Bird Song (Grace Series)

by S. L. Naeole

  Shaking my head I mumbled into his shirt, “I’m the one who hurt you. You have the patience of…well, an angel, and if I can make even you angry, then something is seriously wrong with me.”

  I felt his chest shake as he laughed, heard the deep timber of it beneath his skin. “Nothing is wrong with you. Everything in the world is right if I love you so much, you affect the way I think.”

  “Do I, really?”

  His lips brushed the top of my head as he answered, albeit reluctantly, “Yes. You affect my entire world, Grace. The obvious changes are one thing, but it’s the changes inside that prove to me every day how profound an impact you have had on my life. Fifteen hundred years of merely existing, feeling the same things, thinking the same things, dreaming of the same thing—and in less than half a year, you’ve changed everything.”

  For some reason, I apologized…again, which didn’t seem to sit well with Robert. “Don’t apologize, Grace. You didn’t ask for me to come into your life and turn it upside down. Had I never spoken to you, you would have continued on your path, and I would have continued on mine.”

  There were times when I knew I needed to keep my mouth shut, to prevent myself from saying things that would only get me into trouble, and hurt those I cared about.

  This wasn’t one of those times.

  “What do you mean, I would have continued on my path, and you would have continued on yours? What path was I on? Oh, that’s right, the one where I had no friends, barely any family, and no you. And what about you? What would you have done for the next fifteen hundred years?”

  Robert stiffened before shrugging his shoulders and exhaling. He pulled me away from him with little effort, despite my using all of my strength to hold onto him. “I would have continued to exist, never knowing what I was missing, and perhaps being all the wiser for it.”

  “Wh-what? Why?” I demanded to know. I looked into his face and, for the first time, saw a faint trace of disappointment…but for what?

  “Don’t worry about it, Grace. What’s important is that I’m here, now. You are more than just a part of my life; you are my life.”

  I wanted to press the issue, as much as I knew he didn’t, but as it always seemed, just when I was getting around to the most important of questions, someone knocked on my door. “Grace, can I come in?” I heard Graham ask on the other side of the door. I turned to look at Robert, to see if he didn’t mind, but he was already gone.

  “Sure,” I replied. “It’s not like you’ll find me in here with anyone…brave,” I mumbled under my breath as Graham walked in, dressed in a uniform of some sort.

  “So, what do you think?” he questioned as he turned around, showing off the burgundy shirt with what I could only assume was a white, clip-on tie. His pants were a dark gray color with a matching burgundy stripe running along the side of each thigh.

  “You look like a nutcracker. All that’s missing is your hat,” I commented, moving my hand to rest in the warm spot that Robert had recently occupied. It disturbed me how quick he was to run away, even now.

  Graham took my motion as a cue to sit, and I snatched my hand out of the way before he crushed it with his weight. “Have you talked to Robert, yet?” he asked, his eyes filled with concern as he reached to push some of my matted hair out of my face. “You look worse than when I left you, Grace. You did talk to him, didn’t you? Did he say something to hurt you?”

  I shook my head, trying very hard not to let Robert’s comments burn a hole in my head, itching to be filled with doubt and suspicion. “Don’t worry about it, Graham. So, did you come in here just to show off your…uniform?”

  He grinned, a hint of a dimple forming in his cheeks that made me blush. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something…important.”

  I turned my body around and pulled my knees up to my chest, resting my chin on them as I stared into his excited eyes. “Ok, shoot.”

  “Well—this is kinda difficult because of who she is, and who you are—see…I kind of like someone—God, how do I do this without sounding like a complete idiot—what I wanted to know is…do you…do you think Lark would go out with me?”

