In the Shadow of Blackbirds(18)

“Poor cousin Gracie seemed as anxious as a frightened mouse.”

“Poor cousin Gracie is a flu survivor. Her hair went white and fell out from the fever. That’s why she wears a wig.”

“That was a wig?”

My aunt nodded.

I gulped. “It almost seemed to me, with all the spirit activity in that house, the family believes they’re being haunted.”

Aunt Eva fidgeted in her seat, but she didn’t admit the Emberses’ house disturbed her. It certainly disturbed me. I could almost understand why Stephen was in such a hurry to get out of there.

I lowered the package to my lap and trailed my fingers over my own name, penned in handwriting I adored—handwriting that mirrored the writer’s artistic nature. The S in Shelley resembled a treble clef. The B in Black could have been called voluptuous. My odd, dark name always transformed into something lyrical and beautiful through Stephen’s pen.

I noticed the string tying the parcel paper together hung loose on one end, as though someone had already slid the string aside to inspect the contents of the package. A small tear also marred the paper. “I think someone’s already opened this. Do you suppose Julius—?”

“Mary Shelley.” My name passed over my aunt’s lips as a tired groan.

I peeled back the tampered end of the paper and slid out a framed photograph. My labored breath caught in my throat. Warmth flushed throughout my face and chest and spread to the tips of my fingers and toes. The strings of my mask tightened with a grin the size of Alaska.

As his last gift to me before leaving for the war, Stephen—fully aware of my love of electricity—had given me a photograph of a jagged lightning bolt striking a sepia nighttime sea.





I HADN’T PLANNED TO HANG ANY DECORATIONS ON THE walls of my bedroom in Aunt Eva’s house. Doing so would have been an admission that San Diego was to become my home for a long while.

However, on Sunday, the day after we visited the Emberses, I couldn’t help but mount Stephen’s lightning bolt on a strip of gilded wallpaper just beyond the foot of my bed. I asked Aunt Eva’s permission to pound two nails into her wall and hung both of his photographs side by side, the butterfly and the electricity. I never found any note in his parcel and was certain Julius had taken it. But the picture had finally reached my hands.

I discovered Stephen had crossed out some words in the lower right-hand corner, perhaps a rejected title, and between gold and white ripples in the ocean, he had written one of his anagrams:

I DO LOSE INK




I squinted and pulled other words out of the letters. Sink. Die. Nod. Skid. Oiled. Link. But none of the phrases I deciphered struck me as being the name of a photograph of a powerful storm over the Pacific.

Aunt Eva knocked on my open door and breezed into my room. “I think I’ll go pick up Julius’s picture of you early tomorrow morning before work. I can catch the first ferry. I’ll just wear a skirt over my work trousers.”

I stepped away from the images on the wall. “Will the studio be open that early?”

“I assume so. Julius is a hard worker.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“That’s not a good idea. You shouldn’t be out in public air any more than you have to be.”

“I didn’t have to go to his house yesterday, but you let me. It’s mainly clean ocean air we’ll be breathing.”

“I’ll think about it.” She spied the mounted photographs. “Are you sure you want those hanging on your wall?”

“Why wouldn’t I? They’re beautiful.”

“Oh, Mary Shelley …” She tutted and took my hand. “Come here. Sit down with me for a moment so we can talk about something important.” She sat me on my bed and perched beside me on Grandma Ernestine’s old blue and white quilt that served as a bedspread. “I know you’ve never had a mother in your life to teach you the ways of the heart—”

“Don’t bring up that morning I kissed Stephen.”

“I’m not. I just want to say I know you think you’re deeply in love with that boy, but you need to keep in mind you’re still so very young. And … he might never come home.”

“I already know that.” I pulled my hand away from her. “Why would you remind me of such a thing?”

“Because every time his name comes up in conversation, your eyes brighten like he’s about to walk into the room. And now you’re hanging his photos on the wall and further surrounding yourself with him. Did he even ask you to wait for him?”

“He said I didn’t have to wait unless I wanted to. He doesn’t want me to waste my life worrying about him.”

“Oh.” She sounded surprised. “Well … that was kind of him.”

“He’s a kind person.”

She took my hand again and cradled it in her calloused palm. “If he urged you to be free, then let him go. Don’t waste your youth wondering if a boy from your past will ever return to you.”

My throat itched with the threat of tears. “I don’t think you fully comprehend how much Stephen and I mean to each other.”

“Mary—”

“Did I ever tell you how we became friends?”

Her hazel eyes softened behind her glasses. “No, I don’t think you did.”