The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  “Come on, Bridge, it’s about to get full-blown dark out. We’ll be in deep shit then.” He took her hand and pulled her gently from the steel machines, rusted stuck in time, to the open room they’d come from. Bridget took one last look in the lost goose’s direction, its cry growing more distant as they navigated the mill debris, away from it. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for it, wandering among the man-made landscape, with the natural sounds of the dam and other birds close enough to hear and unable to find his way out.

  • • •

  In the parking lot, Tripp turned to her at her car. “Dinner?”

  “What?” She’d been thinking of Lucia, and if she was honest, about Nate. Where he was right now, where Lucia was right now, if they were together. If they were together together. She hadn’t realized how firmly the doubts had taken hold, but now they were there, solid as though they’d always been there, and she found if she was honest, she no longer truly believed in him.

  “I said dinner? The 543?” Tripp repeated as Bridget started to shake her head no. “You have to eat no matter what, right?”

  Bridget felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, and without looking at the display, declined the call. Petra had already called three times that day alone.

  She followed his truck in her car for the three miles into town. She thought maybe she should call Nate, tell him she was meeting Tripp. In another life, he’d have gotten a kick out of this. Back when Holden was alive, and she and Nate and Alecia and Bridget were a foursome, they’d have parties at Nate and Alecia’s.

  Sometimes he’d come to Nate’s without a date and flirt with Bridget and Alecia, vying for their attention, the men oblivious or just not caring or even teasing them all. Holden would say here comes your boyfriend and laugh, and Bridget would redden. Or she remembered one of his girlfriends, Aubrey with the perm, who worked nights at the Quarry Bar, who sat incongruously at the living room card table next to Alecia. Alecia with her Seven jeans and her straight blond hair. Aubrey went out to smoke a cigarette and Alecia had hissed across the table, Jesus, Tripp, are you slumming for women now? And Bridget had elbowed her, because honestly, the girl-on-girl trash talk irritated the living shit out of her. Didn’t they get enough bullshit from men and now they had to give it to each other? Tripp would say, Aw, A, you’re such a bitch sometimes. Bridget had laughed, because that, at least, was true. Tripp would put his arm around Bridget, his big hand squeezing her shoulder, and say, listen, my two favorite women are already taken. Holden would roll his eyes and later say, I don’t know how anyone can stand that guy. Bridget would defend him, he’s just kidding around, lighten up. But lightening up wasn’t in Holden’s repertoire and he only tolerated Tripp because Nate loved the guy. Their card nights had always seemed like postcollege shenanigans, where the rules of normal society didn’t exactly apply and they could all be as ridiculous as they wanted with few consequences.

  But now the weird part was, Bridget was available and Holden was dead, and none of them had partied like that in what seemed like years. Since Gabe was diagnosed, at least. Three years felt like a lifetime. Sometimes she asked Nate how Tripp was; he even once told her that Tripp was engaged—maybe to the woman in the picture on his desk. At the time, she’d been oddly sad about it.

  And now, Tripp was here. She remembered the way his fingers clutched her arm as she leaned into him at the mill, gentle and firm. It made her wonder what his hands would feel like on her bare skin and then chastise herself for the thought. But truthfully, the idea had been there for a very long time, if only in a boozy afterthought way. If she was truly honest about it, she’d always used to put on a little bit more makeup, her shirt a little lower cut, her hair a bit more curled on the nights she thought Tripp might come.

  Now he sat across the booth from her at The 543 giving her a grin she’d thrilled at only a few years ago, and the jolt under her skin went up her arms and straight up into her hair, then dissipated, instantly, like static.

  She wasn’t that same person. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn lipstick. Her clothes hung on her—she’d been curvy at one point, but a sporadic diet of frozen dinners and red wine for dinner had run the curves right off her body. Now she had no hips, no waist, just a straight blob from her neck to her knees, and had Aunt Nadine seen her now, she would say girl you gotta stand up twice to cast a shadow. The jacket Bridget wore had been Holden’s spring jacket—a tan canvas, utterly unfashionable with no shape whatsoever. She was a widow now, still having sex dreams about a man who died a year (nearly a year, must call Petra!) before, and being content with orgasming in her sleep and calling it a good night.

