The Feathered Bone

by Julie Cantrell

  As I begin to read, all I can see is the twelve-year-old, ponytailed girl I chaperoned all those years ago. I imagine her sitting in that filthy shed, writing letters to a sparrow, hoping day after day that we’d find our way there to rescue her.

  The earliest entries reflect her innocence, with little hearts forming the dots of each letter i across the page. It’s painful to see.

  I read about the men coming to “visit” on their way home from work, dropping in before driving home to their families. It’s been more than three years since I learned the truth about Carl, his double life, and I still have trouble trusting people. I can’t imagine how Sarah will ever believe in anything again.

  I sit for hours, reading every word of Sarah’s journals, filling in the gaps of her last four years. In bigger cities I probably wouldn’t be allowed to help with this investigation due to my personal ties to Sarah. But here, resources are limited. We have learned, in efforts like these when we know the family, to separate ourselves from our emotions, to get the job done in a professional and confidential manner. But this is Sarah. So I cry my way through every page.

  I flag some sections for Jay along the way, words or phrases he’ll be able to use to build a case against the abductors. Some entries stand out more than others.

  Hello Sparrow,

  I’m so glad you’re here. Some days I start to think God has forgotten all about me. But then he sends me a message. Some kind of sign, like you, Sparrow, to remind me that he really is with me.

  I thought miracles were big things, like turning water into wine or making a blind man see. But now I know miracles happen every day.

  You are here with me. That’s a miracle.

  The Man only took me and not Ellie. That’s a miracle.

  I wasn’t locked in the shed when the flood came. Another miracle.

  I survived being kept in a box. And chained. And all the other things. Miracle!

  Bridgette brings me books and pens and stuff. That’s a miracle.

  So maybe a miracle is anything that gets us through another day when life gets too hard.

  Remember that fortune-teller who gave me this feather and told me I could fly? I think I finally understand. We all have a feathered bone. It’s called hope. If we hang on to hope, if we don’t let anybody break us or make us forget who we are, then we will always be free.

  Hello Sparrow,

  Today I asked Bridgette if she loves The Man. And she said, “Ain’t no such thing as love.” I told her I believe in love, and she said, “Don’t be stupid.”

  I told her it’s because Mom and Pop love me. My friends love me. God loves me. And no matter how many bad things happen to me, I’ll always have that love inside of me.

  She got real quiet, and then she asked me how I know they love me.

  I told her they would never do anything to hurt me. Not on purpose.

  She said, “But God’s hurting you right now, keeping you here in this place.”

  “God’s not doing this,” I said. “You are.”

  She got mad and said she wasn’t doing it either. That LeMoyne was doing it. Just like he had done to her. And then she told me a really sad story:

  When I was little, my mama was always pimpin’ herself out for a fix. I don’t remember how old I was the first time she let ’em have me. We were in The Boss’s stable, but what I bet you couldn’t guess is that LeMoyne used to be in The Boss’s stable too. Just like me.

  Boss used to beat him so hard he’d stop breathin’. Hold him under water ’til his face turned blue. Mama said LeMoyne got it the worst ’cause he was always fightin’ back.

  One day LeMoyne tried to get away. Boss caught him. Poured a whole pot of fish fry right on top of LeMoyne. You seen his back, right?

  But you gotta understand somethin’. Back then, Boss was still workin’ under the big man, Sax. So Sax comes in, finds LeMoyne there–his favorite boy–all melted like a popsicle.

  And he figures Boss needs a lesson too. He slams a big ol’ pipe against Boss’s back. Snapped his spine, so his legs don’t work no more. That’s why Boss is in that wheelchair. You see?

  That was the last time he forgot who was in charge.

  Couple years later, Sax died. Boss took over and started making everybody call him Boss. And now LeMoyne works for him. Well, he did until we got this big house. Now I guess LeMoyne’s runnin’ his own show, and Boss ain’t so big no more.

  Jay finds me in his office. “We’re bringing in the suspects now. Oliver LeMoyne and Bridgette Gallatino. Find anything yet?”

