Through Her Eyes

by Jennifer Archer

  After dinner, I go up to my bedroom and log on to the internet on my laptop computer. I want to research nightingales to see if Bethyl Ann is correct that they don’t exist in North America. I think she’s wrong. The bird I saw in the hedge looked exactly like the picture of the nightingale in the library book.

  Before I begin a search, I think about Mom’s suggestion that I email Hailey, and I can’t resist checking my inbox. I have fifty-one messages—most of them spam, though five are from Hailey. And from Colin? A big, fat zero.

  A few days ago, it would’ve stung to find out Colin didn’t care enough about me to try to get in touch. Not anymore. When I think of him now, I don’t feel anything at all. The truth is, Colin was never really mine, only a dream. Maybe my change of heart regarding him has a little to do with Tate.

  Yeah, right. Who am I fooling? It has everything to do with Tate. I don’t know why he’s being so nice to me all of a sudden; I’m just glad he is. We didn’t talk about anything earth-shattering at the bridge. He just told me a little of its history—how it was originally built in the 1920s to make it easier to get from one side of the canyon to the other. The bridge isn’t used anymore, except as a hangout for teens. That must’ve been the case for decades, because the graffiti Mr. Quattlebaum complained about dates back to as early as the 1950s. Tate also mentioned the legend about Henry’s suicide, but he didn’t add any information I hadn’t already heard.

  I delete all the spam before opening Hailey’s first message.

  Tansy, I can explain what happened. I’ve always had a thing for Colin. But I knew you liked him so I tried—

  I hit Delete without reading the rest. Though I’m over Colin, Hailey’s disloyalty still hurts.

  Outside my window, the bird begins to trill. I enter the word nightingale into the search box on the computer screen just as Mom pokes her head into the room. “What’cha doing?” she asks.

  “Researching nightingales,” I answer before adding the lie, “for a science assignment.”

  “That sounds interesting.” She smiles. “Well, I’m turning in early. Good night.”

  “’Night,” I say, keeping my gaze on the screen as she closes the door. I click on the first link that comes up. It’s a bird-watcher’s site and it confirms what Bethyl Ann said. No nightingales in this part of the world.

  Baffled, I close the site and open the second link. A quote written by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley appears. I remember seeing a book of his poetry on the desk in Bethyl Ann’s bedroom the day I had lunch at her house. The quote reads: “A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”

  A quiver of recognition hums through me.

  “You’re early tonight,” I whisper to the serenading bird outside, feeling Henry’s pull.

  It isn’t easy, but I manage to wait until midnight to make sure Mom is soundly asleep before I slip from my room. I’m anxious to go up to the turret, but I still stop by to check on Papa Dan. Mom locked his door from the outside. I twist the deadbolt Bill Dilworth installed and let myself into his room. The sound of his raspy, staggered breathing makes my chest ache. “Sleep tight,” I whisper, tugging the fallen sheet up over his shoulder, realizing our roles have reversed; he used to tuck me in at night, used to murmur the same words I say to him now: “Don’t let the bedbugs bite. I love you.”

  Stepping outside his room, I close the door but can’t bring myself to engage the deadbolt. I get halfway down the hallway before I stop and go back, knowing what I have to do, whether I like it or not. Bitter tears scald my throat as the lock clicks into place beneath my fingers. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  Moments later in the turret, I look at the photos I developed earlier, now hanging on the drying rack. I linger over the one of the empty bench rock in the grove of green cottonwoods before moving on to the shot of Papa Dan in the driveway. In it, he is an old man—the grandfather I know, not a teenager. He leans against Bill Dilworth’s truck, not an old-fashioned car from out of a gangster movie. Whisking my fingertip across his image, I think how unfair it is, how hard to have to stand by and watch him wither away.

  My nerves stretch tight as I sit in the velvet chair by the window. I study the items on the round table: the envelope of photos from City Drug, the teardrop crystal, Henry’s journal. Beneath my palm the leather is smooth in places, bumpy in others.

