Missing Dixie(60)

I nod and my skin heats from the embarrassment at being caught breaking down again.

Buck up, buttercup, my subconscious scolds me. I take a deep breath and do that.

I’m tough. I lived on the road alone for nearly three months. I started a business by myself. I’ve got this.

Even though I do feel as if I can handle this, I also know that just as Gavin’s pain is my pain, Liam’s pain is also seeping into the broken places inside my heart and that I won’t allow this child to receive another mark on his skin or miss another meal no matter what I have to do.

The ire burns in me, anger at the kind of people who allow children to be hurt or go hungry, rage at those who inflict pain on the innocent and helpless.

“Breathe, Bluebird,” Gavin tells me quietly. “Go pick out a movie. One of those Disney ones you’re always telling me I need to see.”

I take a deep breath and turn to go into the living room, but not before hearing Liam ask, “Why do you call her Bluebird?”

I can’t help myself, I need to hear the answer. Once I’ve stepped out of sight, I lean against the wall and do my best to eavesdrop.

“Well . . . that’s kind of a long story, I guess,” Gavin says, barely speaking loud enough for me to hear. He mentions something about a story he already told Liam outside this morning but I don’t know what he’s referring to.

When Liam doesn’t respond, Gavin continues.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t have a whole lot of hope. I didn’t hope to see my friends, or hope to play with my toys, or hope to get anything for my birthday or Christmas. I had done that and been let down a lot. So I didn’t have much hope or dare to think that my life would ever get much better.”

I close my eyes and place a hand on my chest to keep my heart from breaking apart.

“Then I met Dixie. And her brother Dallas. And I don’t know . . . I felt . . . alive. I felt hope.”

Liam is still quiet and I wish I could see his face.

Does he have hope? Does he get birthday presents? Has he ever had a Christmas?

“Remember what I told you about today,” Gavin continues. “When Dallas, my friend and Dixie’s brother, was mowing grass by a pond and he saw a bird. One of the blue finches like you and me saw in the backyard. This one was small and lying down in some high grass but there wasn’t a tree or a nest around. It was just . . . there. And it looked dead.”

“But you said it wasn’t. You said it flew away,” Liam’s voice is soft and yet heavy with the sound of betrayal.

“I told you the truth. It didn’t die. We just thought it was dead. But then Dixie showed up and Dallas picked it up and carried it home and the next thing we knew, it was chirping and flying away, right out of his hands.”

“But . . . how?”

I have to strain to hear Gavin’s answer. “I think, maybe, that our little bluebird was lying there, feeling bad and defeated and maybe thinking about giving up. But then we came along and lifted it up off the ground and took it somewhere safe. We gave it hope. And when it came to and we watched it fly away, it gave us hope right back.”

I smile when the inevitable question slips from Liam’s lips. “Okay. So you saved the bird but what does that have to do with Miss Dixie?”

Gavin chuckles lightly. “I call Miss Dixie Bluebird because she gives me hope. When I’m lying down feeling bad and thinking about giving up, it’s her that makes me pick myself back up again and fly. Even when I think I can’t, even when I don’t want to. As long as she has hope, has faith in me, I’ll still try to be the best that I can be.”

And here I thought it was because I had blue eyes and my last name was Lark.

Fighting tears at this point just feels stupid so I let them out, wiping them gently and wondering why it took a child to get that story out of Gavin. Why he never told me how he felt.

The room falls quiet so I peek around the corner. Gavin turns on the burner and pulls up a chair for Liam to watch while he roasts the marshmallows.

Seeing them does strange things to my insides. I don’t know what it is, but somehow they are right together. As if my only purpose in life was to unite these two wounded souls. As if somehow they belong to me and I belong to them.

“How goes the movie search?” Gavin calls out.

Even though his back is to me, I know he knows I haven’t looked for movies.

I take a few steps back from the entryway and call back, “Oh, it’s going. Disney really has the corner on the princess market, though. Not sure you boys would like any of these.”

“How about The Wizard of Oz,” Gavin calls back.

I smile because that’s always been my favorite. Hence my fiddle being named Oz. “I think I can scrounge that one up. Bring me some s’mores! I’m starving in here!”

We play at the banter, mostly for Liam’s sake, while we settle in with the movie and the s’mores.

“There’s no color,” Liam says when the black-and-white movie begins to play.

I smile, glancing over at Gavin and his tattoos and his hazel eyes and bright white smile.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “There will be.”

Liam falls asleep somewhere around the time Dorothy meets the lion. Gavin looks pretty beat and I’m exhausted myself.

“Want me to turn it off?”