“Yeah,” Chloe snaps at me. “Don’t play with crazy people. Did you see how she came at me? She’s taking her jealousy out on me, Mom.”
“You know I pride myself on staying out of other people’s business,” Mrs. Dillingham chides. “But we all know Wren’s been off this summer. Chloe has a point.”
“What?” both Chief and I bite back at the exact same time.
“Look, Wren, I’m sorry that I have a boyfriend.” Chloe tosses her hair. “I’m sorry that I have a life. But what did you expect? You’re moving to Utah. I had to find new friends.”
“Chloe,” Mr. Dillingham snaps.
His wife is silent.
I can’t seem to breathe. Like the morning I woke up and found Lizzie gone. As if the rotation of the planet stopped, making the wind die, the sky fall. My lungs stop working, only for a moment but enough to shake my center clear off balance.
I look at Chief. “What?”
“We’ll talk about this later.” Chief is looking at his clipboard, like a coward.
Mr. Dillingham whispers, loudly enough for me to hear. “Chloe, I told you that in confidence. You weren’t supposed to say anything.”
In an unapologetic tone, Chloe says, “Oops.”
How indelicately she treats my life.
“That was your plan all along,” I say to Chief. “You’re sending me away.”
“We’ll talk about this later.”
I’m trapped. Lizzie was, too.
She was getting out of Spokane only if Chief let her go. If she found something that forced his hand. She didn’t sneak out a locked door. He opened it.
I can’t believe I didn’t realize this before.
“You know where she is,” I say. “You’ve known the whole time.”
I take off running. Chief doesn’t follow. He knows I’m trying to escape a labyrinth. There is no getting out. I have no car. No phone. No money. He’s the police. He’ll find me. Chief will see to that. I can run all over Spokane, but in the end I’ll come back to my house and he’ll close the door. Chief has made it so.
The truth is this: I am the songbird. And Chief is the cage.
38
A KISS TO BUILD A DREAM ON
Luca and I are sheltered under the bus stop outside Happy Homes Assisted Living Center. Rain drips on the glass, smearing its way down to the ground. The wind picks up, and a few dried leaves gather in a swirl.
“Fall is coming,” I say. A chill rolls down my arms.
I ran to Luca’s house. I told him about Utah. About Baby Girl and the money she gave to Lizzie. About Chief, and about how Lizzie disappeared because my dad opened the door, on purpose. And he didn’t tell me. And he didn’t go after her.
Luca said there was only one place we should go. In the dark of night, nothing can be solved. All we can do is wait for the bus to come.
“It’s still summer,” Luca says. “Let’s not think about fall.”
“I think I hear sirens. Chief’s coming for me.”
“That’s just the wind howling.” Luca pulls me in closer. “Don’t worry. The bus will be here soon, and we’ll get out of here.”
“Where are we going, Luca?”
“New York City,” he says. “We’ll get a loft in Brooklyn where you can paint, and I can skateboard at the park down the street.”
“We can get restaurant jobs.”
“Or work at a coffee shop.”
“And live off of free lattes and scones.”
“Caffeine and carbs. Does a person need anything else? You can go to the art museum on your days off.”
“We’ll drink wine and wear black and always look slightly disgruntled, even though we’re blissfully happy . . .” I pause. “Will you miss it here?”
“No way.” But Luca is lying. I can tell.
“I hear it gets pretty cold in New York in the winter,” I say.
“And the heat in the summer makes the city stink.”
“Maybe we should go to California instead.”
“But the traffic is awful.”
“And I’m not fancy enough for LA.”
“Texas sounds interesting,” Luca offers. “I hear everything’s bigger down there.”
“I like us just the size we are.”
“Florida has the ocean. Or we could eat lobster in Boston.”
“Chicago dyes its river green on Saint Patrick’s Day.”
“We could hike the Appalachian Trail,” he says. “Or get a houseboat and float down the Mississippi? That sounds nice.”
But it won’t work. I can’t pretend the truth away anymore.