  A poet is a nightingale…

  What does my nightingale poet want to say to me tonight? I’m not sure I want to know. The moment I found the journal, I felt my sanity slipping away like sand through my fingers. Maybe I shouldn’t read Henry’s poems anymore.

  I slide the top photograph from the envelope, the one of Papa Dan squinting up into the mulberry tree. Henry’s pocket watch still lies on the ground at his feet. Is that what my grandfather searched for all morning?

  The nightingale’s song plays through my mind, so pretty it brings fresh tears to my eyes and a longing for something that I can’t name.

  …his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened…

  The crystal captures the lamp’s glow and winks at me. I want my grandfather back. Maybe that possibility exists, maybe not. But I’ll never know unless I take the chance.

  Aiming the teardrop at the picture, I turn it slightly until a prism of light stretches between the two items. The prism shimmers and surrounds me. The image in the photograph widens.

  I slip through.

  12

  “Henry! You dropped your watch. I hope it didn’t break.”

  Henry grabs the mulberry tree’s lowest branch, pulls himself up, and climbs to the next branch, then sits on a sturdy limb near the top of the tree. “I don’t care if it breaks. Keep it, Daniel. I don’t want it anymore.”

  “I can’t take your watch.”

  “You aren’t taking it. It’s my gift. That watch might be worth a lot of money someday. If you don’t want to carry it, store it in one of those fancy little boxes you make.”

  “I never keep them,” Daniel says. “I give them away.”

  “You really should make one for yourself,” Isabel tells him.

  The phantom I first saw in the tree and the boy beneath it have come alive. They move and talk like actors in a black-and-white movie. Without question, I accept the teenage boy, Daniel, will grow up to be my grandfather. I accept, too, that I inhabit someone else’s body—a girl named Isabel. I’m not sure how I know her name, I just do. I know everything she knows. I feel her emotions, speak her words, think her thoughts as well as my own. And it seems right, the most natural thing in the world. It’s almost as if we’re both inside her body—Isabel and I. But she’s the one in control; I can only follow along, listening and watching as if I’m a passenger.

  Isabel wonders about the note of sarcasm in Henry’s tone when he mentioned the boxes. She blames it on his strange mood today and silently forgives his condescending attitude toward their best friend. Linking her arm through Daniel’s, she kisses his cheek. “I love the box you made me for Christmas. I keep my favorite trinkets inside it.”

  Daniel grins, then releases her arm and bends to pick up the watch. He wears a coat and a scarf, a woolen hat and heavy boots. The timepiece he holds out toward Henry is a deep, glossy gold—the only speck of color in this drab, neutral world. “But your folks gave it to you for your birthday,” he protests. “It must’ve cost ’em a pretty penny.”

  “They have plenty more pennies,” Henry scoffs. “I don’t want anything from them. Not anymore.”

  Isabel’s heart aches for him. She wonders how his parents can be so cruel. They leave him alone too much. Mrs. Peterson always accompanies Mr. Peterson on his business trips, and they take more vacations than anyone she knows, even during the months when Henry is in school and can’t join them. I
sabel’s folks never leave her alone.

  “I’m sure they love you,” she says to him, pulling her coat more snugly around her. Her fingers are numb inside her mittens as she shades her eyes against the sun’s white glare and gazes into the tree branches at Henry. “You must miss them. It has to be just awful staying out here with that moody Miss Ivy all the time. I thought she resigned?”

  “After I put a bullet in my foot, you mean?” He laughs. “What Father wants, Father gets. He doubled the old bat’s salary to bribe her back.”

  Daniel looks at Henry suspiciously. “You didn’t really shoot yourself on purpose like everyone says.”

  “Didn’t I?” Henry cocks a brow.

  “Stop that!” Isabel scolds. “The way you talk, it’s no wonder people—” She catches herself.

  “Think I’m insane?” Henry says, feigning a wicked laugh. “Don’t look so grim, Isabel. I don’t mind being the town’s Mad Hatter. In fact, I like it.”

