Hummingbird Salamander(45)

But she couldn’t really know. So I gave in. Partway. Chose something not quite a lie.

“Something to do with work,” I said. Not entirely untrue.

“Bullshit,” she said.

I couldn’t look at her as I said, “Language.”

“Ever since you hid that thing in the trunk,” she said, leaning over the table to fix me with her glare, “you have been in your own world. You have not been my mom.”

There it was.

“Work just got really bad,” I protested. “It’s tough being a—”

“No. That’s not it,” she said. “Don’t feed me that bullshit again.”

“Well, it’s none of your business. I’m not going to discuss it with you.” Blurted without thinking. My last defense. The only way to try to keep containment, to stop the drones from destroying us all.

“If you split up, I’m going to live with Dad.”

My mouth opened and closed again.

What she was telling me. That she knew about my one-night stands. Thought I was having an affair, divorce on the horizon. That brief surge of elation that she knew nothing about Silvina crashed into such a wrenching sadness.

“Oh, baby,” I said, and reached across the table for her hand. But she pulled back, out of reach. “We’re not getting a divorce. We’re just fine.”

“No, you’re not. You don’t talk to him anymore. It’s like the last time. Except this time you have a gun.”

I leaned back, exhausted. Just wiped out by everything coming at me from all sides. Scared for my daughter, for a different reason, and ashamed. Such a grown-up look on her face. I didn’t want her to have to be an adult yet. Even if part of me was impressed.

“It’s not that way…” I mumbled, braced for the next accusation.

But a tiredness had crept into the anger on her face. A tiredness and, I realize now, a resignation. A retreat that made it clear how much it had taken out of her to say these things to me.

“Promise me the gun doesn’t mean anything. Promise you really have had the gun for a while,” she said.

I nodded. “I promise. It’s true. I just didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”

“And will it go away? Will whatever it is be done with soon?”

No break in her voice, I’ll give her that. No looking away. I withered under that full and damning regard.

“Yes,” I said, grateful for the lifeline. “Yes, it’s almost done. A couple more days.”

But would it end soon? Was there a point where I could tie a knot and be done?

A text came in and I gave it a glance.

>>Hello, Jane. Things going well? Or a little … sideways? Hope you keep the gun. You might find you need it … Let me know when you’re ready to talk.

My daughter frowned, gave me a long, appraising look, got up, and left without another word.

Relief at the avoidance. Relief that she’d left so I could study the journal. The regret came much later. The regret that I hadn’t explained more, hadn’t found some way to prolong the moment. To live in a moment more stable and more certain than any of what followed.

It struck me that she looked “off” for another reason. My daughter’s hair was different. Shorter. She’d gotten a haircut since the hummingbird, the storage unit. I hadn’t noticed, even though according to my calendar I was supposed to be the one to drive her to the hairdresser’s.

I pulled the gun out again. Spent some time taking it apart. Just as I’d thought: a tracer, tiny, hidden inside the magazine. Something microscopic written on it. So I got the magnifying glass. The words read “Just checking.”

I smiled. But I didn’t laugh. The psychological profile of “Wig Man” wasn’t good. Unpredictable. Or bored. Or full of himself. All of those were more dangerous than someone competent and balanced.

I put the gun back together, carefully placed the clips in secure compartments. Not much of a leap to accept Hellbender’s gift. Shovel Pig had held a gun once, until the first time my daughter, age six, had showed curiosity about my purse and I’d found her looking inside. I’d gotten rid of the gun soon after.

But it wasn’t like I’d never used a gun before.





[51]


Silvina’s note to me lay deep within Shovel Pig, too. In a zippered compartment within a compartment, next to her journal. Somehow, I hadn’t wanted to pull the note out. But now I did. Like a talisman. Like a balm. That direct communication. I sat there at the table feeling all alone except for Silvina.

Could this be as far as I was meant to go? From Silvina’s perspective? What if the salamander was metaphorical or symbolic in some way? Then the journal was the last thing—the endpoint. Salamander was my business. But had become her business, because she’d done her homework on me. Something in that thought trembled on the edge of comprehension, of clicking into place, then faded.

The only “nature” expeditions I recalled as a child were those I took with my brother. He would tell me tales of mythic salamanders—that under the earth were long-lost cave systems, and giant phosphorescent salamanders the size of alligators lived there, coming up to the surface to hunt for food and to mate with salamanders from other cave systems before returning to the darkness. When we tired of overturning rocks to find some tiny specimen, he would lead me into the foothills above the farm and we would pretend to be searching for the giant salamanders.