by Karen White
“And then to Colette, his daughter.”
As if in mutual agreement, we were silent for the rest of the trip, each of us trying to slide the pieces into a puzzle that had lost all size and shape, the unspoken questions drowned out by the sound of the wind in our ears and the steady beat from the radio.
Maisy and Lyle ran out to greet us as soon as I pulled up into the driveway, Lyle’s arm around her shoulders. For a moment I thought Maisy would hug me, or that I would hug her, and I knew she was thinking the same thing, the way we stood on our toes leaning forward. You called me first, I wanted to say, but didn’t. The circumstances were wrong, and I wanted to think that we were both too old to keep score.
But Lyle hugged me and kissed my cheek before shaking James’s hand. “Any news?” James asked.
Maisy shook her head, and I saw her red and swollen eyes, the hollows under her cheekbones. “No. We’ve set up a command central here, and there are teams working everywhere, but nothing yet. Nobody’s seen a trace of them.” She choked on the last word, unable to say it.
“The coast guard is sending a helicopter to search the bay, just in case they took a boat and ran into trouble and can’t get back,” Lyle said softly.
We moved up onto the shade of the porch. “How is Grandpa taking it?”
Maisy’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know—he won’t say anything. And he won’t leave the apiary.”
I looked at Lyle. “Has he said anything since I left?”
“No. Nothing—although his speech and writing have improved enough that he can communicate if he chooses to.” He glanced up at Maisy. “He’s fighting some battle in his head, but he doesn’t seem to want to ask for help.”
Maisy’s phone rang and she jumped to answer it, hanging up after just a few words. “One of the teachers from Becky’s school, Susan Clementson. She’s organized the teachers so that they’re all driving around and asking people if they’ve seen Becky or Birdie. There’s nothing. We’re thinking they left pretty soon after midnight, and that they had a good head start in the dark so nobody would notice them.” Her voice broke and I felt myself leaning toward her, wanting to hug her. But Lyle put his arm around her shoulders and allowed her to press her face into his chest. I felt more sad than relieved.
We moved inside and the house seemed so empty and soulless, the corners darker. It was almost hard to breathe. “Can we go up to Becky’s room?” I asked, not sure what I might be looking for, but knowing I had to start somewhere or go crazy.
I stood in the middle of Becky’s bedroom, seeing how childish it was, with the small pink table and chairs, the ruffles on the bedspread, the stuffed honeybee mobile that danced in the corner in a draft from the air-conditioning vent. She’d told me she wanted to keep bees, too, that Florence had said she and Grandpa would help get her started as soon as Grandpa was feeling better. I stood under the mobile in the middle of all that pink and knew that I would have kept the room the same, would have wanted to keep Becky a little girl as long as possible. Maisy and I both understood that childhood was just a tiny blip in a person’s lifetime, and that the rest of Becky’s life she’d be forced to spend as an adult.
“Did she say anything to you? Give you any reason to think she would run away?” I asked.
“She did say something, but not for a moment did I think she’d run away,” Maisy answered, looking at Lyle as if she needed corroboration. “Last night when she was packing for camp, she told me she didn’t want to go. That she needed to keep an eye on Birdie. I told her that’s what I was here for, that I would take care of Birdie. And Becky seemed to accept it, and was even excited about camp.” She threw up her hands, as if she’d already gone over and over it all in her head and still couldn’t find a plausible answer. But her eyes looked directly into mine and we were little girls again, and she was looking at me as if I held all the answers.
I turned away, then walked across the hall to Birdie’s room. Her bed was unmade, all the drawers in her chest and dresser neatly closed, her nightgown carefully folded at the bottom of the bed.
“She changed into a dress, which would make her less obvious if she was walking around at night than if she were still wearing her nightgown,” Lyle said.
Like she knew. Like she planned it. I wondered whether anybody else had thought the same thing. I walked to the closet and opened it, moving to the back as if my younger self were pushing me forward. The suitcase was still there, where Maisy said she’d returned it after finding the teapot lid. I pulled it out of the closet, then opened it on top of the bed.
