The car jolts and Juniper wakes with the sharp bump of her head against the window— bump, bump, bump — as pavement disappears into the packed dirt. Their new house is about as far from the city as you can get, and in the rearview her mother’s eyes are apologetic.

​

“Almost there, hang on Junebug,” her mother says. 

​

The car jolts back and forth with every pothole, their belongings thrashing in their boxes. June holds the boxes down to keep them from toppling until they finally slow and pull into a gravel driveway. Their house is one storey tall, with a leaning railing and a bright blue door. The rest of it is faded and white, all of the windows dusty and dull. June was prepared for that, for the house to “need some work,” as her mother said, but there was one detail June couldn’t believe she hadn’t mentioned. 

 

“We live across the street from a cemetery?” June says. 

 

“It’s just like any other neighbour’s yard,” her mother replies, “Except people are resting there.” She doesn’t look at the cemetery, and June detects a shudder as she heads to the front door, finagling with the keys. June crosses the street to its overgrown entrance. It’s small, the wrought iron gate shaped into the word Family overhead. Rose bushes peek over the wall and through the gate, their heavy heads bobbing in the sun. Juniper pushes the gate, but the door only rattles.

 

“Juniper! Come inside, that isn’t a place to play.” 

 

She touches the small flowers growing between the stones, their bright green leaves. Her father’s funeral had purple flowers, dozens of them. She grips the stones, and scales the first layer to survey what lies beyond the wall. There are a dozen gravestones, the grass tall and wild around them, moss growing on their sides. As her mother calls her name again, Juniper catches a shiver in the grass, a flash of black that startles her footing. She sprawls onto her back, dirt and rocks skidding underneath her.

 

“Juniper!”

 

Her mother’s footsteps run across the dirt, and soon Juniper is gathered in her mother’s arms, her hands brushing the dirt from where Juniper had fallen. 

 

“You’re okay,” she says, a tremor in her voice. “We’re okay.” Kissing her on the head, Juniper nods under her mother’s lips. “Now, why don’t we go pick out your room?” 

 

#

 

Juniper can’t sleep in a new place. It’s too quiet here, and too dark, the night creeping into her room like

velvet covering her eyes. An owl hoots, and then all is silent. She looks outside the window for it, but there is only the road illuminated by the moon, the cemetery a neat, shining square plot just outside. And then she sees it. A black cat sitting by the gate, its yellow eyes looking straight at her. 

​

Juniper jumps, her head bumping into the wall behind her bed. Her heartbeat thrums in her chest. It’s not really looking at me, she tells herself. She leans forward, creeping toward her window again, letting the cemetery back in her sight inch by inch. Sure enough, the cat is there, its big yellow eyes gleaming in the night like saucers staring into her soul. It takes a few steps forward, never breaking eye contact, crouching low, as if rearing to pounce right into her bedroom at any moment, or… 

 

Or roll over for… belly rubs? 

 

The cat flashes its eyes at her as it writhes playfully, folding its paws up into itself like a rabbit, long tail swishing through the dewy, sparkling grass. 

 

“Do you… want me to play with you?” Juniper whispers. As if hearing her, the cat sits back up, letting out a howl before returning to its prone position, flashing its soft belly at her. 

 

June puts on a sweater and tiptoes through the house, holding her breath all the way until she is outside, the night air bursting within and all around her once she is free. She runs to the cemetery gate, bending down to greet the cat. The cat tilts his head into her palm, as though he has always fit right there in her grasp. Juniper laughs, and after a while finds herself sitting with the cat on her lap, snuggled on her crossed legs.

 

“Do you have a family?” she asks, though of course, he doesn’t answer. “I just have my mom now. That’s our new house; we just moved here. I’ve never been the new kid before. I’m going to have to start school by myself. My dad used to always walk me to the bus stop and pick me up, but now he isn’t here, so…” 

She hasn’t talked to anyone about this until now. It makes her mother too sad, but a cat can handle it, she thinks – the broken heart of one girl. Juniper knows, somehow, that he is listening, his body soothing and warm in her arms as she speaks. She feels the weight of her emotions slipping off of her, and without them, sleep takes its place. She yawns. 

 

“I should go back,” she says. When she tries to leave, though, the cat follows. He paws at the door, soft little swats in the night, swish, swish, swish. 

 

“I don’t think mom would want you coming inside,” Juniper says, nudging him away. But when she opens the door, the cat darts ahead before she can grab him, disappearing into the dark.  

 

#

 

Juniper searches for him, whispering psst. She turns on the living room light, hoping it won’t wake her mother. Only then does she see him, sitting in her father’s spot on the couch, his head tilted in a way that seems so familiar.

 

But that can’t be, Juniper thinks. It can’t be, because…

 

“You’re dead,” she says to the cat. She hasn’t said it aloud before, and the word feels at odds with the

world. “You’re not him. That isn’t your spot. Get out, get out!” 

 

She lunges for the cat, but he darts away again. He jumps on the mantle, where framed photos of them as a family line the white bricks. They were the first things her mother unpacked. The cat paws at one of the frames, and Juniper catches it just in time. It’s from the summer fair, Juniper feeding a baby goat her dad was holding, her mom hugging her and smiling at the camera, their eyes squinting in the sun. She can smell that photo, the hay and the warm grass and her father’s soap can hear his laughter when the goat turned and nibbled on the buttons of his shirt instead. 