“I’d miss when the lilacs bloom here in the spring,” I say.
“Me, too.” Luca pulls me into him. I rest my head on his shoulder. “It’s a good thing the bus isn’t here yet. We have time to decide.”
He reaches around me protectively, as if he can prevent what’s going to happen. But it’s all make-believe, the lies we tell ourselves to make living better. No matter how close Luca hugs me, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m near the end of the picture. It’s almost clear. Just a few more steps backward.
I nuzzle into Luca’s neck and smell his familiar scent. Even after I washed my sheets, the memory of him clung to each fiber. If I could disappear into his skin right now, I’d do it.
I won’t slip away again. I won’t let myself go. I’m stronger than that.
“Is life just a made-up story?” I ask him. “An imagined daydream and night-dream, until it’s over?”
“If that’s the case,” he whispers, “we can be anything we want.”
I turn toward him. “All I want is to be with you right now.”
Luca kisses me. The chill of the rainy night dissipates around us. He tangles his hands through my hair, like roots burrowing in the ground. Grabbing at his T-shirt, I pull him closer, drinking him in.
This is life in a kiss. My life. Held between his lips, whispered in my name.
And yet something is dying. Withering away. The part of me that liked being in a cage. The part of me that found comfort in being unwanted. The part of me that lived a lie I told myself.
I kiss Luca with everything that I am—with lips and tongue, hands and arms and skin and bones, heart and soul. Seconds that quickly become minutes to wrap myself in the truth I’ve created before shedding light on the lies around me.
Thunder claps, and I shudder, pulling back from Luca.
He kisses my forehead. The rain falls harder now. Water cascades in sheets down the glass, like we’re under a waterfall. Hidden.
“Let’s never leave here,” I say.
“Don’t worry. The bus won’t come. We’re safe.”
“For now,” I say. “Until we decide we can’t wait any longer.”
“Or until we forget why we sat down in the first place.”
“I don’t ever want to forget you.”
“Then you know what you have to do,” Luca says.
“I have to leave here, don’t I?”
He pulls me back into him. “Not until morning. No one should go out in this rain.”
“OK. We’ll wait until the rain stops.”
“What should we do to pass the time?”
“I could sing to you,” I suggest.
Luca smiles. “You know how to sing?”
“One song.”
He lies down on the bench and puts his head in my lap. I stroke his hair, my fingers memorizing each strand.
“It’s a song about sunshine.”
“I think I know this one,” he says. “OK, Songbird. Sing.”
So I do.
And when I’m done, Luca asks me to sing it again and again and again, until the rain departs and a slice of morning peeks out from the horizon.
“Your singing worked,” Luca says, his voice hoarse. “The sun is back. I think it’s time.”
“I know. I can feel it.”
“Do you need to borrow my belief in you again?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve found
my own strength now.”
He kisses my forehead. “It was there all along.”
“Can I have your phone?” I ask.
He takes it from his pocket. My heart beats quickly. My mind clouds with what-ifs, but going back is not an option. The time for fantasy is over.
I search for Vivienne Rhine. The truth was here all along, like the little secrets tucked in the books in the Spokane Public Library. That’s the odd thing with the truth. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Luca must see it on my face. “Is it what you thought?”
“Yes.”
“Boise?”
This feels impossible. “Yes.”
“Then we can find her.”
“Yes.”
Of all the scenarios Lizzie and I dreamed up, this is one I never expected.
“What is it?” he begs, touching my leg. “Tell me, Wren. Is there more?”
“Luca . . .” The sun has risen, painting the entirety of the bus stop in yellow. “There’s so much more.”
39
A MILLION PIECES OF LOVE
I stand in the kitchen, rain from the night before still softening my clothes. My knee is scabbed over from yesterday’s softball game, the blood dried and cracked. It feels unfathomable that my fight with Chloe was just yesterday. I am living a new life today. Chloe feels so small—a pin drop—compared to this.
I walk through the house as if seeing it for the first time.