“I looked through all the pockets,” Lyle said. “I only found the lid.”
“I know,” I said. “But I always like to see for myself.”
“You sound like Caroline,” James said, and I had the impression that he’d meant it as a compliment.
Maisy left and came back with the lid. “I hid this in my drawer, just in case Birdie went looking for it again.”
She gave it to me, allowed me to hold it in my palm and feel the heft of it, to see the pattern of the bees. “I’m pretty sure now that the entire set of china was made for the Mouton family—the beekeepers on the Beaulieu estate. It was a thank-you gift for one hundred years of service.”
Maisy’s eyes met mine. “And yet it ended up in James’s grandmother’s home, and two pieces ended up here.”
“Actually, just one and a half,” Lyle corrected. “We found the teapot lid, but not the teapot.”
“Could that have been what she was looking for in the attic?” I asked Maisy. “Because you said she had the lid in her hand when you found her.”
Maisy shrugged, her shoulders shaking, and I could tell she was trying very hard to keep it together. “Who knows what’s in Birdie’s head? Have we ever known?”
“Maybe she’s gone looking for the teapot,” James suggested. “That’s just a guess, but it follows her discovery in the attic with the lid, and the empty cedar chest. Maybe she’s on a quest to find it, and Becky decided to go with her to keep her safe.”
“That makes no sense,” Maisy said. “I can’t believe Becky would just leave without telling me.” Lyle put his arm around her, and Maisy let her head rest against him.
I continued to hold the lid, thinking. Remembering. I looked up at Maisy. “That summer I left—the summer when Birdie stopped talking. Grandpa found her in the attic—remember? She’d collapsed and was lying on the floor. Maybe she found something she didn’t expect and it made her—I don’t know—lose touch with reality.”
Maisy’s gaze met mine. “Or it made her remember something.” She thought for a moment. “I’m wondering. . . . I found something that may or may not have anything to do with this. There’s a possibility that Grandpa was sterile. He had mumps as a child—it’s in his medical records. It could have made him unable to have children—like James’s uncle. What if Birdie isn’t his?”
Our thoughts ran in tandem, a blur of unexpected discoveries over the last few weeks: of the beekeepers on an estate in France, our grandfather’s possible sterility, and of a little girl named Colette Mouton who came to America in 1947 and then disappeared.
I looked away, breaking the connection.
“Your grandpa found Birdie in the attic that first time?” James asked.
Maisy nodded. “Yes. He brought her down the steps and called the doctor.”
“Did anybody else go up into the attic?”
I shook my head. “No. Grandpa said he didn’t want anybody else up there. He said there were a lot of spiders.”
Lyle and James shared a look. “So nobody went up there after Birdie collapsed, so nobody knows if something might have been taken out of the attic and put somewhere else?” Lyle asked.
“No. I left shortly after that and . . .” I stopped, realizing what I was about to say.
“And I was pregnant,” Maisy said. “I didn’t wan
t to risk a fall, so I didn’t go up. I don’t think I’ve been up there since.”
I stood. “None of this is helping. We’ve got to figure something out or I’m going to get in my car and start driving. Are we sure they didn’t take a car or bikes or any form of transportation?”
“We’ve checked all of that—including Becky’s friends. No leads,” Lyle said.
“There may be one thing,” Maisy said, almost apologetically. “I didn’t think this was important. . . .” She stopped, waiting for encouragement.
I wanted to shake her, to tell her it was okay to speak out and be noticed. But I caught James watching me and instead I took a deep breath. “Nothing’s not important when a child is missing. What is it?”
“Birdie may have spoken to Grandpa before they left. This morning, when I went to wake him and tell him about Becky and Birdie, his notepad wasn’t on his nightstand where I’d left it last night. It was on the floor next to the bed, and when I picked it up there was something written on the top page.”