 

The cat weaves through the other photos — her father blowing out anniversary candles with her mother; the three of them at the beach, covered in sand — and crosses to the end of the mantle, where the blue urn stands alone and gleaming. He bumps against it only once, the top of his head meeting with the wide body of the vase, but that is enough. 

 

It falls, shattering just out of Juniper’s reach, the deafening blue rubble glimmering in fragments on the floor. In the silent aftermath, there is only Juniper’s own tremulous heartbeat, and her father, nowhere and everywhere: on the floorboards, on the carpet, on her shirt, on the cat. 

 

“Oh no, oh no,” Juniper says, picking at the pieces. The cat jumps down, bumping its head into her over and over, trying to claw into her lap. From the hall, she hears her mother’s footsteps running barefoot on the floor. 

 

“What is it? What…” her mother looks in disbelief from Juniper, to the floor, to the blank space on the mantel where her father used to be and is no longer. “Juniper, how on earth…?”

 

There are tears in her eyes, mirrored by Juniper’s own. 

 

“I’m so sorry mom.” Juniper goes to her mother and buries her face in her chest, crying. “There was a cat, and he got in, and…and I thought… maybe it was dad.”

 

“You thought your father…was a cat?” 

 

It sounds so stupid aloud, the same way it sounded when she said her father was dead, because he couldn’t possibly be dead. But there it was. The cat joins them on the floor, weaving between their legs before sauntering to the pile of ashes, where he begins to sweep them up with his paws methodically. 

 

“Okay, time for you to go,” her mother says, scooping up the cat under its belly. “I think you’ve done enough for one day.” But he squirms, kicking hard and freeing himself from her grasp. The cat sprints down the hall, Juniper and her mother chasing behind.

 

#

 

They find him in her mother’s bedroom, rummaging through half-opened moving boxes. He darts from one to the next before pushing one box off a pile and to the floor, spilling paperwork everywhere. He meows before sifting through the papers, pulling out an envelope from the clutter with his teeth. On the envelope is her mother’s name. The handwriting is her father’s.

 

“What is this?” her mother whispers. She slides a finger under the lip, breaking the envelope’s seal. “I looked through these papers over a dozen times, I never saw this before…” She unfolds the papers inside, reading and muttering aloud fragments that June can only just hear. “Please spread my ashes in the yard… you didn’t want to be in an urn. I’ve set up a fund for… you and Juniper…please contact…Oh my god.” 

 

 “Mom? What is it?” Juniper asks, reaching out for the papers. Instead, the cat sets itself between them, nuzzling its head against the palm of Juniper’s hand. Her mother drops the papers and stares at the cat, all anger out of her eyes. Instead, they swim in something like hope, something like love.

 

“Will?” she asks. The cat purrs and splays out, making biscuits in the air with his paws.

 

“It’s really dad, isn’t it?” Juniper asks. She plucks the cat up in her arms and holds him, feeling the warm purrs in his chest vibrate through her own.

 

“We’ve missed you,” her mother says, leaning down into the cat’s fur, its warm black belly. Her mother embraces all of them, Juniper and the cat, holding them both so tightly Juniper never wants her to let go.

“We have missed you so much.” 

 

#

 

On Juniper’s first day of school, her father the cat watches as she gets ready. His daughter brushes her hair back, looking older than she did the day before. Life passes too fast, always, but he is glad to be here for every moment, in whatever form that has been given to him. He leans into her leg as she puts on her shoes and zips up her backpack, and can feel her heart rate slow with him near. At least he can be here for her in this way. 

 

“You’ll do great, honey. Just smile and be yourself,” her mom says, kissing their daughter before leading her out the door. “Dad taking you to the bus stop?” 

 

“Just like always,” she says. “Come on, dad.” 

 

Outside, they walk together to the bus stop, the way they always have been since Juniper was little. The cemetery across the street is golden, pollen glimmering in the early morning light. The world feels at peace, though he knows there is still mourning here. It is there when Juniper reaches for his hand before remembering she can only pet him; it is there when she goes to ask him a question, realizing he is by her feet instead of above her, looking down, watching over her.  

 

There is so much she misses about her father– how he could pick her up so effortlessly and spin her until she felt dizzy; how when she was mad he would sing until she couldn’t help but join along. She misses falling asleep on his lap, him checking her homework. She misses how he can’t tell her that she will make new friends, that she will like her new teacher, that the wide and frightening world is only one of those things and that she can conquer the other.  

 

They wait together, sitting on a boulder at the street corner. It isn’t long before other children arrive, gathering around her. 

 

“Is that your cat?” one girl asks, reaching out. “Is he friendly?” 

 

“Yeah, he is,” Juniper says. 

 

“I’m Olivia. I have a cat, too. You’re new, right?” 

 

The bus comes and Juniper takes a seat with her new friend, and when she leaves the cat watches, his eyes gleaming. He curls into the rock, into himself, and he waits until the hour arrives when his daughter comes back when he can take her home again.