  “She’s mentioning someone they call Boss,” I say. “He might be paraplegic.”

  “Yeah, we’re following that lead right now. Think we’ve traced it back to a man in Algiers.”

  Chills run through me. “Jay, I saw him. The day of the field trip. He was on the ferry with us. Then I saw him again by the café. He was near a young woman. I thought she might have been a prostitute. There was a younger girl with him on the ferry, but she wasn’t with him later. That had to be him.”

  “Would you know him if you saw him?” He scrolls through his computer screen, pulling up profiles.

  “That’s him.” My stomach sinks as I point to the man’s weathered and familiar face. The same cold stare that set my nerves on end that day in New Orleans.

  “You sure?”

  I nod. “He’s in two of the photos I have from the field trip.” Sweat coats my palms. “He’s been right here all this time.”

  “We got him now,” Jay says, lifting his phone to call the NOPD.

  While Jay handles the search for the man known as Boss, I continue reading Sarah’s journals.

  Hello Sparrow,

  I told Bridgette how God gave Adam and Eve everything they needed—plenty of food, good weather, a pretty place to live. But Adam and Eve ate the fruit that wasn’t theirs.

  They knew it was wrong. And they did it anyway.

  They didn’t even say they were sorry. Instead, Adam blamed Eve. And Eve blamed the serpent. They both got mad at God.

  Bridgette said, “I bet God taught them a lesson.”

  I said yes, but not the kind of lesson she’s learned from Sax and Boss and LeMoyne. God just wanted them to know that choices matter.

  “That’s the point of the story,” I said. “Even when we make really bad mistakes, we still have the choice to do better. It’s never too late.”

  Then I bent down close to her and hugged her, and I whispered to her. I said, “Bridgette, it may take me a long, long, long, very long time, but you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to forgive you. And I’m going to forgive LeMoyne. And I’m even going to forgive Boss. And all the men who visit. Forgive all of you.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because,” I told her, “if I let go of all that hate, it’ll leave more room for love.”

  Monday, November 10, 2008

  Maybe five foot five at most, Oliver LeMoyne is a short, pasty, red-haired man with a freckled face and a potbelly. A battered set of crooked teeth jut out beneath a wiry mustache, and his receding hairline stretches long behind a sickening set of weak brown eyes. Bridgette isn’t much shorter but even in her midtwenties is heavier than LeMoyne, with bleached tips on the dead ends of her frizzy hair. Neither says a word. They both seem to understand they are no longer in control.

  “But she was trafficked too,” Sarah says, defending Bridgette.

  “Don’t worry,” Jay reassures her. “We realize that and we’ll be fair. Now, tell me one more time, Sarah. Is this the man who hurt you?” Jay speaks with a voice as clear and steady as any I’ve ever heard, as if the entire four-year walk through hell has led us all to this exact moment. A dance with the devil himself.

  “Yes,” Sarah says, pointing toward the one-way glass that protects her from the three abductors. “That’s him.”

  “And this guy? Is he the man you know as Boss?” Jay points to a frail, handicapped man in a wheelchair, the same haggard passenger who bo
arded the ferry with us from Algiers all those years ago. How could we have known that the girl we assumed to be his granddaughter had been trafficked for years? That her face had been printed on the side of a milk carton, listed as a missing child. That slaves were, in fact, still being sold across that river.

  I point to Boss’s wheelchair and say, “Who would have imagined? A man like that running one of the largest prostitution rings in the state?”

  “Chains of the heart,” Sarah says. Then to Jay, “Yes, sir. That’s him.”

  Chapter 30

  Saturday, February 14, 2009

  Valentine’s Day

  JAY PULLS AN EMPTY BOX TOWARD HIS CHEST, HELPING ME PACK my belongings. “I think it’ll do you good to move out, Gloopy. Get a fresh start. Someplace new.”

  “Yeah, I’m surprised both houses sold so quickly. I figured Mom’s would sit on the market for a long time. Especially with all those newer homes that have been built around it since Katrina.” I gather newspapers from the recycle bin and wrap a framed photo.

