Immediately, I was taken aback by the birds’ unusual eyes—a thin band of color rimmed dark pupils. I couldn’t make out the exact shade in the dim lighting, but I suspected one had green, the other teal. My mother’s and grandmother’s natural eye colors.
Tears pooled along my lashes, and I was beyond grateful that Zee had shared with me that bedtime story of my heritage. The Callows were guardians and gatekeepers of something incredible. All twenty-four of the blackbirds were my ancestors—generations of women protecting something amazing.
There’ll be a whole flock of women there to help guide the way, that I can promise you, Zee had said.
She hadn’t been exaggerating.
“What am I doing wrong with the pies?” I asked the pair.
The birds bobbed their heads and watched me with somber eyes, and then lifted off, soaring into the backyard to join the rest of the keepers.
I knew full well they couldn’t tell me—they couldn’t speak. Only sing. And I’d never receive a message in my sleep, either, even if I ate a dozen pies. Zee had told me once that one of the drawbacks of being a keeper was that they couldn’t sing messages of their own. Only notes from others. Even so, I thought perhaps they could have given me some sort of hint or sign, but as they disappeared out of sight, I was left with only a pit of sadness in my stomach and tears blurring my eyes.
Grief was a capricious companion. Sometimes distant and aloof. Sometimes so overwhelming it was hard to think a straight thought. Its mood changed at whim, making it emotionally exhausting to keep up.
There were times, like right now, when it felt as though I’d been grieving my whole life long.
Probably because I had been.
I sat there on my knees for a good, long while, hoping they’d return, before slowly standing up. I closed the window and climbed into bed, feeling like the weight of the world anchored me to the mattress.
I pulled up my quilt, tucking the worn fabric next to my face, and closed my eyes. I could hear the birders chattering loudly about the blackbirds. I fell asleep the same way I’d woken up that morning. To the sound of a ruckus outside my window.
8
Natalie
I’d slept in fits and starts and woke to a dulcet female voice insistently saying my name.
“Natalie. Natalie.”
I stirred, then stiffened in fear that I wasn’t alone in my bedroom.
“Natalie, your father is dying.”
I bolted upright in bed and blindly reached for the baseball bat I kept next to the headboard. My heart pounded as my eyes adjusted to the early morning light streaming in through the windows, which were open only wide enough for the mountain breeze to ruffle the sheer curtains. The screens were in place. No one had come in that way.
Throwing the sheet off, I slid out of bed and hurriedly checked Ollie’s room, right next door. Her blanket was on the floor, and she was fast asleep in the toddler bed, her small hands thrown above her head. Her gentle, rhythmic breathing set me at ease for a moment.
I checked her closet, the only possible hiding spot, and found nothing out of the ordinary. Doubling back, I searched the little house top to bottom. There was no one.
Loosening my grip on the bat, I leaned against the wall, letting the adrenaline settle. I gave myself a moment, then went back into Ollie’s room.
I knelt down and retucked the quilt—her blankie, or bankie as she called it—around her, and watched her breathe for a moment.
I let my fingers linger on the quilt. It had been a gift from my mother to Ollie, crafted from remnants of her baby clothes. Mama had made many quilts in the same fashion, including AJ’s, which had gone missing after the car wreck that killed him, and she’d made many for friends and family.
But never one for me. She’d been working on it when AJ died, and in the aftermath, like most everything else in her world, it had ceased to exist.
My fingers drifted across the fabric, lingering on a soft terry cloth square in the corner. The image came easily of Matt holding a newborn Ollie in the crook of his arm like a football, her tiny head resting in his big hand. She’d looked like a little pink peanut against his muscled arm as she blinked up at him.
“She’s looking at me like I’ve done something wrong,” he’d said.
“Probably she’s wondering what in the hell just happened to her.”
He gently kissed Ollie’s downy head. “Don’t worry, sweet girl. Daddy’s here now.”