  Dating was a laughable proposition. Then again he hadn’t asked.

  She ran a hand through the ends of her hair.

  They both ordered coffee. Tripp suggested pancakes and Bridget went along with it because food didn’t have much taste and she truly didn’t care. The waitress took away their menus and the pregnant silence was followed by them both speaking at once.

  “So, do you think—” Bridget started.

  “What do you want—” Tripp said.

  They laughed. Tripp motioned for Bridget to talk first.

  “I was going to ask you, do you think Lucia and Nate are together?” She shook out a sugar packet and tore the top.

  “I don’t know. I called Nate just before I saw you at the mill—”

  “Did you follow me?” She interrupted him without thinking.

  “I did,” Tripp conceded, stirring his coffee. “I had a hunch you wouldn’t go home. You left my house in such a rush. Tell me, why are you so intent on figuring this all out? It doesn’t seem like you believe Nate. You don’t believe Lucia, do you?”

  Bridget considered this. It was a perfectly fair question, and one she’d been asking herself the entire drive to the mill earlier. Again, because today seemed like a particularly good day for honesty, she had to admit maybe it was the curiosity of the whole affair that pulled at her. I mean, what else did she have? Besides Petra and the perfect maple tree, which seemed pretty stupid now. For God’s sake, let Petra find the tree.

  “I think I believe Nate. I do. He’s not a cheater. I’ve known him for years.”

  “Does a cheater have a type?” Tripp asked slowly, unfolding and refolding his napkin.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think so.” But then Bridget flashed on Holden, on Watercress 6:30, on that broken red acrylic fingernail, each so seemingly innocent. Holden—stiff, conservative, predictable Holden drinking one (and only one) bourbon and water on the rocks at the bar after his medical conference—had taken a red-fingernailed radiologist to his bed. He didn’t seem the type, either. He’d voted for Bush. “Maybe not,” she conceded.

  “Alecia cheated on Nate, did you know that?”

  Bridget looked up then, stunned. “No. When?”

  “Years ago, before they were married maybe? Someone kissed her at a work thing. This is how life happens, though. There’s no type for anything. People are just doing their thing, being people, right?”

  “Maybe. But with a student?” Bridget tried to figure out if he was defending Nate. It was one thing to explore a kiss at a work function when you had a boyfriend, but it was quite another to hunker down with a student when you had a wife and a disabled son at home who depended on you.

  “I don’t think so.” He moved in his seat, tucking his hands under his legs and leaning forward. “Lucia being missing? This changes things, I think. They’ll gun for him. Harper already had a closed case on the guy for institutional assault. I don’t know if it would have stuck. He was talking to the DA. But he wanted Nate, for sure.”

  “Should you be telling me this?” Bridget practically whispered, looking around. The closest occupied table was ten feet away, but still.

  “Probably not. I’m basically just a traffic cop; there’s no crime in this town. There’s drugs, but even those have a larger regional task force. It’s no secret I can’t stand Harper. He go
es after what he thinks the truth is, be damned with what he finds out along the way. I want to be a detective, but not his way.”

  “Something was going on at school,” Bridget admitted slowly. She thought about the witch comments, the burning note. She thought about Lucia’s creative writing journal, sitting on her desk, the bizarrely cryptic entries she’d initially attributed to her brother. Wrist to floor, his hand like an ape.

  She thought about how disengaged she’d been as a teacher in the past year, the past few months. How life seemed to be happening around her, and if she had to picture it, she felt like an observer. A patron in the monkey house. She realized that maybe all of this was related, that maybe Nate was collateral damage.

  She couldn’t articulate now how the kids all seemed to slide sideways since Lucia disappeared. How their eyes shifted away from Bridget, away from Bachman, their mouths smirking, whispering behind cupped hands.

  There was a missing piece. Something that no one knew.