  The toll of a bell diverts Isabel’s attention to the farmhouse across the way—the Quattlebaums’ farmhouse. No, not anymore. Not here. The farm belongs to Isabel’s family; her father is the farmer I’ve seen through my camera lens in my own world—somehow I know that. He’s out there now, shoveling snow in the yard. He props the shovel against his body to play fetch with their Labrador retriever, Kip. Isabel giggles as Kip runs toward the barn to retrieve the ball. “Daddy is in for it now,” she says. “Kip will want him to play for the rest of the day.” Her father pulls off his glove and blows on his fingers to warm them. He doesn’t tolerate the cold. Once he’s inside the house, his hands will throb as he warms them over the fire.

  “What do ya want to do today?” Daniel passes Henry’s watch to Isabel, and I feel the weight of it in her hand. “Remember when we spent Saturdays playin’ hide-and-seek in the canyon? Now, that was fun. Too bad we’re too old for games like that now.”

  “Says who?” Henry asks derisively. “Tell you what…we’ll change the rules to make it more interesting.” He winks at Isabel. “Instead of one person hiding and two seeking, Isabel and I will hide together, and you’ll have to look for us, Daniel.”

  Heat creeps from beneath Isabel’s coat collar and climbs up her neck and face to warm her cheekbones. Until recently, Henry treated her and Daniel the same—as slightly amusing, slightly annoying younger siblings. He never winked at her or made flirtatious suggestions. Their shared glances didn’t startle her or make her pulse stutter, as they do now. She is confused by his increasing attention, by his dark, unwavering stare and the unfamiliar feelings it stirs inside her.

  The bell rings a second time. Isabel feigns annoyance, though she’s really relieved. Slipping Henry’s watch into her coat pocket to hold for him until he comes down from the tree, she sighs and murmurs, “I’d better go.”

  “So that’s how your mother calls you in now? By ringing the bell?” One corner of Henry’s mouth curves up. “I think I’ll call you Bell from now on. It fits.”

  “That is a good name for you!” Daniel agrees. “You’re always interruptin’ and makin’ noise.” He dusts snow from his mittens into Isabel’s face.

  Shrieking a laugh, she scoops up a fistful of snow and tosses it at him, and in that small part of Isabel’s mind that I now occupy, I think how wonderful it is to see my grandfather so young and strong, so healthy and happy.

  “You’re askin’ for it now, Bell!” Daniel yells, reaching for more snow.

  Henry jumps from the tree and takes Isabel’s arm, casting a dark glance over his shoulder at Daniel. “Bell is my name for her, not yours.”

  A stunned look of apprehension flashes across Daniel’s face, and I feel the pressure of Henry’s fingers through Isabel’s coat sleeve as her gaze darts between the two of them. “I need to go home,” she murmurs, a sudden wariness humming beneath her skin.

  Henry draws her a few steps farther away from Daniel and gives her arm an even harder squeeze. “It’s a quarter past eight,” he says quietly. “You just got here.”

  “I’ll come back when I finish my chores.”

  He frowns at her father across the field. “They’ll just find another excuse to keep you away from me.”

  Daniel begins whistling, and she looks over to see him packing snow into a ball. At first, Isabel thinks he hasn’t heard her conversation with Henry, but then Daniel glances up, their eyes meet, and she realizes she was wrong. She can’t tell from his expression if Daniel feels excluded, or if he’s worried about her. Or both.

  When Daniel returns his attention to the snowball, she lowers her voice and says to Henry, “I’ll tell Mama and Daddy that Daniel is with us. They think the world of him.”

  “And what about you?” Henry’s black eyes search hers. “What do you think of Daniel?”

  “I love him, of course.” Amused by his jealous scowl, Isabel nudges Henry and grins. “Silly goose, not like that. Daniel’s like a brother to me.”

  “Promise you’ll come back.”

  “I promise.”

  “After lunch, if not before.” Henry holds tight to her arm until she nods her agreement.

  “Ouch!” Daniel cries.

  “What’s wrong?” Isabel calls.

  “I cut my hand.”

  Breaking away from Henry, she rushes to Daniel and stoops beside him in the snow. She takes the fist he cradles against his chest, asking, “How did you manage this?”

  “There was a sliver of glass in the snow. It sliced right through my glove.”

