The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  Alecia wondered when it happened.

  “Bridget was the hero,” Nate said. “If it wasn’t for her, well . . .” He’d left the rest unsaid, and Alecia swallowed her shame, looked away. Studied Bridget’s chart, the wall, the fire extinguisher instructions.

  Bridget talked, filling in the gaps, her voice halting and croaky: Lucia framed Nate for the affair. She’d come onto him and he rejected her. On top of that, Nate questioned the validity of her rape claim (at this, Nate had the decency to look down, ashamed). Petra examined her fingernails the whole time.

  She was only supposed to disappear long enough to make Nate sweat it out, get him fired, end his marriage. But she never came back. Taylor went looking for her, they argued, Taylor pushed her over the edge of the embankment. Just like Taylor pushed Bridget.

  Taylor, so in love with her best friend’s rapist that she killed to protect him. Was everyone really so desperate to leave this place?

  Alecia wondered if she actually meant to do it. She imagined a quick flash of anger, the impulse to push her, to shut her up.

  “What will happen to Taylor?” Alecia was the only one who asked, and now everyone else looked away; no one had an answer. Bridget had recorded the whole fight in Taylor’s hallway, the darkened room catching the voices clearly. She’d sent it, broadcast to the world, on her Periscope account, so even the shattered phone didn’t matter.

  “And Andrew? The rape?”

  Nate shifted in his seat. “I sent a letter to the school. I don’t know if it will matter. I told them I couldn’t write his recommendation. I told them what he did.”

  Tripp tapped the bed. “We saved the video, right, Bridge?” He leaned forward.

  Bridget nodded, her eyes half closed.

  “It might not matter. She’s dead. She said yes. It would be hard to prosecute.” Tripp sat back, deflated. “He’ll lose that scholarship. But he won’t pay in any real way.” He said it with the confidence of someone who’d learned the hard lessons of the law, first hand, for years.

  “Hard, but not impossible,” Alecia said, suddenly wanting this, Andrew’s lost baseball future not enough. None of it enough.

  Nate’s hand covered his mouth, his eye twitching. “Can I testify?” he asked, dumbly, trying too hard to save a girl who was long past saving. The offer was for himself, a balm on his guilt.

  Alecia turned away, glad, maybe for the first time ever, that Gabe wouldn’t be a “normal” boy.

  Perhaps Linda had been right. There is nothing so great about normal.

  • • •

  Later, after everyone left and only Alecia remained, they watched The Price Is Right. Alecia rested her hand in the same place Tripp had, right next to Bridget’s hand. She studied her long, delicate fingers. So thin. She looked like a child, and Alecia had no idea when that had happened.

  “So . . . you and Tripp?”

  Bridget gave a shrug, didn’t take her eyes of the television.

  “You have to say something,” Alecia said, pushing her the way you press your thumb to a recent bruise, just to feel the pain in all its newness.

  “Okay.” Bridget sighed. “What will you do about Nate?” Now she looked right at Alecia’s face, almost defiant, until Alecia felt her heart fill up her chest, the pain quick and sharp, then abating.

  Nate.

  “I can’t make it up to him,” Alecia said, holding Bridget’s gaze. Watching her friend shake her head, agree with Alecia that no, she couldn’t. Could Nate make it up to her?

  She recalled the way Nate had behaved at home on Wednesday (how lucky he was that Lucia had been killed on Wednesday, that science could prove it): attentive, gentle, his hands over hers, jumping up to answer the door, quick to sign the credit card receipt, hurrying to get Gabe a cup of milk, her a glass of water, and later, an uncharacteristic glass of wine.

  She thought about how quickly she’d adapted to a life with just Gabe, how much lighter the air in the house felt after Nate had left, the cord of muscle between her shoulder blades loose and easy. She felt something else, too, away from Nate. Something new and just born, fresh but raw, stripped bare like skin after a chemical peel: Gabe might be okay. Not the child she’d hoped for, not the person she thought he would be. But he’d still be fine, just as he was. She thought of the soccer ball sticker, peeling and curled in the bottom of her drawer. It would turn yellow and gummy before she’d use it.