  Jay fills his box with Ellie’s old yearbooks. “I’m just glad to see you moving forward. I was beginning to wonder if Carl might break you for good.”

  I shudder, remembering the moment Raelynn saved me from taking my own life. “He almost did.”

  Jay stops working and looks my way. “You know he’s not worth it, don’t you?”

  I don’t answer. I just move closer to Jay, sit on the floor, and begin to pass family photos to him. One shows Carl, Ellie, and me at Disney World. Ellie wears pink polka-dotted Minnie Mouse ears and stares up at Cinderella with the kind of grin that only exists for those who still believe in magic. I’m kneeling next to Ellie, smiling nearly as big. Behind us, Carl is tall in the background, looking disconnected. The same way The Boss stared from his wheelchair in New Orleans that day. The words Vivienne told me back on the trace rise again—“That’s not love.”

  “I still can’t believe he moved out without talking to you about it first. Same thing with the divorce.”

  I nod. “I never saw it coming, Jay.”

  “I remember.” His tone reveals his deep compassion, as if he’d fix it all for me if he could. “I was with you and Raelynn at the gym.”

  I struggle to remember who was around me when it happened. It’s all a blur now. “Yep. Right there, in front of the whole town. It’s been a slow bleed.”

  Jay listens as he pulls another box for the frames. Somehow he has a way of making me feel heard. As if my feelings actually matter. As if I matter.

  “But worse things happen, right?” I don’t bring up his fiancée’s death, but the look he gives me makes it clear. He knows, as I do, what real loss feels like.

  I straighten another family photo in a cracked frame. This one shows a happy threesome. Carl, Ellie, and me on the beach, sitting close to one another. It was a photo I kept on my desk. A client once saw it and said, “Y’all look like a cozy family.” I smiled and said, “We are.” I always believed we’d hold tight to one another through life’s storms. Never had a doubt.

  “But look,” I say, showing it to Jay. “There were plenty of happy times too. I’m telling you, if someone had told me about Carl’s affair, I wouldn’t have believed it. I trusted him completely.”

  Jay raises his eyebrows.

  “It’s true, Jay. I believed with everything in me that Carl was faithful, honest. It was the reason I married him. Trust. That’s what I believed he offered me. It wasn’t always easy with Carl, but I was grateful. I was happy.”

  We both look at my wedding photo, the one that shows me smiling in my long white dress and matching veil. I was so young, standing there full of girlish hope, building my life on the dream of forever. If only I had understood what Viv has taught me—we marry to heal our childhood wounds.

  I hand off the last of the photos and let Jay help me back to my feet. He pulls me up, then nearer. I am caught off guard, but I don’t move away. Instead, I allow him to hold me here, against his sturdy chest.

  “Amanda.” This is all he says. My name. And yet this one word is packed with meaning. And hope. When Carl said my name, it was in an accusatory tone, or yelled across the house because he needed something. And Jay has always called me Gloopy. But now he’s said Amanda, and I have never heard anyone say my name with such tenderness. Not like this.

  I lift my eyes to his, blue and clear and steady. I don’t offer any spoken reply. Leaving my body pressed against his is enough. We stand together, our hearts beating double-paced, as if the whole world has left us here, together.

  Jay bends, and I hold for a kiss. Not just any kiss, but Jay’s kiss, the kiss I have skirted since we sat knee to knee on our kindergarten carpet squares. But just as he leans in, his cell phone rings. The unexpected buzzing brings an embarrassed smile across Jay’s chiseled features. I am filled with desire, like none I have ever known. His phone rings again, and we both move away from the almost-kiss.

  He answers the call, and I go back to packing, holding myself together despite the flurry of chemicals igniting within me. Maybe it’s the natural howling of hormones, but all it took was one brief touch and this man set me afire.

  To give Jay more privacy, I move to the back of the house and begin to sort items from my bedroom. I am gathering rarely used clothes for the charity box when Jay joins me, near the bed. “Everything okay?”

