The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(15)

People disappear all the time, he’d said. He’s a cop; he should know. No one would miss you, he said. Hell, no one would even notice. And if they did, he’d just tell them I’d left him and gone back to my family in another state. No one would check. No one would care.

This is my future, he told me. This is my end, if I ever, ever, ever humiliate him like that again.

Bernadette was still staring at me, her eyes still blank. I waited for her to say something. To say anything. To tell me what a pathetic wreck I was. What a terrible mother. To hop on her motorcycle and leave a trail of diesel fumes all the way to the Javelina so she could sit with Sam and tell him all about the nutcase outside town.

Instead, she said, “Show me.”

She helped me up again, and slowly I led her through the kitchen, through the back door, through the yard. When I got to the shed, I hesitated. I hadn’t been inside since that night. Bernadette paused, too, for a second, then moved past to unlatch the rough plank door. She opened it and stepped in. I forced myself to follow. It was musty and close and smelled of motor oil. “This is bad,” she muttered, glancing around. “Bad energy.” The afternoon sun cut through the dusty window like a blade; the light was weak, but it was enough for her to scan the walls, taking in the rakes, the spades, all the garden hand tools. Then her gaze rested on one item in particular. It was a machete, hanging just where Jim had left it.

She shook her head, backing away.

She didn’t speak again until we returned to the house. Then she paced the living room, her steel-toed boots clicking up and down the wood floor. I waited expectantly, not knowing for what.

“Where’s your daughter?” she asked.

I told her Laurel was staying with a school friend for a few days. Bernadette nodded.

“Now, think hard. Give me a name and a number. Someone you can trust. Someone who will take you and your daughter at a moment’s notice.”

I shook my head, desperate. “No one. There’s no one. They’re all Jim’s friends here. My family’s gone. It’s been ten years—”

“It doesn’t have to be someone you know well, or even recently,” Bernadette said. “You’d be surprised how many people are willing to help, if they’re only asked. But make it someone as far away from here as possible.”

A name sprang to mind.

“I used to know someone in Boston.”

Bernadette seemed pleased. “Very good. Write it down.”

There was a notepad and pen on the end table beside the telephone. She grabbed it and handed it to me.

“In two days, when Jim has left for his shift,” she continued, “I’m coming back here and giving you cash and two plane tickets out of Albuquerque for Boston. Do you know where the Albuquerque airport is? Never mind—I’ll give you a map anyway. You’ll leave as soon as I get here, gas up your car and drive hell-bent for leather. Take nothing with you. Nothing—do you understand? By the time Jim gets home, you’ll be in coach, eating peanuts somewhere over Chicago.”

Suddenly the enormity of what she was plotting overwhelmed me. The insurrection was too massive, too fast. The blood was draining to my feet. I began to shake, murmuring protests.

“I can’t. Wait. Please. Two days is too soon. I can barely walk. Laurel has to finish school. Laurel has to finish school. Please, she has to.”

Bernadette stared at me again, but not unkindly. I was ashamed at my weakness. Oma used to tell me stories of how she and her husband and their young daughter—my mother—had fled East Germany and the communist occupation. Left their lovely home one night without warning or preparation, their dinner half eaten on the table, racing on foot toward the western border with nothing but the clothes on their backs, the barking of search dogs in the distance. I was just a child at the time, and shivered at the story, but Oma would hug me and kiss my cheek. Mut, she’d say. Courage. And here I was, frantic over pulling my seven-year-old from school early.

But of course my panic was more than that—when you’re released suddenly from a dungeon, sunlight is a painful thing. Prisoners need time to adjust. Bernadette must have understood.

She nodded. “When’s the school year over?”

I did the calculation as fast as my feverish brain could manage. “Fourteen days. June fourth.”

“Does Jim work that day?”

Another calculation. “Yes.”

“Good. June fourth. Until then, pretend everything is okay. Nothing has changed—understand?”