The Darling Songbirds

by Rachael Herron

  ‘Yeah. I called one of you – I can’t remember which one. To ask. I just got a voicemail.’

  Funny, people had always gotten the three sisters mixed up, even though Adele didn’t think they looked that much alike. ‘It was me.’

  Nate squinted sideways at her and kept walking. ‘Why didn’t you call me back?’

  ‘I wasn’t home.’

  ‘For weeks?’

  ‘Believe it or not, yeah.’ When she’d arrived home to discover the message, she’d called Molly and told her. Molly had become hysterical and had hung up, and Adele had spent the night wondering if she was okay. It turned out Molly had met up with the ship’s purser-in-training and they’d gotten so drunk they’d reenacted the Titanic scene on the prow of the ship. Not only was it lucky they hadn’t lost their jobs, it was pretty fortunate Adele hadn’t lost two members of her family that week.

  Lana had never even had the courtesy to call Adele back. It was possible, Adele knew, that she’d changed her number, that she’d never received the message. Adele had sent her an email but it had bounced back, the address no longer good. She knew Molly would have told her, anyway.

  So no, she hadn’t bothered to call the stranger back who left a message asking about her uncle’s wishes. It had been too late.

  But she should have. She knew that. ‘Can I apologise to you now – and leave it at that?’ Adele didn’t expect it to work.

  He was silent.

  ‘Okay, then. I was off-grid, camping. When I came home, I found your message and an eviction notice. I packed up my entire life and came here as fast as I could, and it still took eight days to do it. I am sorry I didn’t call you back. I should have.’

  He stayed quiet, but his pace slowed. Adele’s heart dropped.

  But then he said, ‘Accepted. If you threw in a thank you for handling all of it, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She stopped, and he did, too. He shaded his eyes to look at her. ‘Really, Nate. Thank you.’

  ‘Yeah, well. I did the best I could.’ Something shimmered in the air between them. Adele felt her throat tighten.

  ‘All right, then.’ Nate moved again, leaving the path and going up a low green rise.

  Adele followed, careful not to step directly onto what looked like graves. ‘I’m pretty sure you did a better job than we would have. What did you end up doing?’

  ‘We had a party.’

  ‘Perfect.’ A crow that was almost as big as a buzzard winged over her head. She felt the rush of air off its wing, and she flapped her arm at it. ‘What kind of party?’

  ‘A big one.’

  ‘In the saloon?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘Open bar?’

  Nate nodded and paused again, stopping under an oak tree. He looked at the crow that had perched on a huge limb above them. It cawed at them as if it were listing its complaints, one by one. ‘So open it hurt. A last hurrah worthy of the man. Liquor flowed like the Radiant River. Beer poured like the tide on a full moon.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a poet.’ The surprise of it pleased her, warm as the sunlight on her arms.

  He moved his jaw as if trying to loosen it. ‘Just a bartender. Pastor Jacobs did write a poem, though, and it was good. You should get a copy from him. The motorcycle gang from Radiant Valley roared by, in missing-man formation.’

  ‘I didn’t know motorcycle gangs did that.’

  ‘Well, this gang is made up of eight sheep ranchers who decided to buy Harleys and ride on Sunday afternoons. They’re called the Mutton Choppers, so it’s not like they’re very Sons of Anarchy or anything.’

  Adele smiled. ‘What else?’

  Nate swung his arms and, in a surprise move, leaped for a narrow branch a good three feet over his head. He grabbed and swayed for a moment. Adele tried not to stare at the narrow band of skin that showed above where his jeans hung around his hips. She tried not to notice the muscles that cut into his lower abdomen, or the trail of darkness that led downward. And she really tried not to think about the liquid heat that rose inside her at the sight.

  Ridiculous.

  He dropped back to the dirt, slapping his hands against each other. He gestured farther up the small hill. ‘Almost there.’

  Adele cleared her throat. ‘Was there food?’

  ‘Was there? Hell, yes. I hired Jones to bring the barbecue trailer out.’

