My tongue twists. I—the drab brown bird that I am—want to peck at her face and shit on her head.
“Give me the word and I’ll call the cops,” Nate whispers in my ear, leading me to sit across from her.
“A bitch,” I whisper back.
“Yes or no?”
“Nathan,” she interrupts, “be a gentleman and get us some tea.”
“You’re not getting any tea. You’re not entitled to a damn thing here.” I lean forward and grip the seat cushion between my thighs. “Wayland Casper told me—”
“Oh, Wayland.” She flashes a schoolgirl smile as if she has a crush. “He’s a handsome fellow. Why didn’t you marry him?”
I make a deep grunt, my insides burning up. “Stop it. Stop changing the subject.”
“Loneliness is the subject. Wayland is lonely. So was I.”
“That’s a brutal way of putting it. Is that why you took my brother? So you could have a playmate?”
She nibbles on her cracker. “Yes.” She nibbles again. “We needed each other.”
“He was only four when you took him away. We loved him. We needed him. Not you. He wasn’t yours to take!”
She closes her eyes and raises a shaky hand for me to relax. I take shallow breaths, focusing on the crumbs in her lap piling up like an anthill.
I shift in the chair and jiggle my feet madly. “Okay, I can try to speak calmly to a deranged woman … for one minute.”
“What about Wayland?” she asks.
“He said you’ve been all over this town, why not have—”
“A child of my own?”
“Yeah.”
“Too old. I was in my late fifties when I thought it was time.”
“So adopt.”
“I wasn’t about to do that. What a hassle, the way those people want to intrude on a person’s entire life. And that process can take years.” Her voice is firm. She spies on Nate while finishing her cracker. After the wrapper is tucked away inside her purse, the crumbs swept off her robe, and her lips patted free of any remaining bits, she takes out her cell and finds an image of Finn. “Looks just like his daddy.”
“Is that why you brought him back? Because Finn reminds you of Eli when you took him from us? Same age. Same face. That must bother you. Tell me it does. Tell me that guilt is eating you alive. Tell me it’s so bad you think it might kill you. I want to know you’re miserable.”
“Ethan—”
“Eli!”
She blinks at me slowly, but it’s not the slow blink of a cat wanting to profess its love, it’s the slow blink of a woman wanting to display superiority. And impatience.
“If I can go on … Ethan left me alone in a lifeless, quiet house. Not a sound. Do you know what that can do to a person’s frame of mind? Especially at my age.” She sets her cell in her lap. “I am a live model, Salem. I stand in stores and listen to strangers tell their stories. However, I’m not invisible to them.” She spreads her fingers in front of her face and turns her hand back and forth. “I’m not invisible. I’m ignored. Such a shame.” Her hand drops. “Who’ll be Ethan and Finn’s family when I’m gone? That seems important to me now.”
By the look on Nate’s face, I can tell we’re thinking the same thing. The wheels are turning. Pieces are starting to fit. I want to say you’re not his family, but she’s saying it in her own mazy way.
“One time, I pushed the mute button of the remote to the television Ethan had left behind, just to see if my home had been hushed by some device. But the sound didn’t return. I wasn’t on mute.” She shakes her head. “Ten years ago I could always find a friend to meet for brunch or someone to chat with on the street, this or that, didn’t matter who or what, as long as it was a familiar voice. Now I spend my days talking to produce in the grocery store.”
“I don’t need to listen to some sad story to make me feel sorry for you. I don’t care. I want to know—”
“Yes, no one cares. That’s evident. People are miserable nowadays, aren’t they? You have that tone in your voice like the rest of them.”
“This tone is because you abducted my brother.”
“No, not exactly. Ethan was handed to me.”
I squinch a bit. “What does that mean?”
“He was going to marry her, you know. His girlfriend was stunning. They met in a photography class at the university.”
“Wait. What did you say?”
“Now, my Ethan won’t talk to any woman who shows interest in him. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard? Almost four years now, and still he refuses to date. I don’t want him to end up as lonely as me.”
