Our Missing Hearts (72)

The understanding seeps into him like a sedative. Limpening his muscles, scooping smooth the hard edges of his thoughts. He leans against her, trusting her to bear his weight. Letting her arms twine around him like a vine round a tree. Through the tiny hole he’s poked in the window covering, a thin strand of light pierces the black plastic, casting a single starry splotch on the wall.

She strokes his back, feels the nubs of his spine under the skin like a string of pearls. Gently she sets their hands together, finger to finger, palm to palm. Nearly as big as hers, his feet perhaps even bigger. Like a puppy, all paws, the rest of him still childlike but eagerly lolloping behind.

Birdie, she says, I’m just so afraid of losing you again.

He looks up at her with the fathomless trust of a sleepy child.

But you’ll come back, he says.

It is not a question, but a statement. A reassurance.

She nods.

I’ll come back, she agrees. I promise I’ll come back.

And she means it.

Okay, he murmurs. He isn’t sure if he is speaking to her, or to himself. About what is to come, or what happened long ago. All of it, he decides. Everything. It’s okay, he says again, and he knows, by the gentle tightening of her arms, that she has heard.

I’m here, she says, and Bird lets the darkness absorb him.



* * *



? ? ?

When Bird wakes again his mother is gone and it is morning. He is curled in the crib, legs folded nearly to chest, the sleeping bag left behind on the window seat, twisted like a shed skin. He has a dim memory of wanting to be small, of finding this safe place to hide. Of retreating. Draped over him is a blanket he doesn’t recognize, heavy and too small and oddly shaped, and then he realizes it is not a blanket but his mother’s coat.





III





In the morning, at ten o’clock precisely, the Duchess arrives in her long sleek car, driving herself this time. Just inside the back door, Margaret hesitates. But Bird doesn’t. He is eager to go.

Good luck, he says. Confidence beaming from his eyes.

Okay, she says at last. I’ll see you soon.

She pulls him close, kisses him on the temple, just where the pulse beats under the skin.

Then Bird, backpack slung over his shoulder, darts through the back garden and out the fence and slips into the car at the curb. There, at the other end of the seat, is a figure silhouetted against a tinted window, turning as he enters. Taller—half a head taller than him now, maybe—longer haired, but the same quick eyes, the same skeptical grin.

Bird, Sadie says. Oh my god, Bird.

She throws her arms around him. Her skin smells of cedar and soap. Bird, she says, I’ve got so much to tell you—

If you’re going to gossip about me, please wait until we’re out of the city, the Duchess says drily. I don’t want to miss anything while I’m concentrating on traffic.

Sadie gives an exaggerated eye roll toward the front seat.

Fine, she says.

In the rearview mirror Bird sees the Duchess’s eyes twinkle back at them, and this more than anything reassures him. Sadie is at ease here, in a way he’s never seen. As the car shifts back into gear, she settles into her seat and turns her gaze to the window, letting out a soft sigh. It’s been months since they saw each other, but somehow Sadie seems younger rather than older, less wary and watchful, as if she’s finally able to breathe after a long time without air. As if she no longer has to fight her way through the world alone. He knows this feeling, or something like it: it is what he felt last night, when he’d called his mother and she came to him; it is what he felt this morning, waking under the comforting weight of her coat. He settles back into his seat, too, happy to be just a child for the moment, not in charge, simply along for the ride. There is so much he wants to ask Sadie—he cannot imagine living with the Duchess, for one thing—but he can wait.

Where are we going? he asks, as the Duchess nudges the car back into traffic again.

To the cabin, she says, and then they’re off.

She drives fast, the Duchess, Bird and Sadie belted firmly in back and pinned in place by unrelenting acceleration, and as they burst out of the tangled gray nest of the city and onto the open road, it feels like a rocket launch into the stars.

I hope neither of you gets carsick, the Duchess says suddenly, with a glance into the rearview mirror.

Neither of them does. Bird is seldom in a car and the sheer speed of it exhilarates him. The tinted windows deepen the colors outside, turning the sky turquoise, the grass emerald. Even the road, which he knows is ordinary flat asphalt, gleams with a silver sheen. In the Duchess’s proximity everything seems richer and more expansive, and this makes such inherent sense to him that he does not question it, simply settles against the soft leather and absorbs it. Beside him, Sadie draws in her breath quickly as a cloud of birds rises from a tree and scatters like a handful of confetti. For the first time he understands why dogs hang their heads out of windows: after so long inside, he, too, feels eager to lap up all he can, the very air tingling with life.

They drive for an hour and a half in companionable silence, the only noise being the occasional whoosh as they whip past another car or truck. The Duchess does not use signals, merely plants her foot firmly on the gas pedal and speeds past as the engine lets out a throaty growl. Bird wonders where the other half of the highway is, the side returning to the city—on the far side of the trees, perhaps. Though he can’t see it, it must be there. It is an exercise in faith. His mother has promised him she will come back. Another exercise in faith. He will remember everything and when he returns he will tell her what he’s seen.