I set the rescue paperwork on the dresser.
“What should I know?”
Greg dried his hands slowly.
“That it ends.”
I waited.
“So does nearly everything.”
“I mean the whole point is that it ends.”
He nodded toward Susan and Steve.
“You keep them alive. You get them healthy. You teach them that people are safe. And then somebody else takes them home.”
I understood where he was going.
“You’ve been asked to foster before.”
Greg looked down.
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Three.”
“And you said no.”
“Yes.”
“Because you knew you’d get attached.”
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the other part?”
He folded the dish towel with unnecessary precision.
“I didn’t think I could handle another version of helping something leave.”
The sentence landed quietly.
I sat on the guest bed.
For the first time, the rescue made complete emotional sense.
Greg had chosen the parts of volunteering that allowed him to be useful without bringing the ending into our house.
He cleaned cages.
Drove animals to appointments.
Covered overnight feedings.
He helped, then went home before attachment required surrender.
“You realize the irony,” I said.
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“You miss the children because we raised them to leave. So you chose a rescue where success means exactly the same thing.”
Greg gave me a tired look.
“I had noticed.”
“Recently?”
“About thirty seconds before you said it.”
Susan crawled clumsily over Steve.
Her eyes were barely open.
I watched Greg reach in and reposition the blanket around them.
“You can say no,” I told him.
“To fostering?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the one who suggested it.”
“I suggested asking what would happen.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m asking whether avoiding every goodbye is actually helping you.”
His expression sharpened.
“That sounds suspiciously like therapy.”
“It’s four in the morning. My rates are excellent.”
Greg sat in the rocking chair.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s allowed.”
“What if I can’t give them up?”
“Then presumably the rescue sends armed personnel.”
He almost smiled.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“No, you’re making jokes.”
“I’m making jokes because if I say what I’m thinking plainly, you may hate it.”
“Try me.”
I took a breath.
“I think you’ve confused being needed with being kept.”
Greg stared at me.
There it was.
Too sharp perhaps.
But true.
I continued before he could shut down.
“The kids needed us. Then they grew up. That didn’t mean they stopped loving us.”
“I know.”
“Your mother needed you near the end.”
His face changed.
I had not planned to bring her into it.
But Susan—the kitten named Susan—was sleeping three feet away.
There was no pretending that connection did not exist.
Greg looked at the floor.
“Don’t.”
“Why did you name her after your mother?”
“I told you. Dignified.”
“Greg.”
His jaw tightened.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “Because my mother hated cats.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“She absolutely hated them.”
“That is not what I expected.”
“She called them ‘untrustworthy little burglars.’”
I laughed despite myself.
Greg did too.
“Then why Susan?”
“Because this one screamed at me from under the shed like I was personally responsible for everything wrong with her life.”
“That does sound more like your mother.”
He smiled.
Then the smile faded.
“My mother needed me at the end.”
“I know.”
“More than Michael and Emma ever did, really.”
That surprised me.
“She couldn’t drive. Couldn’t manage her medications. Could barely get upstairs.”
I remembered.
Those last eighteen months had exhausted him.
He visited her almost every day.
He fixed meals she complained about and arranged appointments she resented.
Then one winter morning she died in her sleep.
No dramatic farewell.
No final conversation.
Just a call before sunrise.
“You hated how much she needed you,” I said softly.
“Yes.”
“And then?”
Greg leaned back.
“Then she didn’t.”
The room grew quiet.
I finally understood something I should perhaps have noticed years earlier.
For Greg, usefulness had become braided together with love and loss.
Children grew up.
Parents died.
Animals were adopted.
Every successful act of care carried an ending inside it.
“What happened after your mother died?” I asked.
“You were there.”
“I mean inside you.”
Greg gave me an exhausted look.
“Laura, I am a fifty-six-year-old man holding a conversation at dawn about attachment theory beside kittens named Susan and Steve. I have reached my emotional quota.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
He sighed.
“That is cruel.”
“What happened?”
Greg stared at the worn blue blanket.
“I cleaned out her apartment.”
“I remember.”
“I found every stupid thing I’d ever fixed for her.”