When I get upstairs, I find Lizzie lying in the hammock, surrounded by the forest on the walls.
She’s a figment of my imagination, a set memory. Lizzie’s wearing her worn-out, secondhand bell-bottom jeans with the holes in the knees, thumbing the scar from when she broke her leg, as if feeling to make sure she still exists underneath her clothes. That scar is her only flaw in a sea of perfection, and somehow it makes her even more beautiful.
The brown of her eyes matches the brown of her hair, features I thought were our mother’s. Lizzie’s frame is thin, but her ability to take up a room is unmatched, her cadmium-yellow aura radiant, even now in my fantasy. The aura is so warm, so like Luca’s, that I wrap myself in it, finding the courage I need in the light.
This is so familiar, and yet it’s as if I’m seeing Lizzie for the first time.
She cradles a cat in her lap.
I’ve been waiting for you, Songbird. Come here. Let me place love in your arms. Lizzie nuzzles the cat and whispers, If we grab on to the pieces, one day we’ll feel whole again. I promise.
Quietly I take a seat next to my sister.
“I’ve missed you,” I say.
I’ve missed you, too. Did you get my postcards?
Nodding, I take in the trees and flowers and butterflies. “I get it now. You didn’t want to ruin the story.”
We can make life anything we want if we pretend hard enough. Lizzie’s eyes dance along with mine, along the world stuck, unmoving on the wall. It’s always summertime here. No one needs to be disappointed when winter comes. It’s better to live here, Songbird.
“Is it?”
But even Lizzie won’t answer that.
“You didn’t like to sleep,” I say.
Lizzie pets the cat in her lap. I’m hyperactive. You know that.
“You hated cars.”
It’s not normal for a human body to travel that fast. We should stick to walking. Why must we be in a hurry?
“Chief always says that cars are weapons. They can kill people. Now I know why.”
Let’s not talk about depressing things. Paint me more flowers instead.
“You let me believe you were just like our mom. Even after you saw the picture of her.”
I’m the wild child, just like her. I can’t help but misbehave. But you, Songbird, you’re such a good daughter. You would never let us down. Do you think my forest needs more insects? Maybe a caterpillar or two?
“I see it now, Lizzie,” I say. “You were playing a part. But you saw things that weren’t there. You worked every day to distract yourself. You told yourself it wasn’t real. You painted a different life for us.”
Sing me that song again, Songbird. How does it go?
“You looked at the world differently because you had to. Because if you didn’t, you’d remember.”
Lizzie sings to the cat lovingly. You are my sunshine . . .
“It won’t work, Lizzie. Not this time.”
Come on, Songbird, if you won’t paint, at least try a handstand. It’ll help. Turn this story upside down. You’ll feel better.
“No. I’m done with handstands, Lizzie.”
She gets up from the hammock, her long brown hair dangling down her back. She spins in circles, one after another after another. Let’s play our game. Where is she today? A lumber worker in Forks, but secretly she’s a vampire killer. Or catching king crab off the coast of Alaska, sleeping on a boat, and popping Dramamine for seasickness. Or a samba dancer in Brazil, and she’s in love with a man named Gabriel, who has a three-legged dog named Victor that likes to wear human clothes.
“Stop it, Lizzie!” I grab her tightly, holding her still. “It won’t work. Nothing will work anymore. It’s over.”
Don’t say that, Songbird.
“It has to be. We can’t go back.”
Her eyes fill with tears. But sadness is just so . . . sad.
“But it’s real, Lizzie. I can’t keep living a lie.”
Lizzie’s cheeks are wet. Tears drip from her chin onto her clothes. It’s just so awful that the older we get, the more our imagination dies. I didn’t want it to end this way. I wanted to save you from the sadness. I wanted us to live here in perpetual summer.
“But you couldn’t save yourself. You couldn’t stop yourself from seeing the truth.”
Lizzie shakes her head.