“Go back. How did you get Eli? How did you get in here that day?”
“He’s a photographer. Did he tell you?”
My head feels like flour sifting through a sieve, only the lumps and imperfections have obstructed the wire mesh. What is the truth? What are lies? We’re on an indirect route—her route. I think how different she is from my mom, my grandma, from every woman I’ve ever known. Plotting her life like the saber-toothed blenny—a fish Connor said pretends to be your friend before it bites your face—that’s her. That’s totally her. My granddad was right to steer clear.
“Why him, Virginia? Why us?”
A pause. “I don’t believe the choice was easy for anyone.”
Nate’s sudden movement distracts me. He steps back and crosses his arms, disquieted by something. “I’ll be right back,” he says, moving past us and up the stairs to his room.
Virginia skims a finger over her cell, a mere four, five feet from me. She sat in that spot the night she checked in, was at the lodge twenty years ago to abduct Eli, and was in this town sixty years ago flashing her chest at my granddad. Her sitting here feels like a punch, a kick in the teeth.
“I’ll have to call him soon. He must be worried,” she says, touching her cell. “I’m not at the church.”
“That’s where you’ve been?”
“They’re always generous. It’s a comforting place for the homeless or anyone stranded in a nasty snowstorm.”
“Liar. You weren’t stranded. You lie about everything.” I sit up and lean closer to her. “Why tell me you were married to an alcoholic? Why tell Wayland you have a Mathematics degree and were a professor? What the hell is the point, Virginia? Why put people through days of worry when you went missing?” I nod at her cell. “Why do this to Eli? I bet he wouldn’t give a damn about you if he knew what you’ve done.”
She stands and hovers over me. Her warm, broccoli-scented breath swathes my face, dull eyes inches from mine. “Salem, you have all the answers that you need.”
“I have nothing.”
She looks over the lobby, takes in the tired room, my worn clothing, my tangled hair.
“I’m not talking about this.” I dismiss her thoughts with a flick of my wrist. “I’m talking about him.”
“You have a lifetime, which is everything.”
I glare furiously at her. She creeps toward the front door like she’s walking underwater. “Eli’s alive,” I say, “but he’s not coming back. I’m the one who died. I died in a fire. Isn’t that ironic? I’m dead to him, Virginia … I’m dead.”
“The time was right for all of us.” She looks back. “I paid for what I received. Nothing comes free. Now it’s your choice what you want to do with the information. The time may be right for the two of you, or it may not. That’s a decision you’ll have to make on your own.” She continues to the door, taking a final look at the photograph of my family overhead before stepping outside. She stops on the porch with the same hesitation she had when she left with the box of photographs the other morning. “Thank you for shoveling out my car,” she says.
“Get out,” I whisper.
She waits for me to say more, but I’m reluctant. At this point, I’d rather she just leave.
“Don’t lose your friends, Salem. Gather as many as you can. Women should
have more friends than shoes.” She steps forward. Her outline fades.
I wipe a tear from my cheek, the chime singing louder than it ever has. My granddad said it caroled like a sparrow, and that my cries matched their songs. He said my fight for breath when I cried—a sequence of high-pitched shrills—was too sweet to be from sadness. But my tears flow only in silence now.
How did she get Eli that morning? Where has he been? Was he good in school? Did he have birthday parties and go fishing when he was a kid? Did he ever talk about us?
My eyes clamp shut.
What’s his favorite movie, favorite book, favorite food? Does he like sports?
I wipe my cheek.
Did he ever learn how to ride a bike? Has he gotten sick from gorging on an entire gallon of ice cream? Was he taught right from wrong? The difference between needs and wants?
I want to know these things. I need to know.
The door to my private quarters jerks open. Joss struts out with Ollie. He jogs to my side and instantly locates the best spot to rest his chin on my thigh.
“I held her for as long as I could,” Jim says. “She knocked me flat on my back again.”
