?” he tried again.
“Over the summer.” She sighed. “While I was packing for Chapel Hill.”
“Oh, we’re talking about when you went to college,” he said, feeling triumphant.
She looked over at him, obviously confused and irritated. “Of course I am. What did you think I was talking about?”
Jeremy knew it was probably best not to answer. “I’m sorry for interrupting. Go on,” he said, doing his best to sound sympathetic.
“Boots was my baby,” she said, her voice soft. “He was abandoned, and I found him when he was just a kitten. All through high school, he slept with me in bed. He was so cute-reddish brown fur and white paws-and I knew that God had given him to me to protect him. And I did . . . until I locked him in the dryer.”
She reached for another tissue. “I guess that he crawled into the dryer when I wasn’t paying attention. He’d done that before, so I usually checked, but for whatever reason, I didn’t do it that day. I just loaded the wet clothes from the