They arrived with wine and sodas and a cake, even though I'd told her not to bring anything, because Eleanor was Eleanor, a certified expert on all rules in theBig Book of Southern Manners,which none of us had actually read, and which probably didn't exist, but which had been drummed into us since birth.
Unfortunately, they also arrived with Oscar.
The first thing he did after Bill and Eleanor went inside was pick a fight with Shelley, who thankfully didn't turn him into a toad. She did, however, burst into tears when he called her a stupid little girl, and then she ran into the house to get away from him.
Jack and I both started toward him to have a chat about manners and, basically, to tell him not to be a little jerk.
That's when he picked up my cat and threw her into the pool.
I shrieked and jumped into the pool to rescue Lou, who could swim perfectly fine but was spitting mad.
Oscar burst into tears and raced off through the backyard toward the woods.
Jack shifted into his tiger shape and went after Oscar.
By the time I wrapped my cat in a towel and let her hide in my closet, calmed Eleanor and Bill down and plied them with wine, explained to Shelley that she was not, in fact, allowed to use her magic to dumpOscarinto the pool and hold him there,and, finally, changed out of my wet dress and into shorts and a T-shirt, Jack and Oscar came walking out of the woods.
I was relieved to see Jack was human again, and Oscar didn't seem to have been hung upside down by his ankles, from the way he was laughing.
To his credit, Oscar marched straight up to me, where I stood next to the grill.
"Mrs. Shepherd, I'm very sorry. It was wrong of me to take out my bad mood on anybody here, but especially not on somebody younger than me andespeciallynot on a defenseless cat."
I blinked.
First, the "Mrs. Shepherd" caught me off guard. Second, Lou, far from being defenseless, would have clawed him to ribbons if she'd gotten her paws on him.
But then I snapped out of it.
"Oscar, I really appreciate that. I won't ask you to apologize to Lou, because my cat won't want to hear it, but I think you should talk to Shelley," I said gently.
His lips quivered, but he squared his thin shoulders and trudged up the steps to my kitchen door like a soldier marching to the firing squad.
I turned to Jack in disbelief.
He walked over and hugged me. "Lou okay?"
"She's fine. Luckily, I still have some salmon left from the post-trip apology. What in the world happened out there?"
But Eleanor, Bill, Oscar, and Shelley came outside just then, all of them with somewhat forced smiles on their faces.
"So," Bill said, rubbing his hands together. "What's for dinner?"
After that, we played pool volleyball and ate lots of burgers and hot dogs and pie and cake, and within no more than half an hour, the smiles were real and the evening was actually fun. When Eleanor and Bill were packing up to go, planning to drop Shelley off on their way home, I noticed Oscar sidle away from the group goodbyes and pull Jack a few feet away from the pool to talk.
And then, wonder of wonders, the boy hugged him before dashing to the car. They all waved, even Oscar, and then they drove away.
"Okay. Spill, Buster," I demanded, folding my arms. "What happened?"
Jack sighed. "His parents are getting a divorce. They dumped him on Grandpa Bill for the summer while they work out the logistics. He's a very sad, very angry little guy."
"And it took a tiger to figure this out?"
He grinned and started stacking dishes to carry inside. "Well. Tigers are cool. After he gathered the courage to touch my giant, furry head, we walked for a bit. Boy and tiger. And he told tiger me all the stuff he would have been mortified to confess to human me."
It made sense. Tiger Jack had pulled Shelley out of some tough times, too.
"You're pretty wonderful, you know?"