  I felt my eyes widen but my jaw was held immobile by my knees. Instead, my entire face rose as I saw that he’d finally developed the courage to voice his feelings. “I think you’d have to ask her, but I’m pretty sure she’d say yes.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief that made his chest sink in, and his whole body slouch over as the rush of air left his lungs. “I was planning on asking her out on a date after my first shift today.” Graham took a look at his watch and jumped up, an expletive shooting out of his mouth as he did so. “Oh damn, I’m sorry Grace. I gotta get going. I start in less than twenty minutes and I’m supposed to be there ten minutes early so I can get a quick runaround of the place.”

  “Go on, then. You don’t want to be late on your first day. We’ll talk more about this later,” I told him as I lowered my legs down to the floor and stood up. “What time is your first shift over?”

  “Five. Are you going to come?”

  I nodded and grinned. “I have to offer my best friend some moral support, right?”

  He glanced at me sideways as he stood near my door, half-laughing as he said, “Are you sure it’s not because you want to keep the peace between me and your boyfriend?”

  The grin that had filled my face died away. “I don’t know that I could actually do that, quite honestly. Things can get so up and down with Robert, but Lark has a mind of her own so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

  He paused as he took in my response. “Is this going to cause a problem for the two of you?”

  The rise and fall of my shoulders indicated that I didn’t know, but deep inside I did. When it came to Graham and Robert, there was always a problem. This was only going to complicate things, but Graham didn’t need to know that. I’d rather deal with Robert than with another Erica.

  “Well, I’ll see you at five then,” he called out as he left, closing my door behind him. I sat and waited on my bed for Robert to return, bracing myself for the onslaught of questions and accusations that I knew would come. But he didn’t show. After an hour of waiting, I finally gave up. He would find me sooner or later. My only hope was that we’d spend more time talking about what it was that he had meant when he said that he’d have been the wiser for not meeting me, but he was just as good at avoiding answering a question as I was at bringing it up. And now this…

  ***

  At four thirty, Stacy arrived to pick me up. I had called her to see if she wanted to go to the movies with me, but didn’t tell her the real reason for going—she would have automatically said no. “So, what movie are we going to see?” she asked as she waited for me to pull on my boots.

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. What movies were playing anyway? I hadn’t been watching the television at all, and couldn’t remember the last time it was that I had actually gone to the theaters, much less seen a preview for anything playing there.

  Stacy had a look of deep concentration on her face as she ran through what could only be a mental list of flicks she had wanted to see, finally settling on one with a curt nod. “Let’s go and see the new zombie movie starring that hunky British sounding guy.”

  There was only one hunky British sounding guy I wanted to see, but he had avoided my thoughts and my room since his cowardly departure this morning, so I wasn’t holding my breath. “Okay. Let’s do that.”

  We climbed into her car and headed towards the theater, her radio on full blast. While most people chose to sing along to the melody, Stacy instead chose to sing harmony, complicating the song by alternating the highs and lows depending on what the backup track had chosen to pick. It was far more entertaining than the actual song, and I marveled at the incredible talent that she displayed.

  “You can thank twelve years of piano lessons for my ability to pick out notes and make them work,” she said in-between songs when she saw my
expression. “I told my mom that I wanted to be a singer a couple of weeks ago, and she said that she wasn’t working as a cook in a cafeteria so that I could be some American pop-tart.”

  The sadness in her eyes was one that I had seen before. The first time I had heard her sing, she had explained what her parents expected of her, their goals for her. Culturally, she was left with few options regarding her parents’ approval, and more than making her own dreams come true, she wanted to please her parents. “That’s what happens when both of your parents are traditional Koreans,” she had explained a few weeks later when Lark and I had pressed the issue.

  “But you’re an American,” I replied, feeling angry that her parents had come to this country because of the opportunities available to them and their children, and then denying them to her.

  “I’m American by birth. For the rest of my life, I’ll be their daughter, and I cannot just ignore that,” she had said, the look on her face crestfallen.

  “Well, I think you should tell your parents that you deserve to live your life the way you see fit,” Lark voiced, her mood dark and spiteful.

