The Darling Songbirds

by Rachael Herron

  Adele buttoned up her jeans.

  She smoothed her hair.

  She rubbed her eyes.

  The whole time, even while he was snapping his belt buckle back into place with a clank, Nate was looking at her with a heat she couldn’t quite name.

  Adele just knew one thing for sure. She was in trouble. Big trouble.

  ‘So. That was …’ How was she supposed to finish that sentence? There wasn’t really an adjective that was appropriate. Fucking amazing would have worked, but she seemed to have lost the ability to swear again.

  ‘Adele –’ Nate started.

  ‘I have to get back out there.’ She pulled on her shirt, which had somehow landed on the concrete floor and bore the distinct impression of Nate’s boot print. ‘Um. In case. I mean, you’re not at work today. It’s all me …’

  ‘It’s all you,’ he said, but his words made them sound very, very different.

  She poked her head out into the main room. Still no one. Thank God. Norma hadn’t let herself back in with the key, no one had broken in. She opened the door and the room stood empty, the ocean-scented wind the only thing occupying the bar stools. ‘We got away with it,’ she said, the laugh creeping back into her voice. She couldn’t quite push down the hiccuping giggles, and she wanted nothing as much as to lock up the saloon for the rest of the night and take Nate back to her room and start everything all over again. And again. And again.

  There were still things to talk about, though. Things to talk through. So she walked to the front and flipped the sign back to Open.

  Then she set herself on a bar stool on the customer side, fitting her hands between her knees. ‘So.’ She knew the shape and weight of him. She knew how the underside of his tongue tasted. More than that, she knew how he rested against her, his cheek next to hers, his breath in her ear. How was she supposed to just talk with him?

  He sat next to her, his boot heel propped on the lower rung of her stool. ‘Yep.’

  ‘I wonder if that’s ever been done back there before,’ she said before she thought it through. If Nate had done that in the same spot, she honestly didn’t want to know. ‘Don’t answer,’ she said at the same time as he said, ‘Not by me.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Did my uncle …? No, please don’t answer that.’

  ‘I won’t.’ His grin was as wide as the Pacific.

  ‘Oh, God. That means he did.’

  ‘My lips are sealed.’

  Adele gave a sharp laugh. ‘Oh, my God. What if it was that bartender of his? Old what’s-her-name. Can you imagine?’

  Nate’s eyes narrowed.

  Ignoring the voice that told her not to keep speaking, Adele said, ‘But he wouldn’t, would he? Not someone like her.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, come on. I think my uncle would have had better taste than that. She was nice and all, with that big belly laugh she had. But she probably slept with anyone who would buy her a drink.’ There had been a sometime-employee at a friend’s bar in Nashville – Allison – who’d brought in her boyfriends proudly when she had them. But when Allison was single, she shimmied her crotch against any man that would put up with it, in the hopes of getting a gin and tonic for free. ‘Uncle Hugh liked to save people, but I don’t think even he would stoop to messing around with a boozer like her.’

  Nate’s face twisted as if she’d just insulted a member of his family.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really know her. I guess you did.’

  ‘Whatever.’ He dropped his hand flat against the top of the bar. A dull thunk. ‘My beer’s warm now. Can you get me another?’

  The words felt like a slap, and Adele slipped off the stool. She needed her feet below her, strong on the wooden boards her great-grandfather had put in by hand. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thanks.’ His chin jutted forward, and his eyes were clear lakes of frigid anger.

  ‘Are you mad at me now?’ What had she missed?

  ‘Nah. Just thirsty.’

  Adele pulled another pseudo-black and tan and set it carefully on the bar in front of him. He kept his eyes on the old wood, his brows drawn together, his expression stormy.

  ‘I’m sorry. What did I do?’

  He snorted.

  ‘Are you punishing me for having sex with you? Because screw you if that’s it.’ The words hurt.

  ‘Already did that, now I want the chaser.’ He took a loud sip. ‘Yeah, that hits the spot.’

