by Megan Hart
“It’s almost dark out. Shouldn’t it be nesting for the night or something? Roosting?” Marian took a few cautious steps toward the door.
“Maybe he thinks he lives here now,” Tommy said. “You know, like a homing pigeon or something. Awww, Mare, look. He wants to come inside.” Tommy’s tone had gone wheedling. He thought he was being charming.
Marian frowned at him. “Terrific, but no. It’s not happening. Briella, close the door. C’mon, now.”
“Mama says no, Onyx. You have to stay outside. But you can come play with me tomorrow, after school. Okay? I’ll be home in the afternoon. Okay? Did you understand me?”
Marian looked around the girl at the oversize bird. “What’s it got in its beak?”
As if it understood her, the raven tilted its head to look at her with that unblinking eye. It dropped whatever it had been holding in its beak onto the railing with a soft plop.
Before Marian could warn her not to, Briella had grabbed it. “Oh! He brought me a present. How cool!”
“Don’t touch that, it’s poison.” Marian moved fast, snagging the cluster of purple pokeweed berries out of Briella’s fist. “Go wash your hands.”
“Give that back. It’s mine. He brought it for me. Ravens bring little gifts to people who help them—”
Marian tossed the berries out into the yard. “Those are poison berries. Go wash your hands, Briella. Now. They’ll make you sick.”
“Goodbye. Goodbye.” The bird croaked and flew off, becoming one with the darkness so quickly it was almost easy to pretend it hadn’t been there in the first place.
“Goodbye,” Tommy imitated and flinched as though Marian was going to hit him, even though she hadn’t done so much as glance in his direction.
“He brought them for me,” Briella said with a scowl.
“They’ll make you very sick,” Marian snapped. “Do you want to get very sick?”
“No, Mama.”
“Anyway, it’s time for bed. School in the morning.”
“The new school?”
“No,” Marian said after a hesitation.
The packet from the school had included every possible piece of information Marian could have needed. Instead of taking the bus, Briella would be getting a ride in the school van that would come right to the house to pick her up and drop her off. She’d be wearing a uniform. There’d been a voucher for the new clothes in the package of information Mrs. Cuddy had given them, and a list of local stores and online sites that would honor it. There was paperwork to fill out regarding the lunch program, the school-provided health insurance, the lease of a laptop. Briella was going to get a free ride, but before she could, a lot needed to be done.
“Tomorrow you’ll go back to Southside to finish up the rest of the week,” Marian finished.
“I thought I was going to the new school.” Briella crossed her arms, a storm brewing in her pale gray eyes.
Marian knew that look, and she meant to cut off a tantrum before it could start. She kept her voice light, her smile bright. “You will be. Next week. This week, you get to finish up at Southside and say goodbye to all your friends there. Mrs. Cuddy said you could take in cupcakes. Have a little going-away party.”
“I want to go to the new school tomorrow. I don’t want to go back to Southside. I don’t want to bring in cupcakes, I don’t care about any of those kids. None of them are my friends!” Briella’s voice rose, up and up, ending in a teakettle scream that cut off abruptly as she ran out of breath.
Tommy shifted in his seat. He stared very pointedly at the floor, his mouth in a thin, grim line. When Briella stamped her foot, he shot Marian a hard look she ignored.
Marian kept her voice calm. “I’m sorry, but you’re not set up to start there until next week. It takes time to get everything settled.”
“Okay, Mama,” Briella said, her voice brightly brittle, plastic, but expression still stormy. “I’ll just stay home, then. With you.”
For a second, Marian flashed to the conversation she’d had with Amy at the bus stop. She was not that kind of mother, the sort who put everything into her kid, and although a ripple of guilt tickled up and down her spine at the self-confession, she shook her head. “No, you won’t stay home. You’re going to school tomorrow the way you always do. Next week, you’ll go to the new school.”
“Hey,” Tommy broke in, taking Briella’s attention, and for once Marian was grateful he was there to stop the showdown before it started instead of exacerbating it like he’d been known to do in the past. “Tell you what. You don’t give your mom a hard time about this, and I’ll tuck you in so you can tell me all about your bird. Okay?”
Half an hour later – and that seemed early, considering how long Briella could be known to drag out bedtime – Tommy was back in the kitchen, where Marian had settled at the table with a mug of tea and a book of sudoku. She motioned to the empty chair opposite her. Tommy sat, shifting and looking awkward.
Marian enjoyed his discomfort for a nice few minutes before finally saying, “What?”
“So…she doesn’t do the…thing, anymore?”
“She was a toddler, Tommy. She had tantrums. She’s older now. No. She doesn’t do ‘the thing’ anymore.”
“You were right, earlier. About me not knowing her.”
“I know I was,” Marian answered.
Tommy didn’t rise to her snark, and that was a first. “I want to be better about it, Marian.”
She put down her pen and closed the soft, pulpy book with a finger in the pages to mark her spot. “Why now?”
“My mom,” he said after a second. “She’s got breast cancer.”
There was no love lost between Marian and her former mother-in-law, but this was not something Marian could take joy in learning. “I’m so sorry. That’s rough.”