  Stacy had just laughed at Lark’s comment, but it seemed to stick with her as she became more open about her singing, doing it far more often than she had previously. Now, in the car, she was belting out the notes, not caring about anything other than the improvements that she knew she was making to the song.

  It was while parking the car that she brought up New Years at Lark’s house. “Did you know that she disappeared for a while, and Graham did, too?”

  I didn’t have to feign shock. I had known about Lark, obviously, but not about Graham. I regretted that I hadn’t even asked him about how things went at Robert and Lark’s.

  Gauging my reaction, Stacy continued. “Lark came in and acted surprised that Graham wasn’t in the living room with me, but then he showed up a few minutes later, with that same surprised look on his face; I knew something was up. Do you think they’re secretly dating?”

  My head shook with the secret knowledge wedged deep in the back of my mind proving it to be the truth. “No. I know for a fact that they’re not. Robert would know, and he would have told me—or complained about it.”

  Sighing with I could have mistaken for relief, Stacy turned the car off and turned to look at me. “It just seemed weird, the two of them disappearing at the same time. Lark told me later that she went to drop you off to meet up with Robert, but she can do that in just a few minutes. You don’t think she found a way to lie, do you?”

  “Stacy, you know Lark cannot lie. She told you the truth. She spent a few minutes talking to me at the gazebo. She came back as soon as we were done. I don’t know where Graham was, but I do know that it wasn’t with her.”

  “Oh,” she replied, and a slight blush tinted her cheeks. “Well, okay then. Let’s go and watch some zombies!”

  As she opened her door and climbed out of the car, I was left wondering what had caused this sudden interest in what Lark and Graham were doing together. As we walked towards the theater, the thought seemed to reproduce like mice until my suspicious mind was filled with possibilities that bordered on the plain silly to the absolute preposterous. Stacy couldn’t have an interest in Graham, could she?

  The line for tickets was empty and we paid for a six-o’clock showing before heading into the theater’s lobby. I quickly allowed my eyes to flick around, hoping to see a familiar face before Stacy did. I was far too slow for my own good.

  “Graham works here?”

  Stifling a groan of disappointment, I answered in the affirmative. “He actually got hired yesterday.”

  The look on Stacy’s face was one of surprise and annoyance. I prayed she wouldn’t put two and two together. My prayer was answered…in the negative. “Is that why you wanted us to come here? So you could see Graham?”

  The twisting in my gut that always happened when I was about to lie felt like a vise was crushing my intestines, and I swallowed at the pain, bit it down, and answered. “No. I came because Robert and I had a disagreement and I needed to get out of the house so that I wouldn’t sit and mope.”

  Strangely enough, the pain suddenly subsided; I had been partially right. I didn’t want to sit at home alone, allowing my mind to run with scenarios that weren’t healthy for a sane person dating a normal guy.

  “You guys had a fight? Wow—I thought angels were supposed to be agreeable and pliant,” Stacy said, amazement rather than sympathy filling her eyes.

  “I don’t know where you got that idea, especially knowing Lark, but agreeable and pliant they are not. They’re angels by nature, sure. But angels by behavior? Not even close,” I muttered as we approached Graham.

  I took one look at the grim line that used to be his mouth and knew something was wrong. I turned to look at Stacy, but her posture indicated that she was not in the mood to be mocking or sarcastic. She looked just as nonplussed as I felt.

  “What’s up?” I asked him once I was close enough to do so without raising my voice. “You look downright sour!”

  The harsh line of his mouth barely moved as he answered me. “The new manager is treating me like I’ve got a thing for his sister or something.”

  The best friend defense mechanism that was in me kicked on and I immediately demanded to know where this manager was. Graham motioned with his head towards someone who was approaching us, and I turned around to confront him, fully intent on chewing him out for whatever it was that he did to put that look on Graham’s face.

  “Hello, Grace,” the manager said to me, because I couldn’t find anything to say to him—not after seeing who it was. “If I had known you wanted to come to the movies, I wouldn’t have agreed to a double shift.”

