The Days When Birds Come Back

by Deborah Reed

  This wasn’t like him. He didn’t think this way. He’d never been involved in anything that could have been interpreted the wrong way.

  But there were points to be made about the house. Practical details about ceilings and floors, and whether to replace the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom, or not.

  I bought some sandwiches and berries.

  It didn’t sound right, even in his own mind.

  Would you care to have lunch with me?

  No, that was all wrong.

  I picked up enough for the both of us.

  Just, no.

  People have to eat.

  Maybe this was all just the heat going to his head. Maybe the salty sea air and all that lavender poking purple through the weeds and that swirl of bees had gone to his head. Maybe her accent muddled his clarity of mind. Maybe the coyotes yipping in the night weren’t helping matters. He’d listened in complete darkness to their sounds of yearning, and he knew without knowing that she was listening, too.

  But now here it was, a week since he’d seen her, and in two days Sarah Anne and Ernest would be here, and the roofers would take over the place. Jameson thought about all of that at once while washing his hands at the sink.

  Then June appeared.

  She rapped a knuckle on the open dining room door.

  He startled so badly he cursed.

  And then he laughed at the sight of her holding up a brown paper bag he recognized from the bakery. Beneath her other arm was the rolled-up blanket, and in that hand, dangling at her side, was a white pail.

  “I haven’t heard you stop to eat yet today. I thought you might appreciate a sandwich.”

  “Come on in.” He dried his hands on a paper towel.

  So she was listening for the way he did things over here, was watchful of his habits throughout the day. This house held the strange and prescient. She was here, and she was holding the very things that had been in his mind, and he wondered what else. “Well,” he said. “All right. Thank you.”

  June set the pail down on the porch, stepped inside, and glanced around. Her eyes grew larger. “It’s beautiful. You’ve already replaced the trim . . . and the batten walls, the floor . . . Everything looks the way it’s supposed to.” Her arms fell to her sides and her mouth hung slightly open. “Aw, Jameson.”

  He looked away at the sound of his name.

  She took a step back and seemed to shake off whatever thoughts she was having. “Right, then. How about we sit on the front porch?”

  And just like that, the blanket was rolled out and the food was uncovered. They talked about the corner column he had replaced, and how the slope of the porch was plumb for the roofers, and she was saying how she’d been busy writing, and how it pleased her that there had been a bit of a draft. She apologized for not returning before today, explaining that sometimes, if she was lucky, the work swept in and took over, and when that happened, she had to run with it or lose it, and there’d be no guarantee of its return, and no real idea what she may have lost to begin with—those hours were particular to that moment in time and could never come for her again in the same way.

  Jameson had to stop himself from staring at her mouth. He didn’t know how to add to what she was saying, but it didn’t seem to matter. He sat with the wonder of it, and as far as he could tell she didn’t mind him listening to her that way.

  Then the sandwiches were gone, and they were having what was left of the berries, and Jameson was poking his plastic fork into a blueberry just as June asked what the weirdest part about his work was.

  “ Weirdest?”

  June shrugged. “Unexpected, I guess. The kind of thing people don’t realize or guess about.”

  Jameson had never been asked that question, but he already knew the answer. “The stuff I find hidden in the walls.”

  June leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “Oh my.”

  “It’s more common than you think. Things show up beneath floorboards and the corners of attics. Wallpaper and crown molding are perfect for slipping letters and documents behind, the kind written on that old thin paper.”

  June faced him crossed-legged. “And what’s one of the more interesting things you’ve found?”

  Jameson didn’t have to think about that, either. “A keepsake tin full of photographs of women in varying stages of undress.”

  He could hardly believe he’d said it.

  June’s eyebrows shot up, but she was laughing, and now he was laughing too.

  He didn’t tell her how the women’s legs were open and their knees raised, and he didn’t mention the crude drawings of male and female genitalia that accompanied them, but he was seeing it all behind his eyes, and could feel the heat in his face.

  “What about love letters?” June asked, and his heart kicked an extra beat.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve found a few.”

  “Oh?”

  He looked down at the berries, stuffed a few in his mouth, and felt certain he was veering into territory in which he ought not go.

  “Can you tell me about them?”

  “Well.” He swallowed his last bite. “They mostly end up in shoe boxes in attics, a lot of them written on tiny folded stationery that’s hard to decipher.”

  “And others?” June smiled boldly, and God help him, he nearly reached out and touched her beautiful face.

  He curled his hands and closed his fists on his knees and told her that most had to do with lust, though it seemed that people chickened out before mailing off that kind of stuff. “Most weren’t postmarked, but maybe they were handed over in person.”

  June leaned away and placed her hands on the porch, behind her hips. “Lust,” she repeated.