  ‘Barbecue baby back ribs.’ Uncle Hugh’s favourite food in the whole world.

  ‘All you could eat. With potato salad and cilantro coleslaw and about a million cupcakes for dessert.’

  ‘That’s a party, all right. People must have loved it.’

  ‘They loved him. I bet he’d given something to everyone in town by the time he died, whether it was a good listening ear, or a hug, or a drink on the house. Sometimes –’ Nate broke off. ‘Did you know his last bartender? Donna?’

  ‘Yeah. The one with the flaming red hair and the fake teeth. The drunk.’

  Nate winced. ‘Hugh kept her alive.’

  ‘I always wondered why he hired an alcoholic. Doesn’t seem like it would be good for business, you know?’

  ‘Business was second to him, I think. Taking care of people was first.’

  Uncle Hugh had always been kind to her and her sisters, filling their arms as they left with presents he’d been collecting for them during their stay – seashells and pieces of carved driftwood and Ziploc bags full of Jolly Ranchers and M&Ms. He’d hugged and kissed them, bragging about them in their hearing, making them feel special. Adele had never spent much time thinking about how he treated others. She should have, though. She added it to a laundry list of regrets that just seemed to be getting longer. ‘I took him for granted.’

  The look Nate gave her – of surprise and, perhaps, chagrin – shamed her. ‘Yeah,’ he said simply. ‘We all did. Okay, just up here.’

  ‘Was there music?’

  ‘There was.’ His voice was hoarse.

  ‘What music?’ She shouldn’t have asked. The answer might – no, it would – break her heart. But she had to know.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nate didn’t know whether to be angry with her or feel sorry for her. She obviously knew the answer to her question, or she wouldn’t be pressing. Briefly, he considered lying. We just had a big jam, an all-nighter, fifty people with guitars and fiddles, playing until the sun came up.

  But that wasn’t the truth.

  ‘The Darling Songbirds. All five albums.’

  She made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I borrowed the PA system from the community centre.’ He kept walking, keeping Adele just out of his line of sight, a foot or two behind him. He didn’t want to know if she was crying, and he sure as hell didn’t want to know if she wasn’t. He raised his voice so she could hear him. ‘Crawled up on the roof and installed the speakers up there. So not only were y’all singing inside the saloon all afternoon, but everyone could hear you for blocks around.’ It had been lovely and had made his heart ache, being able to hear Hugh’s favourite girls singing about love and loss even while he was grabbing six extra cases of napkins down the street at the Cash’n’Carry.

  ‘We didn’t sing, though.’ Her voice was small. ‘In person.’

  ‘No.’ What were the two of them doing here? Why had he offered to bring her? It was hard enough to grieve the man’s passing in private, the pain still so raw it hurt like a grease burn, but to be at his grave with Adele – that just might be too much. His boots slowed.

  Adele hurried then, and passed him. ‘Are we almost there?’ Some women Nate had known held guitar cases like they were too heavy to carry far. Adele held hers like a musician, like the black soft case was just an extension of her body. It didn’t slow her down.

  ‘Yeah. That one.’

  But she’d already paused. He knew she saw the right one. The Darling Bay graveyard didn’t receive that many new residents a year, especially now that so many people wer
e choosing to be cremated. Nate didn’t understand it himself. Why choose to burn your body and have to deal with the ashes (store them? toss them into the wind?) when you could just plant yourself in the dirt? Your whole body making the earth better, your molecules changing, spreading out, becoming the tree above, reaching for the light. He and Hugh had spent long hours talking about that. Nate had had no problem making that choice, at least, hearing Hugh’s voice in his head. Stick me in the ground. Don’t worry about coming to visit, neither. I’ll be busy, having a good old new time.

  The dirt of the grave was still dark and uneven. This wasn’t one of those city graveyards where they covered a person with sod as soon as the widow turned her back – here, the caretakers (Willie and Wagoner Rayburn, who’d taken it over from their dad twenty years before) just let the grass cover over the graves in their own time. Sometimes weeds grew. A lot of the graves still had tenders, people who had loved the ones who were buried there. They came and pulled the weeds, and the nice thing was that they minded the other graves, too. It might take a while, but if Wagoner and Willie got a little slack (or spent too much time in the saloon with Norma and Parrot Freddy, which had always been a Rayburn trait), someone else in town would come back and pull out the mustard weed, planting pansies and marigolds.