  “No big deal. Jenny again. Called from her mom’s so I didn’t recognize the number.” He shrugs as if the women chasing him are nothing worth worrying about. Tina, the West Coast Barbie, was one thing, but Jenny is another. Not only does Jenny live right down the road with no risk of ever leaving LP, but she’s able to turn the head of any man in town with one quick flick of her wrist. Add her high-pitched giggle or her talents in the kitchen, not to mention her ability to never know the answers to the simplest of questions. She’s a man’s dream, the mind of an eight-year-old and the body of a teen, the culinary skills of Martha Stewart and the sex appeal of Marilyn Monroe. With Jenny after Jay, I don’t stand a chance. He’s not Carl, Amanda. That’s not the kind of woman he wants.

  I pull a sweater from my closet as Jay looks out my bedroom window, watching my neighbor’s teenage son drag a crew of cousins around the yard. They are piled into a plastic kid-sized swimming pool, tied to the back of a four-wheeler. He’s racing circles around the lot, trying to get them to fall out of the pool. One girl takes a tumble, twisting and turning across the rutted grass. The others look back as she drops, laughing and holding on for dear life.

  Another crew is jumping as high as they can on the aging trampoline. With no safety screen, they try to steer clear of the springing metal coils. In the center a young girl curls into a tight ball, trying not to let the big bounces separate the hold she’s got on her own bent legs. It’s an old game called crack-the-egg, a backyard favorite Ellie, Sarah, and Nate used to play.

  “How many kids do they have now?” Jay asks, unable to keep track of my neighbor’s growing family.

  “Only three,” I admit, “but it’s kind of like Raelynn’s house. Constant commotion.”

  I move to get a better look, standing close to Jay. Even without touch, the warmth of his body meets mine. When he shifts his weight, our arms brush together. I don’t pull away. Neither does he. Instead, he turns his body closer and places his hand on my waist.

  “So tell me about Dex’s promotion.” I try to keep us in neutral, but Jay isn’t having it. He pushes my hair back from my face with slow hands, and I am no longer a worn-down carton of grief. It’s been too long since a man held me. With Jay’s touch I become a spiral of stars, swirling through the atmosphere. I can no longer tell north from south, up from down. My skin begins to swim around my bones. It’s as if Jay is a magnet, and each particle that builds me is racing wildly toward him.

  “Amanda, what are we doing?” Jay no longer speaks sheriff. “You know how I feel about you, don’t you?” He rolls his hand from my waist across my lower back. His finger slip
s beneath the hem of my shirt, skimming my bare skin. My spine shoots sparks. They explode within me. Around us. Between.

  “Honestly, Jay. I wish I did know. How you feel.” I speak softly, a nervous kick to my voice. I’m not even sure I remember how to kiss a man. It’s been more than three years.

  “How can you not know?” Jay laughs gently.

  “How could I?” I counter. “For all I know, I’m just another Jenny.”

  Now Jay pulls his head back to look intensely into my eyes. “Amanda,” he says. “You’re not just another anybody.”

  These words erase the dull gray layers that have long settled within me. In this very instant, I am nudged from despair. He has extended the rope, and sound by sound, he pulls me from the mud flats of grief, the swamplands of sorrow. “You’re not just another anybody.”

  His message echoes through me and I am free. Free.

  I unroll a stretch of bubble wrap across the counter and begin to pack the final stash of kitchenware, one piece at a time. Raelynn reaches into the back of the cabinet and hands each glass to me, pretending again and again to drop a dish.

  Beth and Sarah are in the bedroom, stuffing the last remaining items into boxes that Preacher and Jay will load into their pickups and haul to my new condo.

  “Gettin’ cold feet?” Raelynn empties the shelf and closes the cabinet, stepping over to help me with the final few wraps.

  I shrug. “It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by it all.”

  “You can do this, Amanda. Viv’s place will be perfect for you. At least until you decide what you want to buy.”

  “I’m just happy to have somebody pay the note,” Viv adds, walking in with more newspaper. “Since the wedding it’s been sitting on the market and hasn’t had a single bite.”