  He didn’t want her to see him blush. He ought to change the subject, but something had gotten hold of him and he kept on. “And other things, of a different deal.” He’d said too much. She was going to ask what he meant, and he was going to tell her.

  “Such as?”

  “Cravings,” he said, speaking to her as if he had a right to speak that way, free and familiar. “Strange kinds of desires.”

  June’s mouth opened slightly. She leaned toward him and looked directly into his eyes.

  “I mean, I’ve read all kinds. Where one person wants to hurt another for pleasure. Or a woman longing for another woman. A man crying his heart out for another man while having to make love to his wife.”

  June lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows, and she did not take her eyes from his. Her hands were clasped in her lap.

  Jameson was first to look away.

  “There’s more,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “No, it’s just that those letters were as desperate as anything I’ve ever come across. Hard to shake all that misery and longing. And I feel pretty awful about it. None of it was meant for me to see.”

  June’s breath had quickened. She was looking at the ocean, and he was looking at the way her chest and shoulders lifted and fell when she breathed.

  “But not every hidden thing was so dark, right?” she finally asked.

  “No. That’s true. People leave behind whimsical, peculiar things. Everyday objects made mysterious by the act of hiding them. Like a red plate or a canning jar full of green cat’s-eye marbles.” The word “marbles” shifted the conversation, ushered in a reprieve, and June leaned away again. “One time I found a slide rule twisted with twine onto a compass. No idea what that was ever meant to be or why someone needed to stow it. I found an awful painting of a mermaid. I imagined a child had done it after reading Hans Christian Andersen, but why hide it?”

  “What do you do with all that stuff?”

  “I give it to the owners.”

  “Of course.”

  “Some places leave behind a whole mess of things. Others not a trace.” He guessed she wanted to know, too, if he had found something in her grandmother’s house, something that rightfully belonged to her.

  “One time I found a gold bracelet tucked inside a po
tato sack behind a wall, and next to that a newspaper article on a railroad that was never built. The article was wrapped inside a handkerchief monogramed HG. No one knew who that could be. Not the owners who had searched the archives of the local papers, not the elderly neighbors. Not everything makes sense. In fact, most of it doesn’t seem to.”

  His voice had taken on an excitement, an energy not so different from Sarah Anne’s on the phone. But whatever he was saying did not appear to be taken in the way he had meant it. June’s face had a look of concern, and then a small judgment, it seemed, as if she were hearing something beyond the words he was saying.

  “You ever get a little lost in their lives?” she asked.

  Jameson cocked his head. “I guess I do. Kind of a perk, I suppose.”

  “I do, too. Get lost in the lives of others.”

  They turned toward the ocean. In the quiet Jameson felt the temperature slowly begin to cool.

  “So that’s it, then,” June said. “All the weird stuff you’ve found?”

  “Well. No. Let’s see.”

  He watched as she drank from a bottle of water, her head tilted, exposing her throat.

  “I’ve come across a couple of suicide notes,” he said.

  June set the bottle down, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and leveled her eyes at him.

  “One inside a wallpaper seam where no one would ever read it. A draft, I guess. Practice on a work in progress.”

  June stared, eyes stark and piercing, the corner of her bottom lip suddenly held between her teeth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to sound so crude.”

  June shook her head. “Of course not.”

  Jameson offered an apologetic smile.

  “What did the note say?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know. Like you’d imagine: Please forgive me for what I’m about to do . . .”

  June nodded once.

  “I’m sorry. This doesn’t seem like the best topic.”

  “Have you found anything like that here?”

  “What, like a suicide note?”

  June nodded.

  Jameson felt like an idiot. He drew a deep breath. The sorrow in this place. The source of grief. Whoever it was and whatever the circumstances, it was being resurrected inside of June, forming across her face this very moment. “No. But I’m not done here. Who knows? There’s still plenty to deal with.” That could not have been close to the right thing to say, yet June seemed pleased.

  She smirked, looking at the porch.

  “Is there something I should be on the lookout for?” he asked.

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you think the person who hid that note behind the wallpaper took his or her own life in the end?”

  Jameson hesitated. “There’s no way to know . . .”

  “I mean,” she said, “if the note was hard to find, it doesn’t make sense. Don’t you think if this person had done it, the note wouldn’t have been hidden away?”

  “Logic would have it, but logic doesn’t always enter into the equation.”

  “True.”

  “The other one I found was tacked to a stud in the attic where a person would have needed to go looking to find it, and in that same house in another room I came across bits of frayed rope on the top edge of an exposed ceiling beam. There was a groove worn in the wood. A man would have had to hang a long while to make a groove like that, so yes, at least that man seemed to have done it in the end, I suppose.”

  June appeared shocked for the first time.

  “Oh God. I’m sorry. That was crass. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this stuff.” He started to get up, but June stopped him.

  “Because I asked you to,” she said.