  ‘Oh. Look at it.’

  It would have been obvious to a stranger from out of town that the man buried here was beloved. The head of the grave was covered in bouquets of flowers. Some were dying – Nate would take those with them when they left – but some were still fresh. Mrs Chumley, who grew the prettiest (and most award-winning, she never let you forget) dahlias in town had been here. Only true pillars of the community got one of her Crichton Honey dahlias planted upon death, only mayors and pastors and fire chiefs. Hugh’s peach-coloured prize-winner was already in the ground and well watered.

  Adele dropped to her knees next to the flowers, her hand over her mouth. The guitar case fell, unnoticed, to the ground next to her. ‘Uncle Hugh.’ Her other hand reached to touch the stone.

  Nate had gone traditional when he’d picked it out. No flashy marble, no syrupy saying. The stone was granite, deeply carved. It would stand against the weather, against the oceanic winter storms. It would be legible for hundreds of years. Nate liked that. He needed that.

  Hugh Darling. He is remembered.

  Adele looked up at him, her eyes suddenly blue-green instead of just sky blue. The change was as startling as the tears in those eyes. Somehow Nate hadn’t imagined her crying, apparently because he was some kind of idiot. Of course she would cry.

  His heart twisted in the middle of his chest like an old gnarled manzanita bush and his limbs froze into place as if the wood ran through his veins.

  ‘This is so nice,’ she finally said, her eyes ocean-bright. ‘This is just perfect, Nate. Thank you.’

  Nate folded himself so that he kneeled next to her. He still couldn’t speak.

  The breeze, which had dropped as they’d walked up the hill, started again, and Nate could hear the ocean’s low roar even here, at least a mile away from the waves. Adele shifted into a cross-legged position and folded her hands in her lap as if she were praying, but her eyes were open, fixed on the headstone. Her gaze was far away, and even though one tear traced its slow way down the side of the cheek closest to him, she had a small smile on her face, as if the memory was a sweet, cherished one.

  After a few minutes, Nate wondered if he should leave her alone with her thoughts. He moved slightly, and in doing so, broke her reverie. Her eyes were clear blue again.

  ‘I can –’

  ‘No, stay.’ She touched his forearm lightly, and Nate caught his breath. He wanted to take her hand, to – to do something he wouldn’t let himself do.

  He just said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘Do you … I don’t know if I should ask this.’

  ‘You can ask me anything.’ He ignored the part of his brain that pointed out they were words he normally didn’t say to women.

  ‘Do you know “Remember Me”?’

  Of course he did. She’d be surprised, maybe, to know how very well he knew the Darling Songbirds’ repertoire. Especially that one. Hugh’s favourite. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can you play it for me?’ She reached forward and pulled her guitar case along the grass towards her. ‘It’s a good guitar. Maybe a little small for you. But I don’t think –’ Her voice broke and she covered her mouth with her hand again.

  He waited.

  ‘I don’t think I can sing and play it alone. I’ve never sung it alone before.’

  ‘Of course.’ There was no other answer.

  She was right, the guitar was small in his hands, but as he ran through the strings to check its tuning, its tone was as sweet as the Songbirds’ voices themselves.

  He strummed the simple chords, just G, C and D, and Adele sang next to him. The birds overhead quieted as if to listen. The wind dropped again, its soughing falling away.

  Adele sang, and each word rang out simply and clearly, each word a bell, each one sung for Hugh. Those last two verses, they’d always gotten to Nate, and he felt a tug at the back of his throat as she sang them.

  When the day is closing down,

  When it’s too dark to see,

  When you think I’m not listening,

  Just remember me.

  When you doubt that I was here,

  When you think you’ve lost the key,

  Raise your glass again,

  And just remember me.