Tommy shrugged. “It made me think about how, you know, we should pay attention to the time we have now. With the people who are important.”
Marian wanted to make a joke about asking him if he was high or drunk, or where the class clown Tommy had gone, but his face was too serious for that. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Try to spend more time with her, I guess. Get to know her better. If it’s okay with you.”
“Of course it is. If you can promise me that you’ll actually follow through with it. You can’t just show up when you want to, Tommy. You’ve done that too often.”
“And not just with the kid, huh?”
She didn’t say anything at first. They’d never had a heart-to-heart, no kind of closure, no apologies. They’d both behaved badly in the past, and maybe she’d been mistaken in thinking she’d put it behind her, because now the idea that Tommy might be trying to say he was sorry closed Marian’s throat up so tight she couldn’t speak.
Another set of raps came at the back door. Tommy looked past her. “I’ll be damned. It’s that bird. Who does he think lives here, Edgar Allan Poe?”
“Don’t open the door,” Marian said at once, although Tommy was already getting to his feet.
Tommy shot her a glance over his shoulder. “I’m just looking.”
He flicked on the back porch light and bent close to the glass, shielding his eyes so he could see out. He jumped back with a startled, embarrassed laugh at another series of taps. Marian got to her feet, not moving toward the door, but straining to see.
“Make it go away. It creeps me out,” she said. “What the hell is it doing here?”
“You fed it. It’s going to keep coming back.” Tommy shrugged. “Like a bad ex-husband.”
She rolled her eyes at that, but couldn’t help laughing. She wouldn’t trust his charms, she’d learned that lesson long ago, but it did feel much nicer not to be irritated with him. “Turn off the light. Maybe it will go away.”
Tommy did, still looking out the door with his hand to his eyes.
“Still there. It’s sitting on the railing.”
“Ugh.” Marian moved next to him and also looked out. The bird was hard to see in the darkness, although she could make out the shape of it.
On impulse, she grabbed a dishtowel from the counter and then yanked the door open as she swung it with a low holler. The bird squawked and took off, the sound of its beating wings getting farther away until she couldn’t see or hear it. She turned to see Tommy shaking his head.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he said.
Another time she might have taken that as an insult, but now Marian only shrugged and tossed the towel back on the counter. “Isn’t it time you went home?”
“Fine, fine,” he said with a conciliatory gesture. His expression turned serious. “I do mean what I said, Mare. About being closer with the kid. I know I let you down in the past. And her. I’m not saying I’m a changed man or anything, but I do want to try. Okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I swear to you, Tommy, if you screw this up and let her down, if you can’t keep your shit together…I will…”
She didn’t know what she’d do, only that she intended it to be bad. Tommy nodded. For a weird, strained moment, Marian thought he was going to hug her, but thank God for both of them, he didn’t. He just nodded again and headed out. In a minute, she heard the front door close.
The sound of tapping on the glass stopped her. Marian turned to the window, but could see only darkness outside. She waited, holding her breath, but the tapping didn’t come again.
Chapter Twelve
Marian had promised Briella she would pick her up from Southside this last day, rather than have her come home on the bus. They would go for ice cream one last time before the local parlor closed for the season. Spend some mother-daughter bonding time. As Marian got out of her car into the late September heat, she lifted her hair off her neck with a sigh. Ice cream was going to be the perfect end to the day, and later they’d have spaghetti for dinner and popcorn for a snack while they stayed up late watching movies. They had an entire weekend before Briella had to go to the new school.
Marian went in through the school’s propped-open front doors. The janitor mopped the tile floor in slow swipes. Straight back from where she stood, Marian could see the back doors leading to the courtyard and playground, and the sun shining in through them was bright enough to cast everything else into a deep gloom. The front office was still lit, but everything else was dim and quiet, almost disturbingly so.
Marian didn’t bother checking in at the office. With school hours over, any kids left waiting to be picked up would be in the gated playground. When she went through the back doors, though, the courtyard looked empty.
Marian shaded her eyes against the late afternoon sun to look around. It wasn’t a huge space, although it had been broken into segments. A large square of asphalt painted with four square lines. A smaller, mulch-filled rectangle toward the back of the courtyard featured the jungle gym equipment.
Slowly, two small figures came into focus in the shadows beneath the bridge part of the jungle gym. Calling Briella’s name, Marian headed for it. When the girl didn’t answer, Marian called again, just as Briella came into full view.
“Hi, Mama,” Briella said brightly.
The girl next to her had a guilty look on her face and chocolate smeared around her mouth. Marian recognized her at once. Pamela Morgan. Briella seemed to have forgotten they had stopped being friends last year, when Pamela decided to take sides with some of the other girls against her. Marian definitely remembered.
“I was just sharing my candy with Pamela,” Briella said. “Is it time to go?”
“Yeah. Hi, Pamela.”
“Hi,” the other girl said. “Did you see my mom waiting for me?”
Before Marian could answer, a woman’s voice called Pamela’s name, and the girl gave Briella a nod and headed toward her mother. Marian slung an arm around Briella’s shoulder. Her daughter linked her arm around Marian’s waist as they walked.