  Adele’s heart quailed. She could have sworn he had just felt – that they’d just had a connection. A real one. ‘Is this about us selling to you?’

  ‘Well,’ he drawled insolently, ‘I knew it would cost me more than a lay. I’m prepared to write the cheque, too.’

  ‘Nate.’

  ‘Or will I have to fuck your sisters, too? Is that part of the deal?’

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Her sisters. Her sisters who were farther away from her than ever.

  ‘You didn’t think there was anything wrong with me a few minutes ago, when I was so far inside you that –’

  ‘You’re fired.’ The words were instant, and irrevocable.

  He stood then, drawing himself up to his full height.

  Adele’s heart quickened, and her hands curled into fists.

  ‘You want to run that past me one more time?’ His voice was so quiet she almost couldn’t hear it under the low whirr of the fan blade overhead.

  ‘You’re –’ Her voice broke, and she started again. ‘You’re fired.’ Could a heart break, just like that? A huge part of her – the majority of her body and mind – wanted to apologise, wanted to take it back.

  But he apparently thought she owed him something. Was that what this was about? Even worse, maybe he’d thought he had to fuck her to make the purchase go through.

  She was – what did they call it? – a contingency. Maybe she was a nice one. He certainly hadn’t had much problem doing it – the heat was real, she knew that much.

  But the motivation, the deeper, scarier, lovely longing she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes, tasted on his breath, felt in his touch, wasn’t real. It wasn’t even close to real.

  ‘Leave your keys on the counter.’ She turned her back on him and opened the till, even though she had no reason to do so. She pulled out the ones and started counting them. She lost track completely after seven so she just straightened them, unfolding creased corners and facing them all the same direction. From behind her, she heard keys slam onto the bar top. Then his footstep, heavy, thumping through the bar. The swinging door creaked furiously, and the iron security door banged shut with a thunderclap.

  Adele had thought she was just falling – she had thought there was time to arrest her descent. But it seemed like maybe she was too late.

  And it turned out there was a place even lower than the bottom.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The rest of the night was horrible.

  No, that wasn’t it. A horrible night in a bar – Adele knew from past experience – was one in which you had to sing in front of people eating dollar hot dogs, too drunk to care about the act on the stage besides yelling lewd and usually-physically-impossible suggestions every once in a while.

  Tonight wasn’t like that.

  She was stone-cold sober, for one thing. She’d seen drunk bartenders before (the old red-haired one jumped to mind) but Adele knew that if she were even a little bit tipsy, she wouldn’t be able to do a single thing right, and as it was, she was getting enough wrong already. She’d slung a cherry into a gin martini and an olive into a Tom Collins, one of the beer taps was clogged, and the sink appeared to be backing up.

  And if one more person asked her where Nate was, she might throw something. There were plenty of good things to choose from. Small shot glasses would hit the floor like a tiny detonation. Bigger rocks glasses would quiet the whole, packed bar.

  The packed bar.
Where had all these people come from?

  Adele wasn’t naive. This was her town, after all. She knew that a Monday night in September should have been one of the slowest nights in the bar’s history. She’d been counting on it. A drinker or two, sure. She’d planned on being professional and then running to the back room to cry before the next one came in.

  But the place was freaking packed with bodies.

  And she wasn’t imagining it – people were staring at her. She knew the weight of that gaze, and she was wilting under it. She’d caught two ranchers openly whispering about whether she was staying in town or out in the new hotel up the highway. She didn’t react, topping off their water glasses with what she hoped was a chipper smile.

  It felt more chipped than chipper, though.

  It wasn’t even like she could go hide in the storeroom. She’d be lucky if she was ever able to make herself go into that room again. The space in there was too full to fit her into it – full of the image of him over her, the way his eyes had burned into her own, the way he’d felt inside her. The words she’d thought he’d said with his eyes. She thought they’d been talking about love.

  Stupid, stupid Adele.

  Donna. That had been the old bartender’s name, she finally remembered.

  At midnight, the jukebox, which she’d very carefully queued up to play the good stuff – Hank and Dolly and Johnny – suddenly lurched into a Songbird tune.