  As Adele’s last word rolled down the hill towards the bay, Nate played the final chord as softly as he could.

  Then she turned. She smiled at him. Right at him. Her gaze was sweeter than the song had been, and in that moment, Nate was struck by something terrible. This woman – the one who currently held one-third interest in the property he wanted to buy – was going to be nothing but trouble.

  Honeyed, gloriously tuneful trouble – the very worst kind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As they walked back towards his truck through the graveyard, Adele swallowed her embarrassment at making Nate play with her. He hadn’t seemed to mind, after all. And he’d been good at it, too. Sure, it was a three-chord song (as so many of the good ones were), but he’d put the soft flourishes in the right places, letting the last chord fade out softly, like Adele herself did when she played it.

  She could have played. She could have sung. But she knew trying to do both at the same time, and then singing alone, would have tossed her right into the middle of an ocean of grief. She didn’t feel that buoyant lately.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ said Nate. ‘I’ll meet you at the truck.’

  Adele glanced back at him, but he was already striding westward away from her. His scowl had returned, and she wondered if that’s what his face defaulted to when he wasn’t trying to make it do something else.

  At the pick-up, she popped the tailgate. From here, she could just see the southern tip of Darling Bay. The roof of the police station gleamed red, and through the sunlight, sparkling silver on the water, she could make out the newer pier. A sliver of the bay shined up at her. It winked, as if it knew a secret.

  Nate had been so kind to her.

  And, obviously, now he was visiting someone else in the graveyard. She wouldn’t ask who it was, though she wanted to know. He’d let her have her grief, without prying. He’d done the one thing she’d asked him to, playing along on her guitar.

  She watched a curl of smoke rise from the valley, where the grass on the hills was autumn-brown.

  Home, sang her heart.

  When Nate got back to the truck, his face was still stiff.

  He started the engine with a roar. ‘Have you eaten?’ He didn’t look at her.

  ‘I’m fine.’ As if to make a liar of her, Adele’s stomach grumbled, so loud it was audible over the motor.

  ‘Yeah. I can hear that.’ A few minutes later, he took the turn onto Lincoln smoothly, then onto First. He pulled in to
the parking lot of Darling Dogs.

  For a moment, Adele considered continuing to insist that she didn’t need to eat, but damn, a hot dog from the best place in town sounded just about right. ‘Great. I’ll buy.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘In payment for the service.’ The last word came out too heavily, as if she was talking about the funeral. ‘Your guitar services, I mean.’ She shoved the sigh back into her chest and jumped out of the truck.

  Chilli-cheese dogs and Cokes in hand, they walked over to one of the small white plastic tables that edged the lot. They sat next to each other, facing the water. Adele was glad she could keep her gaze in front, on her food, on the boats, glad she didn’t have to work on not looking at him, into those dark-denim eyes.

  They were only half a block from the water. Two fishing boats chugged into port, moving slowly and heavily, as if their haul was good.

  ‘I’ve been gone so long I don’t even know what’s in season.’

  ‘Sablefish and salmon. Probably. That’s Dirk Whitey’s boat.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I know everyone at the marina.’

  ‘Right, you have a boat.’ He’d said he was sleeping on board so she could sleep in his bed. ‘Which one is yours?’

  He squinted. ‘Can’t see it from here. Just a little fishing boat.’

  ‘You fish?’

  It was as if she could almost see the tension leave his shoulders. His face relaxed. ‘Every chance I get.’

  Adele took a huge bite and closed her eyes to better enjoy it. Exactly the right bean-to-meat ratio.

  Nate did the same.

  After the red boat had docked and two men had jumped onto the pier, Adele’s mouth was empty enough to speak. ‘My dad used to take us fishing when we were here. Never on a boat, though. He wasn’t a fan, always got seasick. We would stand on the pier and nine times out of ten what I would pull up would be something like a string of seaweed or plastic bags. I was pretty good at getting my line caught on someone else’s, too. The serious fishermen out there didn’t like that much at all. But we had fun.’