Stray Hearts by Jane Graves Page B

he’d promised Kay?
    Returning to the house, he headed for the spare bedroom and squeaked the door open, hoping it wasn’t as bad as he remembered.
    It was worse.
    By Kay’s description of her apartment he knew she was used to something considerably more elegant than the cracked windows and dingy walls he now saw before him, not to mention the decade-by-decade collection of old furniture and other garage-sale items left by the house’s previous owners.
    He scanned the room, looking for something to give him hope. Maybe the old brass bed would be salvageable. And the dresser, too, if he could find the missing drawer. And there were a few items up in the attic he might be able to resurrect....
    Then he slumped against the door with a heavy sigh. Who was he kidding? There was no way he was ever going to make this room habitable by Saturday.
    No way.
     
    Kay called in a few favors from friends she’d helped move over the years and managed to get the majority of her possessions from her apartment into sixty-two-dollar-a-month storage space at Stor-Ur-Self. Then she filled her car with the bare necessities—clothes, toiletries, television. It had nearly torn her heart out to leave her beautiful apartment, and when she closed the door for the last time and handed Mrs. Dalton the key, she truly thought she was going to cry.
    She swallowed her tears and headed for Matt’s house. It was just before noon when she got there. Somehow she thought the clinic would be a little more plush than the shelter, but that hope evaporated the moment she opened the door.
    In the waiting room were the same electric-orange plastic chairs she’d seen at the shelter. A bulletin board hung on one wall with ads for local pet-related businesses, a cartoon or two, and a collage of cat and dog photos— evidently Matt’s patients. Pale gray walls and a white tile floor rounded out the utilitarian decor.
    She heard voices and saw Matt coming down the hall alongside an older woman carrying a tiny white poodle with red ribbons on his ears. “But he threw up twice,” the woman said, her voice quivering. “Twice in an hour!”
    “He’s all right, Mrs. Feinstein,” Matt told her. “It’s just a little stomach upset.” Then he saw Kay. He pointed up the stairs. “Last door on the left. I’ll be up there as soon as I can.” He nodded surreptitiously toward the old woman and gave Kay a tiny shrug that said it could be two minutes or two hours.
    As Matt gently admonished the old lady about letting her dog snack on Twinkies and fish sticks, Kay went up the creaky oak stairs. When she reached the second floor and looked through the first doorway she came to, she realized that even Matt’s living quarters left a lot to be desired.
    At one time the room had been a large bedroom complete with fireplace. Now a few chairs, a coffee table and a ratty old sofa qualified it, barely, as a living area. The beige paint on the woodwork had peeled, displaying a moss-green layer below it, and the faded wallpaper looked to be original tum-of-the-century. She had a passion for vintage homes, but lack of tender loving care made this place look just plain old.
    With great trepidation, Kay continued down the hall toward the room Matt had designated as hers, expecting more of the same tired old decor as in the living room. But when she peeked around the doorway, she was astonished at what she saw.
    Centered on the back wall between two windows sat a brass bed, a little dinged-up but brightly polished, draped with a well-worn double wedding ring quilt. A Tiffany-style lamp rested on a bedside table, its shade intact except for one tiny pane missing at its crown. An old oak dresser was missing a drawer but was polished to a warm glow and topped with a lace runner. An eclectic assortment of framed items hung on the walls, from old photographs to seafaring maps. White lace-trimmed curtains graced every window, and while their edges were tattered, when Kay drew one toward