Our Missing Hearts (73)

The Duchess has referred to it as the cabin and in the strictest sense this is true: a little milk carton of a house, encircled by trees. To Bird and Sadie, cabin calls to mind Abe Lincoln, hewn logs, and howling wolves. The Duchess’s cabin is small and simple, but this is as far as the resemblance goes. The wooden floors in the main room gleam like buttery toffee. The big fireplace at its center is made of rounded river stones. Behind it are a pair of small bedrooms, a bathroom. On one wall, a window peeks through a clearing in the trees to the silver sparkle of water in the distance.

I’m trusting you not to drown, the Duchess says. There’s not another house for miles, so no one will be coming to save you.

She lifts her wrist and checks a slim gold watch.

So here are the rules, she says. You are not to go off the property, but it’s forty-seven acres so I assume that won’t be too much of a limitation. You may swim, if you don’t mind the cold. You may make a fire, if you’re careful. In the fireplace only. I’ve left you a bag of food that should last until I come back tomorrow. Anything unclear?

Who built this house? Sadie asks. Somehow I don’t think it was you.

She grins cheekily at the Duchess, and the Duchess smiles back indulgently.

My father did, she says.

She pauses suddenly and looks around, as if she is seeing the cabin for the first time. Taking in the wooden walls, the planked ceiling, the satiny floor.

Or rather, had it built, she says. That’s how he did things. Her voice softens. When I was little, we used to sit on the shore, out there, and fish. He and my mother and I. I haven’t been here in many years.

Then she shakes her head, as if shrugging away dust. So don’t burn it down, please, she says crisply.

Are you going back to help my mother? Bird asks.

For the first time the Duchess looks uncertain.

You know your mother, she says, and Bird nods, even as he wonders if this is true. When she gets an idea in her head there’s no stopping her. But she’s coming to me when she’s finished, and we’ll be here tomorrow morning to pick you up.

And then what, Bird and Sadie both think, but neither of them dares to ask.

The Duchess checks her watch again.

I’d better go, she says. I won’t get back until midafternoon as it is, and if there’s traffic—

She picks up her keys from the table and turns back, looks from one of them to the other.

Don’t worry, she says, her voice unexpectedly gentle. Bird, Sadie. Everything will be fine.

Of course it will, Sadie says. We’re here, now.



* * *



? ? ?

When the Duchess is gone, Bird and Sadie—suddenly aware of all the months that have passed between them—lapse into bashful silence. Tacitly, they take stock of their surroundings. In the big main room, a table and three chairs, a kitchenette; in the bathroom, a shower and toilet and a small louvered window through which they can see nothing but trees. Two bedrooms, a larger one, cream colored with a big double bed, and a smaller one—pink—with a twin bed in the corner.

Without asking, Sadie kicks her shoes off in the big room, but Bird doesn’t mind. It’s clear who the house was built for—parents, child—and he is happy to let someone else play the role of adult for a little while longer. He settles on the sofa in front of the fireplace, and beneath him the aged leather crackles.

What is it like, he says. Living with the Duchess. What is that like?

Sadie laughs. Domi? she says. She seems super scary, but she’s not.

As if a seal has been broken, she begins to chatter away. The first day, she said, she hadn’t seen Domi at all. She’d been given a bedroom—up on the top floor, with a huge antique map of the world hung on the wall—and left to her own devices, and she’d spent all day exploring the museum of a house, trying to figure out what kind of place she’d landed in, what kind of woman Domi was. Margaret said she could be trusted, but Sadie was not used to taking things on assurance. Late that night, she’d found her way into Domi’s office and was still behind the desk, reading the papers scattered there, when Domi came in.

And just what do you think you’re doing? Domi demanded, and Sadie had looked up, studying her with new eyes.

So all these checks, she said, ticking her finger down Domi’s ledger. To all these libraries. You know what they’re doing. You’re—helping.

A long moment, where they appraised each other anew.

Why, Sadie asked, and Domi said: It’s one small thing. To start to make things right.

Sadie shut the checkbook. I want to help, she said.

She’d expected Domi to laugh, but she didn’t. Instead Domi had sat down in the chair across the desk, as if Sadie were in charge and she was the supplicant, asking for a favor.

Maybe you can, she said.

They’d spent days talking, Sadie telling Domi everything she remembered about the authorities, her host families, the whole system of PACT. How they’d moved her, who had met her, where she’d gone. What she’d seen in the libraries, those months in which they’d hidden her. What she’d wished she’d done, and what she’d wished others had. Domi listening. Learning.

I couldn’t go out, Sadie says to Bird. In case anyone spotted me. But Domi found me stuff to do. And she’s been looking for my parents. Trying to trace where they’ve gone.