Our Missing Hearts (81)
When they peek outside everything seems blurred, everything outside uncertain and obscured. No longer trees but an impression of trees: green blurs sliced by wet, dark streaks. No longer the calm water from yesterday but a slate-gray blur, something swelling and churning just at the edge of their sight. They can’t see far; a haze hangs in the air, like the spray of salt from the sea, and they pull the curtains shut so they don’t have to glimpse whatever terrifying fight is raging outside. The wind grinds against the roof, the windowpanes, the ground—so much rain, it is indistinguishable from an ocean’s roar. They are a small boat caught in a squall, everything topsy-turvy. Which way is up? They are no longer sure. The wood-paneled floor might be the deck, upended; the rain scouring the roof might be the waves, lashing and gnawing at the keel below their feet.
I’m scared, Bird says.
Sadie’s hand creeps into his, warm and comfortingly damp and alive.
Me too, she says.
Late into the night, they feed the ravenous fire, neither of them ready to give up, nodding off well after midnight, waking up as the fire dies down and the room grows cold, adding another log, coaxing it back to life, rousing it from the ashes again and again until, just before sunrise turns the sky gray-gold, they both fall asleep, side by side beneath the scratchy wool blanket, and at last the fire goes out.
They wake up, stiff-necked and cold, and look at the darkened hearth, then at each other.
It doesn’t matter, Sadie says quickly. It doesn’t count. It’s almost daytime now.
She says this with all her old brash confidence, but he knows she needs him to agree.
He nods. It’s okay, he says.
Outside the roar of the storm has stilled. The silence swells and echoes, their ears gradually adjusting to the absence of sound. Now the taps of the slowing rain are discrete, fingers drumming. Instead of an indistinguishable blur, they can make out individual sounds. There is a single drip of rain pattering against the window. There is the single ping of a drop clanging against the gutter like a bell. There, suddenly, is a single bird testing the predawn air, then another bird answering its call.
Though it’s still dark, they eat the last of the cereal for breakfast, because even at the end of the world, they think, these things make them feel more prepared for whatever is to come. Then, without discussing it, they take up their posts on the front steps, though they still are not sure what they are waiting for. The sky is just beginning to lighten. After yesterday’s storm the air feels clean and crisp, the birds shouting at each other from the trees. The rain-damp world seems two shades darker—the rocks changed from pale buff to dark gold, the dirt from gray-brown to near-black—but everything is still here. A squirrel climbs, fusty-eyed, out of its hole, dangles by its rear feet, and stretches itself languidly, first one side, then the other. At Bird’s feet an industrious pair of ants lifts a crumb that’s fallen from his breakfast and begins the long awkward journey back to the nest.
Perhaps it is possible. Perhaps everything is fine, there was just a delay, perhaps Margaret and Domi are on the way to them, safe and sound and triumphant.
I hear them, Sadie says, jumping to her feet.
She’s right: they both hear it, a car crunching up the long gravel drive through the woods. From the front step, they watch it approach. The Duchess’s car, so urban and oddly incongruous here, a thin bright bullet boring through the forest in slow motion. It comes slowly, almost reluctantly. Sadie takes Bird’s hand, or Bird takes Sadie’s hand, they aren’t quite sure which, and they watch the car make its way to the cabin with agonizing slowness. As it nears they can see two figures in the front, though through the tinted glass they can’t make out the faces, only a shadowy shape on the passenger side, another at the wheel. Then it comes to a halt and the engine dies and the passenger door opens, but it isn’t her, it’s a man, a tall body unfolding itself and turning toward them, and Bird makes a choked sound of recognition. It is his father, the Duchess grim-faced behind the wheel, and they know something has gone terribly wrong.
Dad, Bird cries. Dad. But no sound comes out. Beside him, Sadie begins to cry.
And as if his father has heard him anyway, his father runs to him, runs to them, folds them both in his arms.
* * *
? ? ?
She’d waited, the Duchess—waited in her gilded townhouse through the evening and well into the night, waited for Margaret to arrive. As soon as you think they’ve pinpointed you, she’d said. Don’t wait, M. Just get out, before they have time to reach you. Don’t cut it close—you always get carried away. And Margaret had agreed.
And then she’d kept speaking, kept on going, past the point where Domi had expected her to stop, past the point where it seemed prudent, then past the point where it seemed safe, then past the point where it seemed possible. By the time it was clear Margaret wasn’t coming, that something had gone wrong, the sky had circled from light to dark and was beginning to grow light again, and she got in the car and headed for Brooklyn. Margaret’s voice had nearly gone out, the authorities finding and crushing speaker after speaker as they slowly spiraled toward her, but as Domi crossed the bridge, a few minutes after three, there it was again: her old friend, louder now, more distinct, through the speakers they’d missed or not yet found, as if now that she was closer her words came more clearly. Telling the stories that those who needed to tell could not say, now grieving, now angry, now tender, a thousand people shouting through her mouth.