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doors to the left and knocked.
    Mary Ann’s voice filtered out. “It’s going to be a while. I’m puking.”
    I tried a few more doors, all locked, finally finding a knob that turned at the very end near a back servants’ staircase. It opened up into a bedroom. I practically flew inside to the guest bath visible from the door. I barely made it to the toilet, shoving the door closed with my foot. Four glasses of water plus one roly-poly fetus was basic pregnant math, sort of like how a Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked ice-cream bar plus a small bag of salt and vinegar chips equaled a nice afternoon snack.
    I washed up at a porcelain sink with a large purple orchid hand-painted inside the bowl. Embroidered towels. I dried my hands on my dress and ventured back into the bedroom. I could see my footprints stamped in the thick cream carpet like a fossilized dinosaur’s. Sheer lavender curtains were tied back on all corners of an old oak four-poster. I imagined pulling at the silk ties and lying there in a private purple cocoon.
    I wondered whether I should fluff out my footprints. Leave no trace behind.
    Mew
.
    Startled, I swung around, knocking my knee painfully against the trunk at the foot of the bed.
What was that?
A kitty? Maybe trapped in the closet? There were two doors in the room besides the one to the bathroom, one with a key in the lock. I picked the door without the key and found myself staring at a red Miele vacuum cleaner, a tight row of empty wooden hangers, and built-in shelves holding extra linens and towels. No cat.
    I stared at the door with the key. There were way too many doors in this place.
    Mew
.
    Tiny, soft, polite. The universal cat distress call.
    What the hell. I turned the key, pushed the door open, and found myself on the threshold of another bedroom.
    Two thoughts, almost simultaneously.
    That was one mean-looking cat on the bed.
    Hadn’t Mike told me that Caroline had lost a
son
?
    This room belonged to a girl. A girl in transition. Pale pink walls and a cream-colored quilted bedspread with a battered teddy bear perched on top. Old-fashioned French Provincial furniture. A porcelain music box shaped like pink toe shoes rested on the dresser below a mirror. Postcards and random pictures were stuck inside the edges of the mirror’s frame, arranged a little too perfectly.
    A movie poster of
Rear Window
was tacked to one wall and a smiling Elizabeth Taylor in
National Velvet
to another. The room felt unused but regularly dusted, like a set piece in a museum. The whole effect was disturbing.
    The cat, an enormous, whorled yellow and white tabby with wide gold eyes, bared his teeth from a predatory position on the bed. He looked like he benched his weight at the cat gym and needed no rescuing from me.
    “Shhh, sweet-sweet-kitty-kitty.” It came out the way I worried I was going to talk to my baby.
    The cat settled back on his haunches, glaring. His eyes followed me as I drifted toward the bookcase and several rows of neatly lined-up volumes. At least twenty diaries, the kind with the cheap lock that any kid brother could pop with a pin.
    My Diary
, in worn silver lettering, was printed on each of the spines. No imagery of Hello Kitty, peace signs, or those
Twilight
guys. I shivered. I felt like I was standing in a pink funeral parlor. The little girl of this room didn’t exist anymore, I felt sure. I doubted she’d ever stood in this spot. The bed, the bear, the pictures, the diaries—all of it transported from another time and place.
    My eyes landed on a cat box in the corner, spread smooth with clean gray litter.
    No kitty footprints.
    The cat had dropped a small, curly brown turd on the floor right beside the box.
    His little message.
    He wanted out.
    T he party was breaking up by the time I slipped back, women milling around, chattering, saying goodbye. I threaded my way to Misty, who was bent over, strapping on her shoes. I guessed the heels at six inches. Knockoffs.
    “What took you so