“Did you let her go?” Joss darts to the window. She draws the curtains wide, utters a mountainous gasp. “You did! You’re letting her get away!”
“She’s not getting anywhere, Joss.”
“Babe, I’m watching her back out right now. She’s leaving.”
“I can call the cops anytime. Today, tomorrow, it doesn’t matter when.”
“But you’re not going to.” She snaps the curtains shut. “What did she say to walk out of here scot-free?” She turns and lifts her chin at me. “Was it a threat? To Eli? To Finn? What happened, Salem?”
Jim whispers to her in secrecy, only not well, the lodge is too quiet not to overhear.
“We have to call this in if she doesn’t,” he says. “We know who took Eli. We’re fucked if we don’t report it and someone finds out we knew.”
“Not true,” Nate cuts in on his way down the stairs. “You’re not concealing it. You’re just not reporting it. There’s a difference. It’s not a crime.”
“How can you hear me?” Jim asks.
“Because even when you whisper your voice sounds like a foghorn.” Nate sits across from me and places a pile of papers on the coffee table between us. I recognize them immediately. They’re Gert’s medical bills, the stack Nate had on his dresser, the stack I snooped through in his room.
He taps the top bill, his finger stopping on the amount owed. He flips to the next, and the next, pointing out the cost of Gert’s cancer treatment: doctor’s visits, tests, procedures, hospital stays, treatments, and medications. Bills dating back to when I was a kid, lasting years, stopping and starting when the cancer was in remission and then returned.
“These were in Grady’s safe-deposit box with the two keys and Connor’s stash. I wasn’t sure why he saved her bills for so many years, or why he had them with that other stuff. I thought maybe he was holding on to the memory of what killed her. But I think it’s clear now.”
Joss and Jim gather next to us and skim through the bills.
“Grady was a janitor. He didn’t have this kind of money,” Jim says. He points to a bill. “That drug cost them five grand a month. Even with insurance this probably adds up to over a hundred grand.”
“Easily,” Joss says, a glum expression on her face, the one she has whenever she remembers what my mom went through.
She hasn’t caught on to what it all means, why Nate’s showing me the bills. She wasn’t here when Virginia offered clues.
Ethan was handed to me.
The time was right for all of us.
I paid for what I received.
Nothing comes free.
Nate and I exchange knowing glances. He clasps his hands between his legs and lowers his head, hiding hurt feelings about his family.
“Those spare keys in the stash were mentioned in a letter,” I say to Nate. “They were given to Grady by my granddad. Grady had a way inside the lodge.”
He nods. “He needed money to try to save my grams.”
“And Virginia wanted a child,” I add.
“An exchange.” Jim releases a bill, and it floats to the table.
“No way.” Joss looks down at me, then at Nate, who looks like a shamed little boy.
“That hag only cares about herself,” Jim says, stroking his beard. “She could’ve given them the money without taking Eli.”
“How can you just sit there and let her go?” Joss asks. “I don’t get it.”
I slide off the chair and sprawl out on the floor. “Her world is small. She’ll die alone. That’s far worse than anything I could ever do to her.”
“But think of your parents and all the years spent without Eli. All the pain everyone went through. It’s not fair.”
“Joss, I wish she were dead.” I look up at her. “I do. But some punishments are too easy.” Ollie settles next to me, belly down, stretching his rear legs out. I pet his back then hold his paw. “Her loneliness will kill her. I’m sure of it, and that’s far worse than prison.”
Nate curls up behind me. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Joss and Jim lay on their backs next to us, eyes on the ceiling, hands joined.
“You know you’ve got Christmas garland up there?” Jim says.
Joss laughs. “Jim, that remark is completely irrelevant to what we’re talking about.”
Ollie lifts his head. His tongue rolls out as if he’s smiling in agreement.
“Jim can’t cope with difficult situations, so he deals by changing the subject,” Nate says. He wipes a tear from my cheek and kisses my temple.