  Was it up to only her? Would Nate even want to come home?

  “He’ll come home,” Bridget said, reading her mind. She licked her lip, took a sip of the ice water from the cup on her nightstand. “You’re everything to him.” She looked away then, almost like it made her sad.

  Alecia wasn’t so sure. She thought of Gabe, tucked into bed; Mandy, the baby-sitter, lying on the couch, tongue lolling out. She thought of Nate letting himself in, watching her sleep. Would he watch her sleep?

  Would she always question him?

  “I’m going home, Alecia,” Bridget said. “To Georgia. Just as soon as I’m better—eight weeks probably.”

  “Why? The kids love you,” Alecia said, but it was a lie. They liked Bridget just fine, but they’d be fine without her, too.

  “My mom isn’t well, hasn’t been for years. I’m missing this time with her. I can’t stay here. In this town, the ghost of that girl, I just can’t. That mill, that school.” Bridget ran her finger along her upper lip. “It’s never been good here. Not for me. You see that, right?”

  Alecia did see it, but instead she took Bridget’s hand in hers. “What about Tripp? Holden’s mom?”

  Bridget sighed, ran her palm along the top of Alecia’s hand. “We’ll have the memorial. I’ll find a tree. I’m ready. I wasn’t before, but I am now. Tripp is . . . Tripp. He’s an Oanoke lifer.”

  Alecia knew and did not say that Nate was, too.

  “You know, the birds did this,” Bridget said.

  Six weeks ago, Alecia would have laughed at her. Bridget with her herbs and her tarot and her instincts.

  “If it weren’t for them, there would have been no reporter to see Lucia and Nate at that motel. It’s like they all fell for a reason. Or a warning. We’re all too complacent here, too sleepy, too insular. Like when the mill closed, the town died, too.” Bridget continued, her eyes squinting, watching the coil of tubes running from the IV into her arm, a clear liquid dripping. “You know, they never even figured it out, what really did it. Sometimes I wonder . . .” She shook her head, her voice lowered, her fingertips trembling. “If she really was a witch. You know she saw dead blackbirds all the time? I read her journals; she said whenever she saw one, something bad happened. She had this obsession with blackbirds, ravens, crows. What if Lucia did it? What if all this is her fault?”

  “She was just a girl, Bridget,” Alecia said. “Think of how many times we see birds, on the side of the road, whatever, and pay it no attention. Besides, the birds that fell were starlings, not blackbirds.” Alecia pulled her hand out of Bridget’s balmy grip, flexed her fingers. “Listen, she was just a girl with a big imagination and no one to love her.”

  “Except Nate?” Bridget said softly.

  That part could have been true. Nate had a flair for the girls in need. Alecia thought of herself, an ice island floating in the warm Carolina sunshine, surrounded by bubbly, sorority giggliness, and he’d reached out and saved her. Took her in, thawed her out with a heat she almost couldn’t bear.

  And now, somehow they were here again. His humanity would be his downfall, the reason she’d cite later if she left him. The same one she’d cite if she stayed.

  “Jimmy. He came back. He loved her, in his own way,” Bridget said suddenly, her voice rasping, almost urgent. She was right, it was the only reason he came back. Alecia thought of what Nate had told her that night, with the Chinese food in living room that had felt like a cocoon. He had a house, why did he stay in the woods? She imagined the fish, shimmering and bouncing on his knee, the blood on his hands. They had
thought it weird, suspicious even. Now, with everything that had happened, only one thing made sense: he was in the woods, looking for his daughter.

  Outside the first-floor window, Nate locked his Honda, the beep-beep audible through the hospital window. Alecia watched him lope across the parking lot, back to her, back to his old life, like nothing had happened, a bump in his step that hadn’t been there for weeks. She watched his long legs, his noticeably bigger paunch, the puff of his face. He might have been whistling.

  She’d never know, that’s the thing. She’d never know the whole truth, not only what he did but how he felt, what he thought. She’d never know, for sure, whom or even why he’d loved. She knew now, and didn’t know before, that there were gradients to love. That sometimes saving someone requires giving up everything, including yourself, and some people need that to feel whole.

