The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(16)

“I can do that.”

“No doubt. We’re staying at the Palomino Motel, just up the road.” She took the notepad and pen from my hand and began writing. “This is the number. Put it somewhere Jim won’t find it. But don’t call, understand me? Don’t call unless it’s life or death.”

She stopped herself and chuckled. “I mean, imminent.”

It struck me that, whatever I was risking, this virtual stranger was willing to risk just as much. And for no good reason that I could see. I was confused, light-headed, struggling for words, trying to stammer out gratitude.

“I don’t know how to repay you . . . I don’t know why you’re doing this.”

“Don’t you?” She cocked her head and smiled down at me as if I were a child who’d just said something precocious.

“Because you asked.”





May 29





Something jarred me awake—not a noise or movement, but instinct. The digital clock on the dresser read 2:31 a.m., and Jim wasn’t in bed beside me. The sheets where he lay were cold to the touch.

I sprang from bed, adrenaline surging, and made my way to the hallway. There, I could hear a tinny melody drifting from Laurel’s room. Cautiously I followed the sound. I recognized it—a song about wishing upon a star, coming from a Cinderella music box Laurel had gotten from Santa last Christmas.

There was a night-light close enough to Laurel’s little canopy bed that I could make out Jim bending over her sleeping form. My breath caught in my throat. I froze in place, staring.

Whenever Laurel had nightmares, I was the one to sit at her bedside till she fell back to sleep. She must have had a bad dream, and Jim must have heard. Watching him with her then—so gentle, so warm—was like stumbling on a stranger. At a Jim that might have been, but for whatever reason—because of whatever devil hunched on his shoulder, hissing in his ear—could never quite close the deal.

I watched as his fingers trailed along Laurel’s cheek, the way he used to brush mine a million years ago. His expression in the obscure light so tender, it jolted me to the bone.

“Sleep, baby,” he shushed.





June 3





The two weeks after Bernadette left the house passed like a forced march through a minefield. For the first time, I was glad of regimentation and rules. They ate up the hours. They helped settle my mind and keep the lies sorted into the right piles.

An odd sensation began to brew in my chest, churning it up. Night after night, I lay in bed taut as a bowstring as Jim slept next to me. I examined this new feeling, turning it over and over in my head like a found foreign object.

Finally, I identified it: hope.

I didn’t like it. Resignation doesn’t ask for anything. Pain can be numbing.

Hope has expectations. Hope can be dashed.

At times, I even found myself bitterly resenting Bernadette for laying this new burden on me—a terrible secret that seemed to press against my lips, straining to burst through as if daring to be caught. But always the resentment lifted the moment Jim left the house, the risk of discovery easing for one more shift at the station. His absences washed over me like a death house reprieve.

It helped not at all that nothing was expected of me, except to be ready when the moment came. I couldn’t bear a second’s idleness. Chores done, I’d rake the leafless yard, dump clean clothes out of bureau drawers just so I could relaunder them. Scrub the kitchen floor, then change the bucket water and scrub it all over again. Bite my lips till they bled.

Sometimes I’d hear the stuttering roar of a bike engine in the distance and imagine it was Bernadette or Sam. I’d wonder whether she’d ridden the two hours to Albuquerque for the plane tickets yet, or if she’d bought them over the phone and was having them mailed to her at the Palomino. Maybe the tickets were lying on her nightstand even now, just waiting for the jailbreak.

Then another thought would crush me: What if she’d changed her mind altogether? Decided to dump Jim’s loser wife like deadweight? Was she even now in Durango or Flagstaff or San Antonio? At those times, it was all I could do not to pick up the phone and call the number she’d left. What stayed my hand was the realization that the only thing I could do if she answered was to pinch out a pathetic, “Are you still coming?”

The easiest thing was keeping it from Laurel. I was so well practiced in that already. And there was so much at stake.