Flying Solo(4)

“You two are amazing. It’s like after you met in college, you just floated from there to here.”

“Oh, hardly. I got completely freaked out when we were having Bethie. That was a whole other person puking and pooping and yelling at us all the time. That was different. Even though she was a good baby. And Tommy was also a good baby, very mellow and quiet, although for some reason he smelled worse more of the time. I don’t know. I guess I’m saying everything’s an adjustment.”

“I haven’t seen your kids in so long, when I walked in the other day, I was sure for a second you had traded them for other, much older kids.”

“I think that sometimes, too,” June said.

“Do you miss when they were babies? They were so cute.”

“I liked it when they were babies,” June said. “But now they’re old enough that they have backpacks and frenemies and real opinions about things besides hating everything when they’re tired. And that’s fun, too. I’m glad they got to see you. I think after all this time, they thought you lived in Skype.”

Laurie had learned to knit so she could make a blanket for Bethie, and then she never did it again. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around more. I feel like I wanted to be Aunt Laurie, and I ended up being somebody they barely remember.”

“That’s not true. Even if it was, what are you going to do? It’s a long flight here from Seattle. And you travel so much for work already.”

“Yeah.” Laurie picked up the duck, which had been sitting next to her on the couch. “I am so in love with this thing.” She ran her thumb along its back, looked at the painted feather patterns, felt the bright green head with her fingertips. “I think it’s a wood duck.”

June put down her drink on a crocheted coaster on the side table. “It looks like wood.”

“No, not a wooden duck, a wood duck. A kind of duck that can nest in the woods.” Laurie looked at the bottom, which was a plain light wood with a faint mark that looked like a circle with the initials CKM inside. “CKM,” she said quietly. “It says ‘CKM’ on the bottom.”

“Calvin Klein…Mallards?” June offered.

“Outstanding guess, but probably not. I honestly have no idea where this would have come from or why Dot would have it.”

“It’s a decoy, right?”

“Yeah. And even though I’m embarrassed by how little I knew about big parts of her life, I’m pretty sure she didn’t have anything to do with hunting.” She kept running her finger over the mark on the bottom. “Baby wood ducks can jump fifty feet out of trees.”

Laurie had been a wildlife journalist, writing about critters and bugs and birds and fish—just about everything that swam, walked, wriggled, or flew—long enough that June expected a certain amount of animal trivia. “Are wood ducks endangered? Did you spend six months chasing them across Michigan or something and then write a heartbreaking article about how they’re getting slammed by climate change?”

“Some ducks are endangered,” Laurie said, “but not these ducks, at least not right now. They were before, partly because of hunting, but then the Migratory Bird Treaty Act”—she looked over and saw that June’s eyes had gone wide—“they were protected long enough to recover.” Laurie smiled and ran her fingers down the wings. “But I did write a story for The Outdoors about a kind of botulism that knocked out a lot of waterfowl up in Oregon and Washington, and some of them were ordinary ducks, like this guy. So I’m not totally without relevant waterfowl experience.”

“That reminds me, you said you had an assignment in a few weeks, but you haven’t told me what it is.”

Laurie put the duck down next to her. “Turtle trafficking.”

“People traffic turtles?”

“Absolutely. They catch them in traps, gather them up, ship them off to places where they’re in demand as exotic pets. Box turtles especially. So I’m going to South Carolina to meet a reformed turtle trafficker named Puppy Tavishaw who’s helping the fish and wildlife guys bust them.”

June stopped what she was doing. “Puppy? His name is Puppy?”

“Just one of the many things I’m looking forward to investigating while I’m embedded with Law & Order: Turtle Unit.”

“Spe-shell Victims Unit,” June offered.

“Turtles are chased by two separate yet equally pokey groups. These are their slow-ries,” Laurie said. “Please, let’s stop before I start googling turtle species that rhyme with ‘criminal minds.’?”

June went back to her work. “Hopefully, Puppy isn’t dangerous.”

“I think the most dangerous part is probably the threat of getting about six million mosquito bites. That, and the fact that I have to take pictures myself, at least for online. I’m still not completely used to it. Which reminds me, wait here, I’m ready to move on to the next box.”

By the time Laurie returned to the living room with the CAMERAS AND 8-TRACK TAPES box, June had put her feet up on the ottoman. “Okay, it’s time to see what’s in here. I found one camera on the kitchen table, so I don’t know what this is.” The ancient masking tape gave way easily, and the dusty flaps of the box puffed motes into the sunlight.