My heart hurt as I withdrew my fingers from the scrap of fabric cut from the outfit Ollie had been wearing that day.
Shoving the memory aside, I went back to thinking about the voice I’d heard. It had sounded so real. It couldn’t have been, though, as there was no one inside the house.
Inside.
Was it possible someone had been outside? Speaking through my open window?
I slipped on a short summer robe and a pair of sandals. A bold sunrise set the horizon aglow as I crept down the porch steps to check the perimeter of the little house for any sign that someone had been out there recently.
Several lights were on in the big house, including the kitchen. Not surprising, since my parents were early risers. If they’d seen someone trespassing, however, Daddy would have been out here with his shotgun long before now.
I considered for a moment that the voice had been my mother’s, then dismissed it almost as soon the thought came. The way the words had been spoken reminded me of Snow White’s singsong way of talking. Mama didn’t singsong. Not ever. Not even when she was actually singing. She had a gunfire way of punctuating lyrics that perfectly matched the tightly controlled way in which she lived her life.
Thick dew soaked my feet as I made my way toward my bedroom window. Crickets silenced. The wet grass showed no footprints other than my own, and the mulch bed beneath my window was undisturbed, covered in spots with sparkling spider webs. Dew droplets clung to the leaves of the boxwood shrubs and fragrant rose bushes.
Satisfied that there had been no intruder other than an eight-legged variety, I rolled my neck to ease the tense knots in my shoulders. I must have dreamed the voice. There was no other explanation.
“Natalie?”
Jumping, I spun around quickly, baseball bat at the ready. I let out a breath of relief as I came face-to-face with my father.
He threw his hands up. “Whoa, slugger!”
“Sorry.” I lowered the bat and willed my heart rate to slow. “I was lost in thought and didn’t hear you coming.”
“What’s going on?”
Looking fresh from a recent shower, he was already dressed for work in his crisply ironed pants and baby-blue button-down. Combed back off his forehead, his damp brown hair looked black in the morning light. As it dried, the hair would flop forward, its waviness winning out over a forced taming.
“A noise woke me up,” I said. “I wanted to make sure no one was out here lurking.”
Your father is dying.
My voice cracked as I added, “But I think I was just having a bad dream.”
While I’d been focused on finding a potential intruder, I’d been holding in the emotional deluge caused by the mysterious message I received. Of course it had been a bad dream. My father dying? No. Not possible. He looked … I studied him closely. He looked the same as always. Thank the Lord.
Absently, I pointed at my footprints in the wet grass. “No one’s been out here but me.”
Putting an arm around my shoulders, he started walking me toward the front door. “Seems like that nightmare still has you shaken up. You should have called me—you shouldn’t be out here alone looking for a bogeyman.”
I allowed myself to be drawn toward him. When I was younger I’d spent a lot of time glued to his side as he read me books, one after another after another—it was our favorite thing to do together, to disappear into the pages of another world. I’d always considered the crook of his arm to be the safest place in the whole world. “Daddy, if I called you for every bad dream I
had, you’d never get a good night’s rest.”
As soon as I said the words, I wished I hadn’t. Even though I spoke the truth, I didn’t like exposing my emotional baggage to others. Especially him. My problems were mine, and mine alone. I didn’t want him worrying.
He stopped walking. “What can I do to help, Nat?”
“You’ve already done more than enough to help me … and Ollie, too. You and I both know I need to learn to be strong enough to stand on my own two feet, and if that means chasing after bogeymen at the crack of dawn, so be it.”
After Matt died, I’d found a job that allowed me to work at night from home. No doubt about it, being a home-based support representative for a local department store had been a lousy job, but I could stay with Ollie and it had paid some of the bills. The rest … that’s where my father had stepped in.
Over the past couple of years, he’d paid what I couldn’t, and all he’d ever asked in return was for us to spend time with him—he’d often come down to Montgomery to take me and Ollie out to lunch or dinner, which, if I were being honest, was simply one more gift he’d given us, not the other way around.