“What was it?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay calm and trying not to imagine what she was feeling right now.
“‘Is it a sin to love too much?’” She gave a little shrug. “That’s why I didn’t think it was important, until I realized I was the last one to speak with Grandpa last night, and this must have been from a conversation he’d had since then. I asked him about it, but he refuses to communicate. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want them to be found.” Her voice hitched on the last word.
I ran my hands through my hair, wishing I could see more clearly, sure there was something obvious we were missing. “I’m assuming you’ve already spoken to Marlene.”
He nodded, his arm holding Maisy tight to his side.
“What about Magnolia Cemetery, where my daddy is buried?”
Maisy’s shoulders slumped. “A patrol car has already been sent to the cemetery and they are checking it routinely. There was no trace of them having been there.”
“Is there another place? What about George’s boat?” James asked.
“It was sold right after he died,” I said. “The new owners took it to Biloxi. Marlene said it got destroyed in Katrina.”
I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to clear my head of extraneous thoughts. I walked over to the dresser and picked up a miniature purple Nessie, a souvenir Marlene sold at her store for people she couldn’t convince to buy the larger one outside. I tossed it in the air a couple of times. I stared at the small sea creature in my hands, as if it were a conduit to obscured memories. I looked up with a start, recalling trips I’d taken with Marlene to my paternal grandmother’s home on Cat Point, where she and my daddy were raised. It was tiny, only three rooms and one bathroom, and smelled of fish and cigarette smoke. The memorable part of it was the almost wistful hugs from my grandmother, and the dock behind their house with an unobstructed view of St. George and a glimpse of Dog Island. I’d been fascinated with the name as a child, thinking the island was filled with all shapes and sizes of canines. My grandmother had died when I was still young, and I hadn’t been back since. But George had grown up there, and Birdie had certainly visited while my father was alive.
“What about my grandparents’ house on Cat Point?” I said. “Has anybody been there?”
“But that’s six miles over a bridge,” Maisy said, her voice rising, and I knew she must be picturing her daughter at night on the dark bridge.
Lyle took her hand. “True, but there are other ways to cross the bridge.”
“Like hitchhiking,” I said, feeling sick. I quickly found Marlene’s stored number on my phone and hit the dial button. She answered after the second ring. “Georgia,” she said, her voice thick with tears.
I didn’t let her say anything else. “I need the address of your mother’s old house. There’s a chance Becky and Birdie may have gone there.”
“The house has been abandoned for years, Georgie. It was on a dirt road right off of the old Pruitt property. But if you pick me up on your way, I can take you right to it.”
“I’ll be there in less than five minutes,” I said, already rushing toward the stairs.
“We’ll take my patrol car,” Lyle said, following behind me. “I’ve got lights and sirens. I can call for backup to bring them home when we find them.”
Feeling comforted by his optimism, I nodded my agreement as we all ran out the door to his car.
I sat up suddenly. “We need to tell Grandpa we’re leaving, so he won’t worry.”
“I think he already knows,” James said, indicating the side window.
It didn’t open from inside the car, and before I could ask Lyle to open it for us so I could call out, he’d pressed on the accelerator and we were speeding out of the driveway. I stole one last look behind me and saw my grandfather watching us leave, his shoulders bent more than usual, his face etched with a kind of grief I’d never seen before and hoped never to see again. Is it a sin to love too much? I could almost hear him saying that into the empty air.
We picked up Marlene, then raced across the bridge over the bay toward Eastpoint. As soon as we got off the bridge, Marlene pointed out turns for Lyle to follow, bile rising in my throat from fear and apprehension as I imagined Birdie and Becky ducking under the bridge and hugging the shoreline in the dark. We hit a dirt road, and listened as the tires churned up sand and shells, billowing a smoke trail behind us.