He began counting with his fingers.
“Lamp. Toaster. Cabinet hinge. Old radio. Drawer in her bedroom.”
His voice roughened.
“She kept things long after she should have replaced them because I had fixed them.”
I said nothing.
“And then I realized nobody was ever going to call me from that apartment again.”
There was no self-pity in the sentence.
That made it worse.
I went to him.
Greg rested his forearms on his knees.
“For years,” he said, “I told myself I was tired of everybody needing something.”
I put my hand between his shoulder blades.
“Then Mom died. Michael moved overseas. Emma moved away. Work changed. People stopped coming to my desk because everything became software tickets.”
He laughed once without humor.
“And apparently I discovered I had spent thirty years complaining about the thing that gave my days shape.”
I thought about my own life after the children left.
I had felt lighter.
Not because I cared less.
Because I had always maintained pieces of myself outside motherhood.
My walking group.
Painting.
Friends.
Books.
Greg had hobbies, but perhaps fewer identities.
Father.
Son.
Fixer.
Provider.
Each role depended on someone needing him.
“What does the rescue feel like?” I asked.
He thought about it.
“Simple.”
“How?”
“There’s a problem. You solve what you can.”
“No complicated feelings?”
“Oh, animals have complicated feelings.”
“You know what I mean.”
He nodded.
“They don’t tell you they need boundaries.”
I laughed.
“Emma might appreciate that line.”
“Absolutely not.”
Susan squeaked.
Greg picked her up.
“You think we should foster them.”
“I think we should decide for the kittens, not for your fear of saying goodbye.”
He looked at me.
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“You’ve spent thirty-one years living with a man who brings home broken lamps and stray responsibilities.”
“True.”
“You really want two kittens in the guest room?”
I looked at Susan’s tiny ears.
“No.”
Greg stared.
I smiled.
“But wanting a clean house has rarely protected me from this family.”
He laughed.
Then Steve began crying too.
Greg handed Susan to me.
We fed them again as dawn crept through the curtains.
Later that morning, Greg called the rescue coordinator.
I listened from the kitchen while he explained that we could keep the kittens temporarily if needed.
He used careful language.
Temporary.
Short-term.
Until placement.
Every phrase built a small fence around his emotions.
When he hung up, I asked, “Well?”
“They need fosters badly.”
“So they’ll stay?”
“For now.”
“How long?”
“Probably six to eight weeks.”
I looked toward the guest room.
Six to eight weeks.
Long enough to become routine.
Long enough to matter.
Greg seemed to understand the same thing.
That evening, a rescue volunteer delivered additional supplies.
Her name was Denise.
She was in her sixties, practical, cheerful, and clearly familiar with Greg.
“You finally broke him,” she told me.
“I did?”
“We’ve been trying to get him to foster for months.”
Greg carried a bag of formula into the guest room.
“I’m standing right here.”
Denise lowered her voice theatrically.
“He thinks if he refuses long enough, nobody will notice he’s a marshmallow.”
“I am still standing here.”
She smiled at me.
Then she handed over the paperwork.
Near the final page was a form requiring our agreement to return the animals when an approved adopter was found.
Greg stared at that line.
His pen stopped.
Denise noticed.
“You don’t have to do it.”
Greg looked toward the guest room.
Susan cried.
He closed his eyes briefly.
Then he signed.
“Six to eight weeks,” he said.
Denise took the form.
“If they thrive.”
Something in her tone caught my attention.
“What does that mean?”
Denise’s smile faded.
“The male’s weight worries me.”
Steve.
Greg looked up sharply.
“You said they were stable.”
“They are.”
“But?”
Denise hesitated.
“He hasn’t gained what we expected since last night.”
Greg was already moving toward the guest room.
The emotional experiment we had agreed to suddenly became something much more immediate.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: Steve’s Failure to Gain Weight Forced Greg Into the Exact Kind of Crisis He Craved, and I Feared What Saving Him Might Cost
For Three Weeks Greg Left Our Bed After Midnight, and One Missing Family Keepsake Made His Explanation Impossible to Believe
Part 7 of 24