“So you left,” I say. The cat walks around us, purring, its warm fur on our legs. “You could have collected a million pieces of love, but it still wouldn’t have changed what happened to you. To us. It wouldn’t have changed Mom. Not even love can protect memories.” Then I say what is needed to move on. “I love you, Lizzie, but you don’t have to protect me anymore. I can do this on my own.”
Lizzie shatters in my mind. A breeze moves through the room, taking the tiny slivers of my fantasy away to dance and get lost in the painted trees and butterflies.
A noise down the hall catches my attention. Chief, with wet hair and a tired face, finds me in Lizzie’s room. The fresh scent of a shower follows him in.
Everything is different. Most of all, Chief.
His face hangs heavy with fatigue, the gray circles under his eyes like sandbags, aging a man who should still be young. Who should be strong. Who should be a lot of things.
I see Chief for who he truly is. All those mornings solving puzzles, thinking I was sitting next to a father who wanted to know the answer, who had the answer, who solved crimes, who helped people. He was justice, never the criminal.
I’ve never felt anger like this before. I might combust.
I push past him and head straight for my room.
“Don’t do this, Wren,” he says. “It’s not what you think. You don’t know the whole story.”
I can’t speak. Tears pinch the backs of my eyes. My emotions rebel against me. Pain for the father I thought I had. Hands that I thought were holding me together were instead holding me back.
Chief tries to control himself. “I told you the pieces of the story I thought you could handle. Your mom left. She wasn’t coming back. I didn’t want to give you hope. It was better to give you a different story. I made the best choice I could at the time. That’s what parents do. Right or wrong. It was more important for you to have the idea of a mother. But not her. Not Vivienne. She would have disappointed you. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“You took us away from her,” I say, barely above a whisper. The pain is worse like this—softly spoken words linger.
“If she wanted us, she wouldn’
t have done what she did,” Chief replies steadily, though I see him cracking, breaking, sinking. But he pulls himself together, puts his hands on his hips—his move—like a police officer standing his ground. “Some mistakes have irreversible consequences. I promised myself I’d never put you in harm’s way again.”
But in leaving, he did. Chief ripped the hole. He is the reason for the scars left on my life by leaving. Not her.
From my closet I get the jar of pennies. I thought it was for Lizzie, but as it turns out, it’s for me. Luca, Leia, and Baby Girl should be here soon. I start down the stairs, Chief following closely behind.
“You can’t leave, Wren. You’re only sixteen. You’re a minor. I can have you tracked and back here within hours.”
I stop, so completely resolved to what I need to do that a serene calm descends on me. No more tears. I’ve shed too many already.
“You knew where Lizzie went, and you didn’t stop her. You let me suffer, wondering, and all this time, you knew.”
“I thought she’d come back by now,” he says. “And I didn’t want to lose you, too.”
“But in doing so, you did. Don’t you understand?”
“You’re my daughter,” Chief insists, as if it’s possible for that to change. He cracks, a tiny fissure right down the center of his chest. Sadness seeps out, midnight blue, flooding the room like water. “All I wanted to do was protect you.”
“You know as well as I do, Chief. People in handcuffs always struggle to get free.”
“Please. Please don’t leave.” He’s desperate, but I can’t stay. For once, I do the leaving.
Luca, Baby Girl, and Leia are waiting outside in Leia’s truck. The day is cool. Clouds linger after last night’s rain.
A yellow leaf dances in the street as I get in the truck.
Chief doesn’t watch from the window as we pull away from the house. It seems to sink before my eyes, like a ship, the captain going down with it. Maybe I should have saved Chief, but we all make choices, and his drowned him long ago.
40
PALM TO PALM
The article I read on Luca’s phone was from nearly fourteen years ago. It spoke about the sentencing of a woman charged with second-degree vehicular manslaughter and child abuse after she attempted to drive intoxicated the wrong way onto the highway and hit another car, killing the couple inside. Her two young children, ages four and two, were in the back seat. One suffered injuries—including a severely broken leg—and the other was unharmed.
Postcards for a Songbird Page 19