Wink Poppy Midnight(47)

She still didn’t move. Didn’t apologize.

I’d expected lies from Poppy.

But not Wink.

I put my hand to my heart, closed my eyes, tilted my head back . . .

I’d never yelled in my whole life. Never yelled at Alabama, or my parents, not even Mom when she said she was taking my brother and moving to France. Never raised my voice in anger. But I felt it building now. I was going to yell. I was going to yell until my heart burst open, blood spraying everywhere. I was going to yell until there was nothing left inside me, not one damn thing. The sound came, up my throat, buzzing at the back of my teeth . . .

I opened my mouth— And roared.

It was shaky, and hoarse, and raw.

But it was a roar.

Three seconds and I was done. Spent. I sunk down to the hayloft floor and stayed there.

Wink came over to me after a while. She sat in the hay, knees tucked under her chin, red hair everywhere.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked.

I shrugged, and didn’t look at her.

The yelling had left me dark inside.

Empty.

Hollow.

“Pa was tall and lean, with deep brown hair and eyes,” she said.

I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything.

“He was beautiful. I knew this even when I was little. I used to weave my fingers through his hair when he read to me. I’d marvel at the smooth, olive skin of his cheeks next to my own pale, freckled hands. I remember running my thumb over his long eyelashes and liking how they tickled my skin.”

She paused.

I sighed.

She kept going.

“Pa first read The Thing in the Deep to me when I was Bee Lee’s age. Mim was doing someone’s cards and Felix was sleeping next to her and Leaf was off wandering in the woods, which he started doing as soon as he could walk. Some people are like that, Pa said. They have the roaming in their blood. He was a roamer at heart too, and came from a long line of them. Bee Lee is the only one of us that looks like him, though Leaf takes after him in all else. There’s no keeping a roamer, Pa used to whisper in my ear, long before I knew how much he meant it. You can tie them down, cage them up like a bird, and it will work for a while, but eventually they will break free. And then they’ll run until they die.

“I thought he was the hero. I pictured him in my head when he read the fairy stories to me. He was the adventurer, the explorer, the swashbuckler, the champion. He was Calvino, King of the Thirteenth, and Paolo, the lost heir of World’s End. He was Redmayne, singer to the gods, and he was Gabriel the shepherd, and Nathaniel, the builder of cities.”

She stopped talking for a long time and just stared at the hay.

Wink was telling the truth. I could feel it.

No fairy tales this time. No lies.

And I was back in, just like that, hook, line, sinker.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“He left the morning Peach was born. I remember . . . I remember how the mists drifted down from the mountaintops and gave the sun an eerie light. Leaf called it a fairy kind of day and I thought so too. Mim checked herself out of the hospital early and picked us up from Beatrice Comb, who lived off by herself at the foot of Three Death Jack. She watched us sometimes, before she died in her sleep a few winters ago. We got home, and he was gone.”

She looked at me, green, green eyes.

“Three months later, I was playing Follow the Screams with Leaf in the woods and I saw something in the Roman Luck house, saw someone moving. I got closer. I peeked in the bay window and there he was, sitting on the green sofa in the music room, reading a newspaper and drinking a cup of coffee, a pile of clothes in the corner, dirty plates on the floor. Pa had been living there, the whole time. The whole time. He hadn’t even come home to see his new baby.”

Long pause.

“And then . . . ?” I asked softly.

“And then he saw me at the window, on my tiptoes, my eyes looking over the sill. He didn’t smile at me. Didn’t say my name. Run along. That’s all he said. Run along.

“I told Leaf about him. And Leaf told Mim. Pa left after that, left like Roman Luck, gone in the night. Gone for real. Gone for good. Autumn and Martin Lind and the murder, that was storytelling, all storytelling. But I did see a man in the Roman Luck house. I didn’t lie. Not about that.”

Wink got to her feet, slowly, and walked over to the hayloft opening. I followed. She looked out into the dusky evening light. The twins were on the roof of the farmhouse again, throwing apples at Peach on the ground, who easily dodged them even though she was laughing her head off.



WINK READ THE last chapter of The Thing in the Deep that night, and I stayed to watch her do it. I needed her to finish the book. I needed the end. When she was done she closed the book and went over to the far wall. She reached up on her tiptoes and set it on one of the dusty wooden crossbeams.

“I’m not going to read that story again,” she said. “I’m done with it, Midnight. Forever.”

Dad once told me that the most honorable thing you can do in life is forgive. I didn’t believe him at the time, and maybe I still don’t. Honor came from defeating foes in battle. From going on long, noble journeys to help those in need. From vanquishing evil and protecting the innocent.

Didn’t it?

I left. I walked to the Blue Twist. Alone. I stripped and jumped in naked.