The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(68)

Stalks of tall purple herbs gradually claimed her yard. Now, in December, the honey-sweet scent of lavender was finally strong enough to cover the horrid stench of the birds found rotting throughout the house. All that remained of Nathaniel Sorrows was a permanent field of purple flowers, a black mark on the concrete, and a bitter taste in the back of the throat the very few times his name was mentioned.

A car turned onto Pinnacle Lane, and I watched as it made its way up the Coopers’ driveway. Two shapes emerged from the car. The larger one was undeniably Zeb Cooper, which meant the other had to be Rowe.

I smiled then in spite of myself. I smiled past all of my misgivings and reservations, past all previous heartbreak and any future heartbreak, because Rowe had come back. It was true, what he had written to me. Suddenly the weary burden of my attack didn’t seem quite so heavy as I remembered something else he wrote.

You don’t have to carry it by yourself.

“It is all right, now? Yes?”

I turned around to see a translucent figure moving among the birds. Wrapped around her was the hooded green cloak that once hid her thick eyebrows and chapped lips from suspicious neighbors; it was the same cloak I’d used to hide my wings from mine.

I nodded. Yes. It was all right.

And with that, the ghost of Fatima Inês waved good-bye to her birds and slowly faded into the night.





AT THE EDGE of the town’s reservoir, on the neighborhood’s highest point — the hill at the end of Pinnacle Lane was a close second — stood a little white house. Hidden by a grove of maple trees, the house had once been occupied by an old man and his wife. They had spent their autumn days scooping five-pointed leaves of orange, gold, and red from its still waters and turned the radio up when young lovers visited the isolated place, smiling at one another as they closed the curtains against the night.

From the attic window of the little white house, one could see the whole neighborhood, which some say was the very reason Jack Griffith bought it. Standing underneath the eaves, Jack could peer across the calm reservoir waters to where Viviane Lavender had once watched the moon disappear, where months earlier a group of cynical teenagers had met the myth they’d never quite believed. From there, Jack could see all the contributions of little Fatima Inês de Dores and her ship captain brother: the post office, the drugstore, the brick elementary-school building, the Lutheran church. He could see Emilienne’s bakery, where customers came to purchase a morning sticky bun from the American-Indian woman behind the counter, where the wafting scents of cinnamon and vanilla comforted even the surliest souls. He could see the new police station and the rows of identical houses that had sprung up after the war. And he could see, at the end of Pinnacle Lane, a house painted the color of faded periwinkles. It had a white wraparound porch and an onion-domed turret in the back. The second-floor bedrooms had giant bay windows. A widow’s walk topped the house, its balcony turned toward Salmon Bay.

I like to think that when Jack Griffith looked up at that moment, he saw a figure on the balcony perched precariously on the widow’s walk atop the Lavender house, surrounded by a flock of peculiar birds singing an unusual song only they seemed to understand. I like to think that he saw me, the loosened ends of my long bandages and the wispy tangled curls of my hair reaching out to the wind, the skirt of my nightgown billowing in melodic waves. I like to think that he watched as I climbed over the side of the rickety widow’s walk, my toes perched on the ledge, my fingers clasped lightly to the railing behind me. Perhaps he noted, with quiet irony, that never before had anyone more resembled an angel. I like to think that he marveled at the mass of bandages that unraveled completely and tumbled to the ground, and at the pair of pure white wings that unfolded from my shoulder blades and arched, large and strong, over my head.

But, mostly, I like to think that Jack Griffith, my father, smiled as I let go of the railing behind me and, stretching my wings to that star-studded sky, soared into the night.

fin





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I feel incredibly fortunate to have the support of a group of people without whom this book would have been nothing more than a fictional world I visited during conversation lulls:

Bernadette Baker-Baughman, agent extraordinaire and literary super-goddess, who believed in Ava from the very beginning. There aren’t enough words to describe how lucky I feel to have such a rock star for an agent.

My editor, Mary Lee Donovan, whose fathomless dedication and encouragement helped make this book into what it is today. I owe so much gratitude to the entire Candlewick and Walker Books family for their hard work — most especially Sherry Fatla, Gill Evans, Sarah Foster, Angela Van Den Belt, Tracy Miracle, and Angie Dombroski. A very special thank-you to Pier Gustafson for the incredible job on the family tree, and Matt Roeser for the book jacket and cover design. It is far more beautiful than anything I could have imagined. Also, many thanks to the extraordinary Chandler Crawford for helping introduce Ava to the world, as well as to Gretchen Stelter, Nick Harris, and Christine Munroe for their tireless enthusiasm and insight.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the constant love and support of my family and friends. Many thanks to Andrea Paris for inviting me over to her dad’s little white house on the reservoir when we were in eighth grade. The beauty of that place never left me. Thank you, David Seal, for telling me I was already a writer when I told you that was all I wanted to be, and Whitney Otto for believing this little book of mine was something worth reading. Liz Buelow, my first reader, for your brilliance, honesty, and all those late-night brainstorm sessions over sushi and sake.