Migrations(56)

“She was just being protective,” I say.

“She was being an enormous bitch, and what’s worse—she didn’t even have the wit to be subtle about it.”

We’re in the guest wing because Niall didn’t want me sleeping in his childhood bedroom. That bedroom was a haven for him but it was also his prison; Penny used to punish him for the smallest things by locking him in there to think about his behavior, and as this occurred daily it offers him a cold childhood to remember. Venturing into that bedroom is stepping back into his inadequacies, his loneliness, the feeling of being responsible for his mother’s happiness and also an utter failure at it.

“Here you are, darlin’.” He’s run me a bath, so I cross to the en suite, undressing as I go and letting clothes fall where they may, as you do when you’re on holiday. I sink into the hot water and Niall sits on the edge of the tub, peering around at his parents’ ornate bathroom tiles and gilding as though the sight of it all bewilders him.

“I’m glad I married a girl who can hold her own,” he says.

“Did you marry me to annoy your mother?”

“No.”

“Not even partially? Because I wouldn’t mind if it were partially.”

“No, darlin’. I stopped trying to get reactions out of my mother a long time ago.”

“You’re still so angry with her.”

I’m surprised at how quickly his response comes. “Because she’s not good at love,” he says.



* * *



I wake from a dream of trapped moths, throwing themselves repeatedly into a pane of glass as they try to reach the light of the moon. Niall’s gone from the bed so he doesn’t see what I see: that my feet are covered in dirt, and have smeared it all over the sheets. I pause. Oh no. I must have gone roaming in my sleep.

At breakfast something is wrong. Penny is striding around the house giving terse instructions to her staff, while Arthur buries his face in a newspaper, hoping for invisibility. Niall pours me a cup of coffee and steers me to a window seat overlooking the gardens.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Penny’s greenhouse cages got left open last night. Her birds escaped.”

“Oh shit…” I try to make out her cutting words in the next room, and hear something about reimbursement and pays being docked. I gulp my coffee and tell Niall I’ll be back in a moment.

Sunlight turns the surface of the pond molten. Long grass brushes my calves as I walk to the greenhouse. It’s quiet and cool inside; I can already see the huge cages at the end are no longer alive with color and movement and sound, but empty like a skeleton. I inspect the lock on the door and my heart sinks—there is no key or combination, simply a deadbolt that can be easily opened from the outside. I wonder if they hesitated before their escape, wary of what lay beyond the cage, or if they surged free, a vibrant bursting of joy.

“I had over twenty species,” says a voice and I turn to see Penny. She looks out of place in this earthy cave.

“Niall showed them to me once. They were wonderful.” And trapped. Even if I hadn’t seen the dirt on my feet, or the type of lock, I would know what happened. There was an ache in my chest from the first moment I saw them in here, hidden from true sky. More than anything I wanted to set them free. But only my other half, the savage half, would actually do such a thing.

“Penny, I…” I clear my throat. “I’m so sorry, I think it might have been me.”

“I beg your pardon?” She walks into a shaft of sunlight and I’m startled to see a sheen of moisture brighten her eyes.

“I was outside last night, sleepwalking. It seems … I mean it must have been me.” I take a step toward her, resisting the urge to reach out. She’s very still. “I’m so sorry.”

“Nonsense,” Penny says faintly. “You can’t be blamed for something you had no control over.”

There is a long silence and I will myself to think of some way to fix this. I see now how much she loved the birds, and it’s so painful to realize how I’ve hurt her.

“How can I make it up to you?”

She shakes her head slowly. Instead of pride and steel she is abruptly small, and old, and scared. “It was a contradiction. I felt sad every time I looked at them.”

My own eyes feel hot.

Penny gathers her poise and drapes it upon herself once more. “Franny, please forgive my rudeness last night. I deal with many patients who suffer a quality that can damage their lives and those of the people around them. I thought I might have recognized that quality in you, but it was unfair of me to make that judgment, and inappropriate to diagnose someone I’m not treating. It’s a failing of mine.”

“Oh…” I’m not sure what to say to this. “What’s the quality?”

“I thought you might be fickle.”

In the crisp silence I recognize her apology for what it is: a politely veiled barb.

“Have something to eat,” she tells me coldly. “You’ve had a busy night. And you might want to consider letting me prescribe you something for the sleepwalking.” She leaves me alone in the greenhouse, and she’s right: I’m impulsive and changeable and restless, but those are kind words for a more brutal truth.