  You never know the deep down truth about anybody, except yourself. And sometimes, not even then.

  I’m not a witch, of course not. But anyone can make things happen. It’s called magical thinking. The baseball team with their mismatched socks. The way Taylor’s grandmother never walked under a ladder or opened an umbrella in the house. The idea that these small rituals keep bad things from happening: a lost game, lost love, lost money. Superstition. The avoidance of bad luck. But what about making things actually happen? It’s harder, but possible. And it’s not witchcraft. I should know.

  No one pays for anything in this town. The mill closes up, everyone out of a job. Good people, or at least people on the razor edge of goodness.

  The game will go on, no matter what the coach or his players have done.

  I can’t be responsible for everyone. I’m nothing if not practical.

  But Andrew. Mr. Winters. Taylor. Jimmy, even.

  I can make them all pay, even just a little.

  It wasn’t hard. A tip to the reporter, she was just hanging around anyway. Her phone glued to her hands at the Bean Café, waiting for the birds. Waiting for the DEP. Bored.

  Sex for grades. He takes them to Deannie’s Motel, up the river.

  The part about being in love? That day in Bachman’s office? That might have been true. I ask you, how would I know?

  The rest was unplanned, see? I’ll go back one day. Maybe. It might be fun to just fly away. People around here would talk about that their whole lives.

  Remember the witch, they’d say. She just—poof—disappeared. Later the story would change because it sounded better: she disappeared the same day the birds fell.

  There’s poetry in that. Or magic.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m incredibly fortunate to have landed at Atria/Simon & Schuster, and am forever grateful for Sarah Cantin, Stephanie Mendoza, and Hillary Tisman for making my every writerly dream come true. Thank you doesn’t seem like enough to agent extraordinaire, Mark Gottlieb, and all the foreign rights team at Trident Media Group. I’m so lucky it’s ridiculous. To all my first readers: Elizabeth Buhmann, my Badass critique team: Aimie, Jamie, Andrea, Theresa, Ella, Orly, and Gwen, you guys are amazing. Also Karen Katchur, Ann Garvin, Amy Impellizzeri, Sonja Yoerg, Amy Nathan, and Kimberly Giarratano. Everything you say is gospel, I swear to God.

  To my writer tribe, Tall Poppy Writers, I’d be so lost without you all. Sarah D, you’ll be in every acknowledgment forever because without you, I wouldn’t ever have written a word. I still have my reindeer fur.

  To my family, especially those of you who talk about my books loudly and often, even when not entirely appropriate to do so, you’re the best. To Mom and Dottie, who cover kid duty when I have to play author, I’m eternally grateful. Love my village.

  Thanks to my dad, the greatest teacher I ever had. Nothing from this book was stolen from his impeccable career.

  And finally, to Chip and my girls, who play a constant second fiddle to the muse in my mind and only seem to get really irritated with me when you have to say it a third time. I appreciate your mostly bottomless patience. I love you to the moon and back.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KATE MORETTI is the New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Year, Binds That Tie, While You Were Gone, and Thought I Knew You. She lives in eastern Pennsylvania with her husband and two kids. Find out more at KateMoretti.com or follow her on Twitter @KateMoretti1 or Facebook.com/KateMorettiWriter.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Kate Moretti

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Atria Paperback edition September 2017

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  Cover design by Emma A. Van Deun

  Cover photograph by Plainpicture/Kniel Synnatzschke

  Author photograph © PR Photography

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Moretti, Kate, author.

  Title: The blackbird season : a novel / Kate Moretti.

  Description: First Atria Paperback edition. | New York : Atria Paperback, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016052118 (print) | LCCN 2016058520 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501118456 (softcover) | ISBN 9781501118463 (eBook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Missing persons--Investigation--Fiction. | City and town life--Fiction. | Teenage girls--Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.O7185 B58 2017 (print)w | LCC PS3613.O7185 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052118

  ISBN 978-1-5011-1845-6

  ISBN 978-1-5011-1846-3 (ebook)

 

 

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