  Wait till your father gets home, just a little longer now.

  It was the song that had played earlier, a song that would always break her heart into a million pieces. Earlier, while working with the jukebox’s programming, she’d tried to delete the song entirely, but she hadn’t been able to figure it out. Why, in a town like Darling Bay, did they have a damn new-fangled digital jukebox? It wasn’t right.

  I swear to the moon above, he’ll be home soon, my love.

  The shot of brandy she’d been pouring into Pastor Jacob’s glass landed on the top of the bar instead.

  ‘You all right?’

  Adele didn’t care. ‘Who put this on?’

  No one answered her.

  So she raised her voice. ‘I’m serious. Who put this album on?’

  ‘Shuffle, maybe?’ The rancher who answered rubbed a finger alongside his nose.

  ‘No. Someone put this song on on purpose.’ She said it as if it were against the law.

  No one, except the startled pastor in front of her, seemed to take her sudden release of emotion seriously. Instead – goddammit – most of them seemed to be singing along. Heads nodded, and a low murmur rose at the chorus. Good God in heaven. They really were singing.

  Wait till your father gets home, wait a little longer …

  For one moment, Adele’s heart felt as if it had become a red paper one, carefully cut out for a Valentine’s Day gift for someone who wouldn’t care, who would take pleasure in ripping it up. The pieces fluttered to the floor, leaving nothing but an empty space in her chest.

  That emptiness made it a whole hell of a lot easier to reach behind the jukebox and yank out the cord.

  Voices continued for a moment, as if it were an acapella part of the song. But they stopped, one by one, when they caught sight of Adele’s face.

  She climbed up to kneel on the bar stool that leaned drunkenly against the jukebox. ‘Closing time! Sorry, y’all!’

  A man who’d been drinking doubles all night slurred, ‘Last callsh what you mean, honey. You don’t just getta close.’

  Adele stared at him. Then she channelled Hugh on a grumpy night, and jumped down from the stool. She stalked to the man who stank of bourbon and nicotine from the cigarettes he’d been smoking on the front porch between drinks. She picked up his glass, still half full.

  ‘Hey, I paid for that, honey.’ He pawed comically in the air, nowhere near the glass.

  ‘Yeah. You did.’ Adele pushed open the half-door motioning him outside. ‘Why don’t you have another smoke?’

  ‘Well!’ The man wobbled, then patted his shirt pocket, digging out his cigarettes with a hooked finger. ‘Good idear.’

  Adele tossed the liquid out so far that it half-landed on the edge of the porch and the rest wetted the parking spot in front. ‘There’s your drink. Enjoy.’

  ‘You little – why, I oughta –’ The man bobbed a bit, his knees doing a slow but repetitive buckle.

  Adele turned to face him. The guy had been a jerk all night, hadn’t left even a single dollar for a tip. She’d relish the chance to call the cops on him for drunk and disorderly. Carefully placing her hands on her hips, she faced him. ‘You ought to what?’

  ‘I … I …’

  ‘Get the hell out of my bar.’ It felt good. It felt right. And Lord, she missed Uncle Hugh.

  The man lurched sideways, aiming his footsteps off the porch and right into the traffic lanes. Luckily it was Monday night at midnight in Darling Bay, and the street was empty.

  ‘Not very hospitchable.’ Adele could almost see him coming up with his next thrown barb. ‘I’m gonna – I’m gonna tell Nate on you when he’s back! He’ll show you what’s what, all right!’ Finally back on the sidewalk, the drunk tilted southward, stumbling as he went.

  Nate.

  Nate wouldn’t be back.

  A spike of something horrible and cold shot up her spine. She could feel the other customers clustered at the window and the door, and sure enough, she had to push her way through to get back inside. ‘Show’s over,’ she said. ‘Everyone out.’

  This time no one argued with her.

  And no one met her eye as they shuffled out the front door.