  The waitress brought dinner. Bridget ate and thought about how she’d been turning a blind eye, out of laziness or tiredness or the sensation she was being weighted down. That anything she did was hopeless, that the students at Mt. Oanoke would go on being ruthless or chipper or doing heroin or underage drinking and nothing she did would make a difference. She was simply treading water. For a teacher, apathy was a crime; she used to believe that. Then again, like Tripp said, she was just a person trying to get through it.

  “I think I’ve been stupid. Or at least willfully ignorant.” On her plate, a half serving of gluey pancakes remained. She hadn’t eaten that much at once in weeks. Months maybe. The hard knot of dough and sugar felt lodged in her esophagus, stuck.

  “Well,” Tripp cleared his throat and rummaged in the plastic holder for more sugar packs. “You’ve been through a lot.” When he looked up he met her eyes, tilted his head. “Did I ever tell you how sorry I was? I was. I am.”

  He didn’t. At the funeral, he gave her a quick peck, but mostly avoided her. He’d said, let me know if I can do anything. Like of all people in the world, when she was at the absolute bottom, when the world seemed black and shot through with silver sharp pain, when getting out of bed or taking a shower seemed like daunting tasks, when she just wanted to talk about Holden because all anyone else seemed to want to do was change the subject or bring her macaroni-and-cheese casseroles, she would have called Tripp? No.

  “You didn’t. But I appreciate it.” She was better at accepting condolences, about smiling back instead of crying. To say Oh, thank you, yes it’s so hard, no don’t worry, I’m fine. That in the strange role of widow, people expected her to comfort them. Oh yes, I know it’s terrible, so awful. Yes, he was so young. Oh, I remember that time at community picnic, yes he was very good at softball.

  “I should have said something sooner, but I never knew what. Plus, the guy didn’t like me much.”

  And for once, Bridget laughed. Most people wouldn’t have dared to say it. So she smiled at him and spoke the truth, which felt a bit liberating. “No. Not so much.”

  “I made too many eyes at his wife, I guess.” He took a sip of coffee but kept Bridget’s gaze until she looked away, out the window to the dimly lit parking lot. To the older couple shuffling to their car, he using a walker, she guiding him with one hand under his elbow. Bridget felt the familiar sting in the back of her throat, the burn in her eyes. “I admit I was jealous of him. Nate, too. Y’all had what I wanted. These happy marriages, a friendly foursome. I wanted that with Melinda, my ex. My daughter. We got engaged for a spell there. It didn’t last. She wasn’t the cheating type, either. And still, somehow.” He gave her a knowing smile and a slight lift of one shoulder and Bridget looked away.

  She held her breath, her mind wiped white of words. Tripp played everything so close to the vest and Bridget had never pried. She knew so little about him; any personal inquiry in the past had been laughed off, treated like a joke. The intimacy felt too sudden, too urgent.

  “And now?” Bridget asked, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say but knew absolutely, positively that she didn’t want this conversation to end, although she couldn’t have quite pinpointed why.

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. With Melinda? Or . . .” Bridget looked around, her hands out helplessly, her face reddening. “Anyone else?”

  “Nah. It’s too hard. I’m getting old.” He laughed, but silently, his mouth opened and she could see the fillings in his teeth. Silver amalgam; she didn’t even know they still did that. “Have you tried dating? It’s awful.”

  “No,” she said much too quickly, her voice hitched and her hands flat against the table.

  He appraised her then, his tongue moving around in his mouth, his cheek bulging with a wry sort of smile. He picked up the bill, and in a smooth motion, shifted out of the booth to pay. When he came back he held his hand out to help her up, and when she stood, they stayed, just close enough for her to feel his warmth, smell the syrupy pancake on his breath, the soapy, dewy fragrance of his shampoo. “You should, you know.”

  “I should what?” she asked, flustered.

  “Try dating.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Alecia, Friday, May 8, 2015

  Search parties on television were a bustling, dazzling affair: efficient and clipped detectives, the buzz drone of walkie-talkies, people coming and going at all hours of the day and night bringing lasagnas in foil pans and tins of homemade cookies. When pregnant wives of suspicious husbands go missing, particularly those who are beautiful and rich, it’s a national spectacle with news crews and cameramen shuffling for the spot next to the detectives. There’s always more than one detective.