  Robert stood in front of me, disturbingly handsome even in his monkey suit of a uniform, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even blink. Surely this was an apparition of some sort, and Graham’s boss wasn’t my boyfriend.

  Stacy, seeing that whatever truce that might have existed between Robert and Graham had suddenly flown out the window, decided that she had to choose a side…and quickly, and so she did the one thing I had never expected. “You look pretty good in that uniform, Graham. I didn’t know you could clean up so well.”

  Graham’s seething gaze shifted over to Stacy, and his eyes widened, as though he just noticed her presence. “Um—thanks, Stacy,” he stammered.

  She nodded her head and smiled. “No problem”, she said with an amused tone as she inched closer towards him, and further away from Robert.

  I looked the two of them over, and then flicked my eyes back towards Robert. “When did you start working at the movie theater?”

  “Since yesterday,” he replied in a curt tone that drew a swift intake of breath from Graham, which was a sign that he was trying to control his temper…and was probably failing.

  “But you don’t need a job,” I pointed out to him, not wanting anything that was said today to escalate into something that would once again demand that I, too, choose a side. I might have known before which one I would have chosen, but not now. Not with the way things were at the moment. “And why did they make you manager?” I demanded to know. “Graham has been coming to this theater a lot longer than you’ve been here. He knows everyone in Heath. Why didn’t he get offered the position if it was open?”

  Robert grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the side, apparently not wanting what he had to say to be heard, which only infuriated me more. Wasn’t he the one capable of communicating without making a single sound?

  “Grace, you know how I got this job,” he hissed. “Don’t make me answer that question.”

  I raised my head up defiantly. Then tell me why you got this job in the first place?

  Robert glanced over to Stacy and Graham, whose eyes were focused on the two of us, Stacy gripping Graham’s arm with such ferocity, I could see the tips of her fingers turning white. Robert’s mouth started moving, but no sound came out. He was mimicking talking to keep ou
r conversation private. Because I know what he feels for my sister, I’ve seen his thoughts. I’ve also seen his thoughts about you, and those two things do not sit well in my mind together, especially if he’s going to want to date Lark.

  Exasperated, I threw my hands up, my eyes feeling as though they were bugging right out of their sockets. You did this because he likes Lark? You’re treating him like dirt because he happens to like your sister? I turned to glance back at Graham, whose eyes were round with surprise, and I looked behind me to see what had caused that expression. Lark was standing behind Robert and I, a scowl etched on her lovely face.

  The fragile beauty that belied the strength and the temerity that was Lark would fool anyone who didn’t know who she was, what she was. I looked at her eyes, the nearly colorless gray eyes that saw more than they let on, and I could see through her just how juvenile the entire situation was becoming.

  “Hello, Lark,” I managed to get out before Robert was able to send out another thought. He turned to look at her, and the silent communication that went on between them was brisk and full of outrage. I didn’t have to hear it to know. I could see it in the tenseness of their necks and faces, the steel iciness in their eyes.

  Finally, after what had only been a matter of seconds, but certainly felt like half a lifetime, Lark turned to me and gave me a stiff smile. “Hey, Grace. I wanted to catch the latest Zombie flick, and had my mother drop me off. Robert told me I could get in free anytime I wanted, so here I am.” Stacy told me that the two of you were fighting—I didn’t know it was about me. I’m sorry.

  I grabbed her hand, and pulled the walking stick out of it. She didn’t need it, hated it, really, so I gave her an excuse to not use it as I placed her arm on mine and turned my back on Robert. “You’re just in time. Graham is getting off from work in a few minutes, so we can all watch the movie.”

  The hiss that echoed in my head at that exact moment caused me to stumble; the pain was so acute, my mind flooded with memories of a similar pain that had lasted much longer, and had done far more damage than merely tripping me up. Though I had placed Lark’s hand on my arm in the guise of helping her, she was the one who supported me, and kept me from tumbling down to the coke stained carpet.