“Slow down,” Marlene said. “Everything’s so different. I thought I’d recognize it, but it’s been at least thirty years. . . .” She squinted her eyes, peering out her side window and then through the windshield. “Turn around,” she commanded, and Lyle did as she asked.
We drove around what seemed like the same dirt road for nearly half an hour, each minute that ticked by dragging on longer and longer, the tension stealing our optimism.
Lyle began to turn left, but Marlene corrected him, pulling on his arm. “It’s near the water—you have to head toward the water.”
An unfamiliar road appeared on the right, and Lyle took it before coming to an abrupt stop. As if conjured, Becky appeared, running toward us. She wore shorts and a T-shirt and held her bunny with one hand while waving frantically with the other.
Hardly waiting for the car to come to a complete stop, Maisy jumped out and ran to her daughter. I tried to follow, but James held me back. Instead of hugging her mother, Becky grabbed Maisy’s arm and began running toward the car.
“Birdie’s hurt bad,” she said, her voice strong, without a hint of a stutter, her face composed, as if an emergency had brought out her true mettle. “I’ll show you where she is.”
Becky sat on Maisy’s lap. “That way,” she said, pointing to a road we must have passed a dozen times already, the path mostly grass and weeds.
We traveled only a few hundred feet before Marlene sat up. “There—on the right,” she said, indicating what could only be described as a shack on the side of the road, the glimmer of water behind it doing nothing to mask the desolation or sense of abandonment.
Lyle pulled up in front and parked the car, turning off his sirens and lights, the sound as intrusive as birdsong at a funeral. Cicadas whirred in the tall pines and cedars that surrounded the house on two sides, the sound almost obscuring that of a boat motor plying the waters behind them.
I recognized the remains of the bright green paint that had once covered the shutters and front door. I thought of the kinds of predators that could be lurking there, the snakes, and cougars, and other things I didn’t want to think about.
“Is she inside?” Lyle asked.
Becky nodded as she scrambled off of Maisy’s lap and led us to the front door. I could tell Lyle was trying to get there before her, to protect her from any danger, but Becky charged forward and opened the door, then ran into the dark interior.
“Birdie! I’m back. Mama and Daddy are here.”
We followed her through a room that reeked of mildew and animal droppings, its sole piece of furniture an ancient sofa with most of its stuffing protruding from the remaining cushions that an unseen creature had made into a nest.
The room at the back of the house was what was left of a linoleum-floored kitchen, the cabinets and appliances long since taken, the flooring worn away in so many spots the floor looked more like the scales of a giant fish. We stopped on the threshold, looking for Birdie, then watched as Becky ran to a doorless pantry and knelt at an opening in the floor.
“Birdie? Are you still there?”
“Dear God,” Marlene said. “It’s where my daddy used to keep his moonshine. And where my mama let your grandpa store his honey a few times after a really good harvest.” She put a restraining hand on Lyle. “Careful—it looks like the floorboards around the opening have rotted.”
He asked Becky to stand back, then gingerly inched his way forward until he got to the opening. He took a flashlight from his belt and shined it inside. “Birdie? It’s me, Lyle. Can you hear me?”
We heard a moan, and Maisy and I both stepped forward with tentative footing, peering into the darkness. Birdie lay on her side, on a brick floor that was covered in green slime. Her eyes were open, her chest rising and falling. Her right leg, the leg that lay under her, was bent at a wrong angle.
“You came,” she said with surprise in her voice, as if she’d not expected us to. Our relief at finding both of them made it almost irrelevant that she’d just spoken to us for the first time in too many years.
“Careful,” Lyle cautioned as he slowly lowered himself through the opening. “It’s only a four-foot drop. I think she has a broken leg.”
“You gave us a scare, Birdie,” he said as he took her pulse, then carefully examined her leg. He placed a gentle hand on her arm before standing. “Maisy, I need you to step back into the kitchen and stay with Becky. I’m going to call for help and I don’t want to move her until it arrives.” He looked at me. “Can you come down here and wait with her?”