There had never been any mention of Mama during all those years of him visiting us—and even now I wasn’t sure if she knew how much he’d provided after Matt died.
I suspected not.
“Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re weak, Natalie. It’s a sign of strength.”
“That’s sweet of you to say, Daddy.” It was just like him to try to make me feel better about my flaws. “But I can’t keep asking. I already can’t repay you for all you’ve done for me.”
“They weren’t loans, Nat. I wanted to help.”
“I know, but I still feel like I owe you more than gratitude.”
He was silent for a moment as though mulling my words. “I have an idea of how you can repay me.”
We climbed the porch steps. “I hope you’re not going to say money, because I don’t have any. Unless you count the kind that’s in Ollie’s toy cash register. And if that’s the case, I hope you don’t mind that it comes with bite marks. Those plastic coins are some of the best teethers around.”
He smiled. “I don’t want money.”
“What, then?” I’d do just about anything for him.
“Same as always. I want time. Stick around here for a while. Six months. A year. Give yourself the chance to get to know this place again. A chance for this place to get to know you again.”
There was only one reason he’d be asking that of me this morning. “You heard Mama and me having words last night.”
“Hard not to.”
I longed to say she’d started it, but I bit my tongue instead, not wanting to get worked up all over again.
“Time is what I want, Natalie. Can you do that for me?”
He knew me too well—and how my first inclination would be to run. My gaze cut to the big house. Mama’s face was clearly framed in the kitchen window above the sink—she was watching us.
“You know I don’t—and can’t—make excuses for your mother,” he said, “but she was on edge last night and took it out on you. She has a lot going on right now.”
“With Anna Kate. Yes, I know.”
Surprise flared in his eyes. “You know about Anna Kate?”
“While I rather wish it was either you or Mama who told me about her, yes, I do know. I met Anna Kate yesterday at the park. She seems nice.”
“I’m sorry. We were waiting to tell you until we knew for certain.”
“There’s no denying she’s a Linden.” It had taken me a moment to see the resemblance, but that was because I hadn’t been looking. The possibility that I had a niece out in the world had never once crossed my mind. AJ had been only eighteen when he died.
“Yes, I knew the minute I saw Anna Kate in person yesterday.” Daddy’s chin lifted slightly as he glanced off in the distance. “Your mother and I were going to discuss it with you today.”
I tapped the head of the bat on the top of my foot. “Now you don’t have to. I already know. For the record, I think asking Anna Kate to supper was a nice gesture.”
“You and I might be the only ones to think so. Anna Kate turned me down flat.”
I twisted his words and threw them back at him. “Give Anna Kate the chance to get to know this place. A chance for this place to get to know her.”
By place, we knew we both meant Mama.
“I’m sure Anna Kate is overwhelmed right now,” I added. “She needs time to adjust to the idea of us.”
Sadness haunted his eyes. “I’m not sure time is going to help in this situation. What happened in the past … She thinks the worst. Justifiably so.”
In all the years I’d heard Eden Callow’s name cursed to the heavens, I never really stopped to think whether my parents had been right to persecute the young woman. I’d simply believed their truth that Eden had killed AJ and gotten away with it.
Their truth. But had it been the whole truth?
After overhearing their conversation last night, I now questioned all I ever thought I knew about Eden. I kept tapping the bat against my foot. “Overcoming the past is a challenge, especially since it looks like you and Mama were wrong about Eden and treated her badly. The key to it all, I think, is that you need to show Anna Kate who you are now, because your relationship with her isn’t about what happened back then. It’s about what happens from here on out.”
He glanced away, toward the big house. “If only it were that easy, Natalie.”
As his head turned, the sunrise caught his face just so, highlighting deep shadows beneath his eyes. Had those been there before? “No one said it was going to be easy.”
His chin came up, and he faked a smile. “I best get going. I’ll see you later on?”
“I’ll be around.”
“And tomorrow?”