  That was the worst part of all. Most of the people leaving weren’t impaired. They weren’t over the limit. They’d just been hanging out with friends, spending time in the bar because this was Darling Bay and a new bartender firing the old one was – literally – the most interesting thing to happen since the library had got a new card catalogue system.

  As the half-door swung closed behind the last, silent person, Adele pulled the iron door shut. The click was unsatisfying and she shot the deadbolt home, trying hard not to remember when Nate had bolted it earlier in the day, just for those few stolen minutes.

  She went into the middle of the wooden dance floor. She sat, cross-legged. Then she flopped backward and looked up into the rafters. Even more cobwebs up there. With her luck, they were strung by brown recluses and black widows.

  And even though she’d unplugged the jukebox, the song kept playing in her head, as clearly as if she were in the recording booth. As her sisters’ remembered voices filled her ears, she cried the way she’d wanted to since Nate had left.

  I swear to the moon above, he’ll be home soon, my love.

  When Adele was young, she and her sisters had ridden bikes all over Darling Bay, up the hills and into Radiant Valley on the other side. The best ride had been straight up Devil’s Mound. (It felt like a mountain to them – now Adele realised it was barely a hill.) The path had been rocky, strewn with blackberry that threatened to choke closed the narrower parts of the path. Every single time, one or more of the girls got a flat tyre. Adele loved it when they did. Such an easy fix, so simple and satisfying. While whichever sister it was sat on the side of the dirt path, making a necklace out of pine needles or daisy stems, complaining because of the heat or the wind or the fog, Adele got to work with her patch kit. She’d gotten so good she could patch a tyre and reinflate it in under three minutes. It had been like a game.

  Now, sitting on the dance floor under the cobwebs, tears leaked from her eyes like the patch she’d applied hadn’t held. There was no glue strong enough to stick her back together. Things that were simple when they were children weren’t simple anymore. Okay, that wasn’t totally true, she thought on a hiccup. She bet she could still patch a tyre if not in three minutes, then pretty dang quickly.

  But the rest of it.

  No sisters.

  No Nate.

  Nothing but this falling-dow
n shell of a building. The hotel and café that needed to be gutted.

  Which was exactly the way she felt.

  Adele gave one last hollow sob as the song ended in her mind. Then she stood, slowly. She did the closing things that made sense to her to do. She washed everything. She mopped. She counted the money, all six hundred dollars of it. Whatever she’d forgotten, she could do in the morning. For now, she’d satisfy herself by turning out the lights and locking the door behind her.

  She turned off the white lights in the courtyard, and without the way they lit the fog, the back porch just looked sad. Lonely.

  Then, without asking herself why she did it, she peeked into each room. Rooms three, four and five all smelled like they should be opened up and aired out. For weeks. Maybe years. Rooms six, seven, and eight were so damp that she knew they’d need to tear open the walls. Rooms nine, ten and eleven were as open as they could be to the elements, covered only by the flapping blue tarps overhead.

  It was overwhelming. Completely and utterly. And what was she looking for, anyway? Ghosts? Vagrants? Old western haunts, having one last romp at the old hotel?

  No.

  Nate.

  She was looking for him. And damn it, the realisation pissed her off.

  But Adele wouldn’t cry. That time of the night was over and she was firmly committed now to being strong.

  Totally strong. She could do this. She had this.

  It lasted until she opened the door of room twelve.

  Inside, the ceiling still stood open to the stars, waiting on a new roof. But there was something new: a sleeping bag carefully laid out on a mat. One pillow.

  And Nate’s guitar, the one he’d played onstage eleven days before.

  Nothing else.

  ‘Nate?’ Her heart in her throat, she flipped the light switch and was surprised – ridiculously so – when nothing happened. ‘Are you in here?’

  Of course he wasn’t.

  But he had been. He’d been sleeping here.

  It didn’t make sense. Adele’s brain felt like she’d been on board a boat all day – wobbly and confused to be standing on land. Her legs shook. But he was the one who was supposed to be on a boat. Right? Living on board? That’s what he’d told her when he’d given her his room.