  “Yes, but. I’m getting a little liberal in the tongue.”

  “I appreciate your honesty.”

  “All right. Well. I think it was . . .”

  “Maybe he was just heavy,” she said. “The man.”

  Their laughter was stifled at first, and then nearly wicked the way they let loose.

  25

  June’s phone buzzed on the desk. It was Jameson. She looked at the manuscript, the phone, the manuscript, and then she picked up the phone.

  “Sorry for the intrusion,” he said. “I forgot to ask . . . I wanted to double-check one last time about the roofers. It’s on my calendar for tomorrow. And I’ll be taking the next few days off. I mean, I’ve made a plan to do that, so . . .”

  “Oh shit,” June said. “Yes. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “All right. Sorry to disturb you.”

  June let out an audible sigh. “Not a problem.” She was suddenly irritated by the whole thing. Not his phone call, but the fact that he’d be leaving and replaced by roofers, who’d make an awful racket. So many of them, tromping across the yard and over the roof, their nail guns and hammers banging away for days.

  “I just needed to know. Like I said, I made plans.”

  “No, listen, I meant to call and come by. I’m swamped over here. Haven’t even touched those parcels yet. Are you headed somewhere on the coast? Sticking around? Going home?”

  “A little south of here for a few days. A cabin on the river.”

  Though June had lived abroad and traveled widely, the idea of getting away had not occurred to her in some time. She’d not left the property since she arrived from Ireland. Two months, and she’d hardly gone to the beach. She stood and looked outside. The day had gotten away from her. It was later than she realized, nearly dusk.

  “I think I’m finished here for the day,” Jameson said. “There’s no sense in me starting the next thing until I get back.”

  “Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked.

  “A walk?”

  “Yes. I haven’t been down to the shore in ages. I could do for a break myself.”

  “Yes,” he said. “All right.”

  June waited for him in the Adirondack chair, watching the bright blue dragonflies float around the yard like props on strings. And then, as if on cue, a doe and her fawn peered from behind the spruce at the edge of the yard, flicking their tails, their eyes wide and watchful. Sometimes it felt as if this small holding on the hill had been written into existence, as if it were not of the real world at all but a conjuring of the imagination.

  June squeezed her knees, turned toward the bungalow.

  Now this man, coming across the lawn toward her, seemed conjured, too. He wore a sage-colored T-shirt and dark jeans with the hems rolled, and carried a long-sleeved flannel shirt in his hand. He appeared scrubbed clean, changed in a way she couldn’t quite place. He wore flip-flops, as did June.

  “You couldn’t have chosen a better night,” he said, and June stood and faced west, toward the water, the direction of endings.

  She led the way down the long footpath to the beach. Campfires already lit the shore, and groups of shadowy figures moved in the distance. The wind lifted voices toward them—ungoverned teenagers, children singing with their parents, couples laughing, an entire world clamoring with life, and June didn’t know if what she was feeling was envy, because she didn’t know if, in truth, she wanted a family the way other people seemed to want one.

  She and Jameson walked along the tide line barefoot, carrying their flip-flops. The sun had dipped below the horizon. Venus glowed brighter than the sliver being offered by the moon and clusters of stars.

  Jameson said, “I used to come down here with my children.”

  June stopped.

  He looked toward the water when he spoke. “They loved being barefoot in the sand.”

  The way he spoke the words, his throat constricted, conveyed something dire. June felt confused. “You’re talking about them as if—”

  “They were shot to death when they were seven years old.”

  She clutched his arm, paralyzed by shock. She searched his face for an answer, for a clue to what she should say or do next
. Then slowly it dawned on her. Everything began to unfold at once. Who he was. What had happened to his children. Another wave of shock hit her and she stepped back to keep from stumbling.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “I think we need to sit. Do you mind? Oh God.” June turned for the dunes. She lowered herself in the sand. Jameson sat beside her.

  “I know who you are,” she said.

  “I figured—”

  “No. I mean, I just now realized who you are, and I’m so sorry for what happened. I know . . . what happened.”

  “I suspected you knew all along.”

  June stared as if seeing him for the first time. “I can’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “You rode a motorcycle.”

  “I did.”

  “And that’s what happened to your leg.”

  “You can tell?”

  “A bit of a limp.” June’s eyes began to fill. “My grandfather was the man who hit you.”

  Jameson jerked his head up.

  “Did you not know?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “No?”

  “I didn’t have a clue.”

  June shook her head at the ocean. “Is this a coincidence?”

  Jameson’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s rather astounding, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jameson shrugged slightly and narrowed his eyes. He didn’t appear as dumbstruck as she.

  “My grandmother kept calling me in Ireland, leaving all these messages,” she said. “She kept saying something about children. Children that weren’t in the accident but who died that day. Of course I heard the whole story later. And even now, the town still talks about it . . .”