A man stood near the bottom step.
He looked to be in his early forties, with a tired face, work boots and a gray jacket that had been washed too many times.
Beside him was a girl around ten years old.
She had both hands pressed over her mouth.
Her eyes were fixed on Nacho through the glass.
The man held a stack of printed pictures.
The top one showed an orange cat sleeping inside a cardboard castle covered in purple marker.
The cat had a white patch under his chin.
His left ear bent forward slightly.
My stomach dropped.
I opened the door only a few inches.
“Can I help you?”
The girl began crying harder.
“That’s him,” she said. “Dad, that’s Sunny.”
The man looked at me with the expression of someone trying very hard not to lose control.
“My name is Marcus Reed,” he said. “This is my daughter, Lily.”
He held up the pictures.
“We’ve been looking for that cat for six months.”
Behind me, Nacho took two slow steps toward the door.
Lily whispered his other name again.
“Sunny.”
Nacho made the same rough meow he had made in the parking lot.
Then he walked past me.
I caught him before he reached the opening.
He struggled for one second, not violently, but enough to frighten me.
“Please close the door,” I said.
Marcus did not move closer.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” he said. “A boy named Eli called us this morning. He said a woman found an orange cat in the parking lot yesterday. He had our number from the flyers.”
Eli.
The boy with the paper plate.
The boy who had cried when Nacho climbed into my lap.
I had given him my number before I left.
I had thanked him over and over.
I never thought to ask why he had been feeding a cat that had only been around six months.
I never thought there might be another search happening at the same time as mine.
Marcus slowly slid one picture through the narrow opening.
I took it.
Nacho was stretched across a child’s bed.
Lily was younger in the photo.
Her front teeth were missing, and one arm was wrapped around his orange body.
Someone had written SUNNY + LILY in purple marker along the bottom.
The date printed in the corner was from three years earlier.
I looked at Marcus.
“That can’t be right.”
“I know what this looks like,” he said.