  Isabel removes her mitten, then peels the glove off his injured hand. A small gash lines the inside space between his forefinger and thumb, black blood oozing from it. But as she probes Daniel’s warm flesh, I’m shocked to see the blood turn crimson. “You should clean and disinfect this; it’s deep,” she tells him. “You might need a stitch or two.”

  Henry comes over, takes hold of Daniel’s arm, and helps him stand. “Come on. We’ll get Miss Ivy to do it.”

  Noticing Daniel’s hesitance to go with him, Isabel says, “That’s okay. He can come home with me. Mother will tend to it. She has the supplies in her first-aid kit.”

  Henry’s eyes narrow; he shrugs, then drops Daniel’s arm. Nodding impatiently toward her father’s farm, he says, “Hurry home, then. Take care of Daniel and get your chores done, Bell.” He stomps off, headed for his house.

  Confused and upset, Isabel watches him go. I want her to defy Henry for acting as if he owns her. She knows she should, and a part of her wants to, but if she obeys him, they’ll be together again sooner, and Isabel wants that most of all. “Let’s go,” she tells Daniel quietly.

  Snow crunches beneath their feet and a brooding silence stretches between them as they cross the field. Midway to the house, Daniel murmurs, “Are you okay?”

  “You’re the one who’s hurt,” she points out, glancing at his injured hand. But her chest is so tight with emotion that she can’t hold the words in any longer. “Who does Henry think he is? Ordering me around like that…implying that you should back off.”

  “Since you brought it up…” Daniel stops walking, cradling his injured hand against his stomach, pressing his loose glove to the wound with his opposite hand. “Henry’s changed…. He seems, I don’t know…dodgy, I guess. Like he’s after somethin’.”

  Pausing alongside him, Isabel asks, “Why would you say that?” But deep inside, she knows exactly what he means; she’s noticed the changes in Henry, too.

  “You know I’ve always looked up to him. In some ways I wish I could be more like Henry and not give a whit what anybody thinks of me. But lately…” Daniel shakes his head as he glances back at the Peterson house. “I’m not sure I trust him anymore.” There’s an uneasy look in his eyes as he adds, “That thing with the gun…him shootin’ himself…”

  Isabel is torn between defending Henry and admitting she’s worried about him, too. Not that she doesn’t like some of the changes in him: the smooth, deep caress of his voice when he speaks her name; the way his
eyes darken when he looks at her; the tender way he touches her at times. But she’s also noticed his arrogance, especially toward Daniel. “He’s always had an edginess about him,” she says. “And I don’t believe for a second that he shot himself. He’s only joking.”

  “That’s nothin’ to joke about. Besides, it’s more than that. I’m startin’ to think everyone else might be right about him. If not for him saving my life, I’m not sure I’d keep comin’ out here.” Daniel looks down at his hands and lifts the glove to inspect the wound. “That and the fact that I don’t want to leave you alone with him.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” Isabel hugs him, filling me with emotion. This boy wrapped tight in my arms will grow up to be my grandfather—my best friend.

  While I absorb his warmth, Isabel is distracted by the hope that Daniel doesn’t notice the breathless sound of her voice and guess the truth—that she longs for time alone with Henry, that lately, it’s almost all she thinks about. “You know how moody Henry can get,” she murmurs. “That’s nothing new. But he’s harmless. And as for him saving you—I don’t want to see your friendship with Henry end, but if that’s the only reason you spend time with him…You were what? Eight years old when he rescued you?”

  “Nine. He jumped in and pulled me out of the river, Isabel. I couldn’t swim. He risked his life.”

  Irritation at Henry rises up in her again. “That certainly doesn’t give him the right to treat you like a bug on his shoe.” She looks back at the Peterson house. “When we were little, Henry and I only had each other for company most days, being way out here so far from town. Next to you, he’s my best friend. If he wants to snarl at me, fine. But I won’t let him treat you like that. I’m going to say something to him.”

  “No, don’t,” Daniel says quickly. “I’ll deal with whatever’s bugging Henry. You just watch out for yourself. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”