“Are you and Pamela friends again?”
Briella shrugged. “No. But since I’m not going to Southside anymore, I figured it would be nice if we could say goodbye to each other like we used to.”
“That’s very nice of you, honey.” Marian thought she might have held a longer grudge.
By the time they got to the parking lot, Pamela’s mother, hysterical, was kneeling over Pamela, who was convulsing on the pavement. Mrs. Morgan was screaming, clutching at her daughter. Marian muttered an exclamation, but she didn’t have the chance to do more than that before a man got out of another car parked in the lot and knelt next to them. He started shouting out instructions to Mrs. Morgan as he dialed his phone, clearing calling 911.
“Stay back here,” Marian said, holding Briella by the shoulder. “Out of the way.”
“Is Pamela sick?”
“It looks like it,” Marian said. “Let’s just keep out of the way, okay?”
“What happened?” a new voice asked.
Marian turned to see the school secretary, whose name she’d forgotten. “I’m not sure.”
“Are they calling the ambulance?”
“Yes, I think so,” Marian said.
By now, Pamela had stopped convulsing. She lay still and silent on the pavement. The school secretary moved forward, kneeling by her still sobbing mother. Marian could not hear what they said. Moments later, the ambulance arrived, and Marian tugged Briella toward their own car.
“C’mon, Bean. Let’s just get home.”
“Don’t you want to see what happened to her?” Briella asked, straining against Marian’s touch as she tried to keep watching.
Marian’s fingers pinched deep into Briella’s shoulder. “No. The people on the ambulance will take care of her. We’ll just be in the way. And besides, how would you feel if people stood around and watched you being sick?”
Buckled into the backseat, Briella said, “Something bad happened to Pamela’s brain.”
“How do you know that?” Marian glanced into the rearview mirror as she pulled out of the lot, going in the opposite direction of the girl and the crowd gathered around her.
Briella shrugged. “She was having a seizure.”
“How do you know what a seizure is?”
“I know things,” Briella said.
* * *
Briella had showered and allowed Marian to condition and fingercomb out her hair without much fuss. She’d gone to bed all on her own at what anyone would have considered a reasonable time. Dean had gone off to work with a kiss for Marian and a reminder that everything was going to be all right. She’d waited until his car left her sight before she went back inside and climbed the stairs to Briella’s bedroom.
The door was closed again. Marian paused before knocking, thinking of the last time she’d come in without it. She listened for noises inside. Briella might be asleep already.
She took a chance and turned the knob, cracking open the door and sneaking a peek. Briella’s bed was empty, but opening the door a little wider revealed that she was sitting at the window. The attic bedroom had a built-in seat with cushions Dean’s mother had made for him when this sloped-ceilinged room had been his, but Briella had tossed them aside. She toyed with the window’s crank handle.
“Hi, Mama,” she said, although Marian hadn’t said anything or even opened the door the whole way. “I’m not sleeping yet. I was just saying goodnight to Onyx.”
“Is it out there now?” Marian went over to the window, but saw nothing.
Briella uncurled her legs from beneath her and shook her head. “No. He flew away, back to his nest. I wish I could fly, Mama.”
Marian took a seat next to her daughter and pulled her close. “That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d fly away,” Briella said.
Marian hugged her a little ti
ghter. “You would? Where would you go?”
“Just away. Way up into the sky, I guess, as far as I could go.”
“So long as you come back,” Marian said.
Briella looked at her. “I wouldn’t be able to if I flew up to heaven.”
“Why would you say that?” Marian shook her head with a frown, then added, keeping her voice calm, “Are you worried about what happened at school today?”
“No.”
“You know…” Marian struggled to find the words to express what she’d been thinking all day, since first seeing the two girls together. “It’s okay to have mixed feelings about what happened to Pamela.”
“I don’t have mixed feelings about her.”
Marian studied her child. “No?”
“Nope. She’s had seizures before.” Briella said this confidently.
Marian didn’t know much about what could cause seizures. “Does she have epilepsy?”
“Something like that,” Briella agreed. “But lots of things can cause seizures. Sometimes pills and stuff.”
Alarmed, Marian sat on the edge of Briella’s bed. She didn’t ask how her daughter knew this, since she already knew Briella had a wealth of information in her little noggin, more than Marian thought she should but could not prevent her from knowing. Fifth grade seemed too soon for kids to be popping pills, but hell, what did Marian know? Even as their parents shielded them more than Marian’s parents had her, in lots of ways Briella’s generation was exposed to way more than Marian had been at the same age.
Tommy had been a big stoner, and Marian had dabbled a few times. She knew, too, that he’d done harder stuff, though never with her. She wouldn’t have said he had a problem with addiction, but stuff like that could still be hereditary, couldn’t it?
“Was…” Marian coughed lightly into her fist, trying to find the right words. “Was Pamela taking pills she shouldn’t be?”
Briella shrugged.
Marian tried again. “You know we’ve talked about drugs and what kinds of things are bad, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You shouldn’t take medicine that’s meant for someone else, and you shouldn’t take it from anyone else except me or Dean, right?”