  Not so much for the teenage mistress of a married teacher.

  They’d put the call out the night before, shoved between the local news and weather and a single headline in Thursday’s paper on page three: “Volunteers Needed in Search for Missing Local Teen.” People in Mt. Oanoke were rarely motivated to do much of anything; Alecia shouldn’t have been as shocked as she was at the desolation.

  She hadn’t told anyone she was going. It was all too weird. She expected throngs of people, chaos and confusion. It was depressing to think about how many people a year must just vanish—poof!—and no one looks for them, no search parties, no police reports. No loved ones ceaselessly pushing the media and police. No one hanging missing posters. It was jarring to realize how much of that work was done by a victim’s loved ones, that these things just didn’t magically happen, and when there was no one to do them, they simply did not get done.

  Detective Harper and another plainclothes detective had set up a folding banquet table in the parking lot between Texaco and the police station, handing out grainy photos of Lucia to a growing group of women—all women, no men. An ambulance and a fire truck sat toward the back of the parking lot, a few EMTs and firefighters hanging on the sides of each one, laughing, throwing barbs at each other that Alecia couldn’t hear.

  Alecia tucked a lock of hair back up into her baseball cap and surveyed the crowd. Familiar faces, but the names all escaped her. No one from Nate’s crowd; would they have dared? Did he even have a crowd anymore? The accusation and media seemed to scatter them all; even Tad had vanished.

  Alecia had called the neighbor to baby-sit at 9 a.m., even deciding somewhat last minute to forgo Gabe’s swimming class and one ABA session that was scheduled for the afternoon. She hadn’t stopped to examine why she’d come, just that she felt compelled. She had been counting on the chaos of a crowd to shield her. She hovered near a red Pontiac, feeling exposed and naked in her sunglasses and hat.

  “Ms. Winter, here to help?” Harper called to her, and she almost fled. Almost. But she felt trapped, a butterfly pinned to the wax, and it was likely that leaving would have only made her look worse. Alecia tucked the stupid sunglasses into her purse and approached the card table.

  “Do you still need volunteers?” she said, her voice low. Harpe
r and the second detective exchanged a glance.

  “Sure,” Harper said, pushing a glossy photo across the table. Alecia looked away. He tapped his fingers against the plastic table in front of him, his tongue clicking in his mouth. “Seems an odd choice. For you, I mean.”

  Alecia clutched the strap of her purse tighter and backed up. “I’ll just go. This was a mistake. I wanted to . . . help. I don’t know.”

  “No, no. Stay. We have precious little in the way of resources. Hard to find a girl no one cares to find. We’re leaving at ten and we’re heading up to State Game Lands 214, where your husband claims he saw her run. At this point, we’re not sure there’s a crime, see? It’s easy for a person to get lost in these woods.” Harper chewed on a toothpick; Alecia could hear the crackle between his molars. She imagined them yellowed, cigarette-browned spit making the wood soggy.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” Alecia repeated, maybe looking for someone to tell her it is okay, we’re glad you’re here, come have a snickerdoodle, but no one did. A group of ten women were gathered at the edge of the parking lot, a few inexplicably clutching Maglites, in various plain T-shirts and jean capris, sport socks and Nikes, hands smoothing their shirt fronts and looking around, shifting uncomfortably. A few whispered, someone giggled. They didn’t invite her over, just watched, one of them chewing, chewing, chewing slowly on a pretzel, like cud, the bag crinkling in her fist. Alecia hated them.

  They were there because they were bored, these fiftyish empty nesters or moms of high schoolers who stopped talking to their parents, maybe moms of kids whom Nate had failed, unpopular themselves in high school, resentful of Nate’s charm, out to prove he’d done something to the poor girl.

  The poor girl. People all over town were dividing into two camps: the poor girl vs. let’s not be too hasty, another phrase Alecia had heard in line at the checkout counter, a husband and wife arguing over which camp they were in. She had slunk behind the impulse-gum rack and waited them out.