Jim points upward. “I’m just saying she’s got garland on her beams.”
“I know,” I respond.
“But it’s almost Easter.”
“And Christmas will come again.”
He looks toward the window, squinting at blinks of sunlight seeping through the sides of the curtains. He crosses his legs and tiny motes of dust lift into the light. “The world’s full of fucked-up people,” he says.
I smile and inhale a long breath through my nose. “I know.” I exhale.
“I’m better at this than you guys think. At least I got her to smile.”
“You’re getting better,” Nate says.
“Salem?”
“What is it, Joss?” I bite my nail.
“What about Eli? You gonna say something to him?”
My nail snaps between my teeth and a sliver sticks to my tongue. The room deadens as everyone waits for my answer. I work the sliver out, hold it between my front teeth, and keep it there as I think.
There’s not much time before Eli comes back.
A small part of me wants to turn off all the lights and crawl under my bed, stay in the dark until he leaves. I’ll hear him come and go then erase the older Eli from my memory like he was never here. Then I’ll always remember him as my four-year-old baby brother, not a twenty-five-year-old stranger with a son. He’s supposed to be a little boy whose cheeks I can pinch, cooing, “Woolly, woolly bear.” He wasn’t supposed to grow up.
But a bigger part of me wants to tell Eli everything.
“Salem?” Joss asks.
With the weight of the three sparrow keys around my neck and all the fear bottled in the pit of my stomach, I can’t give her an answer.
Too many possibilities lie ahead.
twenty-seven
Late afternoon. The lodge is still.
Nate sweeps my hair back and feathers his thumbs across my cheeks. An hour of passionate sex has left him with dilated pupils and ragged breaths.
His name has stayed with me after calling it out repeatedly while I came. I didn’t say Jesus or God this time. It was Nate.
Nate.
“You’re amazing,” I whisper.
“You too.” We share brief t
remors when we kiss, sweat deep between our legs. “I think I’ll keep you,” he says.
“Really?” I laugh.
“Yep.” He rolls off me and relaxes at my side, his warmth against mine.
“Well, since you have the comfort fuck down pat, I think I’ll keep you.”
The laughter between us survives only a few seconds before it transforms into silence. So much has happened that we can’t see straight, and that’s only partly from the sex. Our minds aimlessly wander from Virginia, to Grady, to Eli.
Nate has apologized multiple times, taking on the responsibility for Grady. I admit that I’m crushed, crushed by Grady’s betrayal, and crushed for my granddad. He was kind to Grady, and he never learned the truth. Would it be easier if I hadn’t found the letters? Having them increases the pain, but not having them would’ve left us in the dark about so many other things.
Nate slips out of bed and opens the window a crack. He takes off the condom and drops it in the wastebasket, then pulls the blanket over my goose-pimply skin to protect me from the cold. I hold it up for him to come back to me, but he returns to the window instead.
“Jim better not break any of the bone sculptures,” he says, scraping the frosted glass with his fingernail. “I should’ve given him and Joss fifty bucks each to load them into my truck.”
“Thirty is plenty, and Joss will make sure they’re packed well. She’s good at that.”
He sighs. “I don’t even want them anymore. I’d leave them all in that root cellar if my mom didn’t ask to see them.” He leans forward, his nose pressed against the glass.
My body tingles when I think of his touch, the smooth curve of his back, his broad shoulders, and firm ass. I wish his silhouette would remain bathed in the thin sunlight of my bedroom window forever. I could just lie here and stare all day.
“You need me to do anything?” he asks, his eyes falling on my breasts.
“There’s nothing to do except wait like we’ve been waiting.”
He nods and turns away.
Eli said he’d return at four, and he meant it. Even if Virginia called to meet him somewhere or to tell him she was leaving Tilford Lake, he’s not coming back until I reopen for the night. He doesn’t know he’s welcome here anytime. And without a cell number, I can’t call to tell him to come home.
The Release of Secrets_Littlest Sparrow Gone Page 24
