He shines his flashlight around, scattering the darkness that has fallen around us. Then back to me. He moves in close, puts his hand on my arm.
“Are you okay?” he asks. His eyes search my face, as he puts his thumb to my eyes, wipes away tears. Something about his heat, his strength. When he pulls me in, I let him. I sink into him, let him wrap me up in strong arms. Finally, embarrassed, I pull away, stare down at the ground.
“Wren, what are you thinking? Coming out here alone?”
Just like a man, right? Imagining that he knows best what should and shouldn’t be done. About to deliver some lecture.
“I could ask you the same,” I say.
I can’t read his expression. He looks past me into the darkness, and I turn to look, as well. Still nothing but winter trees, the ground starting to glow with the rising moon.
Into the silence between us, I admit, “I saw someone. Maybe. I thought—”
I’m going to stop talking because it sounds too much like what I told him the other day. I saw a man in the building across the street and I gave chase, and then he was gone. No one else had seen him—not Bailey Kirk, not the many office workers at their desks. Just me.
In fact, no one has ever seen you, have they, Adam? Not even Jax. I wasn’t ready to introduce you to my friends, my life. I didn’t want to tell you about Dear Birdie. But I didn’t want to lie about it either. And now you’re gone from my life, and no one else has ever laid eyes on you.
“Yeah,” he says in answer to my first question, I guess. “I’m following you. I followed you here.”
“Why?”
Stupid question, right? He thinks I’m looking for you, or that you’re going to come back for me with some nefarious intent. He’s right about me. Maybe he’s right about you. Either way, and I don’t plan to admit this, I’m glad to see Bailey Kirk. I don’t want to be alone in this dark place anymore, chasing shadows into nothing, feeling my way out.
“Because that’s what detectives do,” he says, holding out his arm. “We follow. It’s usually pretty dull. A lot of times, we just sit and wait, and nothing ever happens. So far that’s not the case with you. You’re keeping me busy.”
In spite of myself, I take the help he’s offered, grab on to him. We start moving back in the direction of my car. I’m limping a little, my knee aching from the fall.
“But you’re not getting any closer to Mia.”
He offers a thoughtful dip of his head. “We’ll see. The night is young.”
We exit the forest and step out into the clearing, the moon on the rise. It’s fat and white, looking down impassively.
“Who were you visiting?” he asks.
There’s no easy lie, nothing quick to say to deflect the question. So, I opt for silence. But we have to walk past the graves to get to our cars, his parked behind me, lights burning, engine running.
“What do you know about me, Detective?” I ask, stopping at Robin’s grave.
She loved the cemetery, which is essentially a wildlife sanctuary. Centuries, in some cases, of mainly undisturbed trees. A place of quietude and peace, birds find safety among the dead—warblers, thrushes, and, of course, robins.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He rubs at the crown of his head.
I take this as an admission that he knows everything I have tried to hide. I hate him for it a little. And yet, there’s also a wash of relief, a tension that dissolves from my shoulders and my neck. It takes so much energy to lie, to hide, to be someone else all the time. The weight of it never occurred to me, how it would grow and become heavier over the years, a great hump on my back, bending me down low.
“Want to get out of here?” he says.
He looks uncomfortable, keeps glancing back at the trees. City boy. Like so many of us, he’s forgotten that we are one with nature, with death. That one day we’ll be trees and grass, wildflowers, lichen on headstones, stars in the sky.
“I know a place,” I say.
“I’ll follow you.”
“Yeah,” I answer. “I’m getting that.”
In the dark of my car, I start the engine. Just as I’m about to pull away, my phone pings.
A text from an unknown number.
Welcome home, little bird.
Little bird. The only person on earth who ever called me that was my father. But the text must be from you, Adam. Did I tell you that he used to call me that? How do you know I’m back here? Was it you in the woods watching?
I feel like the world is spinning, past blurring into present, a great spinning wheel. You. This place. The girl I was. The woman I’ve become. And my father.