It took me a moment to understand why he was suddenly so interested in my whereabouts. “Then, too. I’ll stick around for a while, Daddy. I promise.”
“A year?”
“Don’t go pressing your luck. I’m not putting a time frame on it.”
He hugged me. “All right. I’ll take what I can get.”
“Thanks for coming out here and checking on me.” I squeezed him more tightly than I normally would and frowned. Had he lost weight? Breathing in the smell of him, I picked up the hint of soap and mint … and something else I couldn’t quite identify. Something sharp, bitter, and completely unfamiliar.
“Anytime. I’m always here if you need me.”
He released me, and I suddenly felt chilled. “Have you been feeling okay lately?”
“What makes you ask?”
Your father is dying.
“Just making sure. Since I’m going to be sticking around for a while.” I tried to make light, but I could hear the strain of worry in my voice coming through loud and clear.
He jumped off the porch with a flourish, kicking his heels up to show off. “Do I look like a man who’s feeling puny? Don’t you worry about me, Natalie.”
As he walked off, I noted that he hadn’t actually answered the question. I kept watch over him until he disappeared through the patio doors of the big house before I turned to go inside, wake up Ollie, and get on with the day.
As I swung the baseball bat onto my shoulder, I told myself not to let the worry take root—that I’d had a bad dream. Nothing more. He was fine. Just fine. Absolutely fine.
If my father were dying, I’d know it …
Wouldn’t I?
Anna Kate
Early the next morning, I woke up before my alarm went off. Today, all was quiet outside, and I knew exactly where I was.
In Wicklow with the blackbirds.
I should have been exhausted after the day I’d had yesterday, but I felt oddly rested. Sitting up, my first thoughts were of coffee. Although I was slightly obsessed with herbal tea, I always kick-started my days with coffee. But soon I started thinking about the blackberries Summe
r had dropped off. Zee’s cobbler sounded like a perfect breakfast treat—I hadn’t had a chance to make it yesterday, but I had the time now.
I hurriedly showered, dressed, and pulled my hair into a sloppy bun. Before I went downstairs, I made the rounds of the small apartment. Zee had been a minimalist, and it showed in her sparse furniture and lack of knickknacks. Her artistic flair wasn’t lacking, however. The walls were painted eggplant purple. The deep sofa was mint green, and the floral upholstery on the single armchair was a riot of colors. The small kitchenette was bare-bones, and I figured that was because Zee mainly cooked downstairs. Her room was painted summer-squash yellow. Crisp white curtains and bed linens added to the bright, sunny atmosphere. I closed the door and went down the hall for my shoes. My bedroom was painted a serene green that reminded me of a mint leaf, and it had the same white, light fabrics as Zee’s room. The whole apartment, while colorful, reminded me of nature. It felt like Zee.
I opened the curtains to check on the birders. Most had gone, but there were a few who remained behind in sleeping bags. I spotted Sir Bird Nerd milling about, his binoculars in hand, and I was surprised he hadn’t headed back to Mobile.
It wasn’t until I turned to go that I saw something green on the other side of the window, on the corner of the stone sill. Puzzled, I slid the window upward, knelt down, and saw that the green belonged to a leaf. It was held in place with a small stone.
Smiling, I carefully picked it up. I realized the blackbirds had given me a clue after all. When they’d bobbed their heads last night, it had been toward the corner of the sill where this leaf sat. Between the darkness and my tears, I hadn’t seen it.
I gently turned the brittle leaf over in my hand. It had five lobes, the tips of which looked like hearts. This leaf was browned along its edge as if in distress, and something deep within me responded to its call for help.
It was a mulberry leaf.
I quickly slipped on my sneakers and went running down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door, which thwacked behind me. I hurried across the lawn toward the mulberry trees, immediately noticing that some of the unripened fruit had dropped overnight. White, green, and pink berries littered the ground beneath the trees. Leaves had started to brown and curl inward.
Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe Page 10
