But they kept happening, and Margaret, on the road, watched. She noticed that people complained about marches blocking traffic, about the futility and inconvenience, but something about these strange happenings caught their attention and held it. She spotted passersby pausing on the sidewalk to zoom in on the photos on their phones or linger over articles about them before tossing their papers into the trash. She overheard people talking about these happenings on street corners, on subway platforms, over coffee on café patios. Not irritated or dismissive, but filled with curiosity and sometimes even delight at the unexpected weirdness of them. Did you see? Did you hear about? Isn’t it crazy? What do you think—？
By the time Bird was eleven, these happenings were nearly monthly. Each time she saw her words in one, she felt a peculiar and not unwelcome glow—even as she knew that with every mention of missing hearts, another line appeared in her file. One more thing she would be held responsible for, though she knew no more about them than anyone else. It was as if those words were their own independent creatures, off leading their own life—which, in truth, they were. What did you call it—surely not pride, because you could take no credit for these accomplishments, you could only marvel like a stranger at the things this being had gone on to do without you. It kept her moving, the thought that others out there were thinking about the children who had been taken, too. Each happening she heard about jump-started her again when the journey and the weight of the stories had nearly drained her dry. We haven’t forgotten, they seemed to say, have you?
Who’s doing it? she asked one of the librarians. Who’s behind them all?
Those art pranks? the librarian sniffed. Margaret had noticed this, a certain disdain for the protests from the librarians—and it was understandable, that when they were painstakingly gathering grains of information, listing and tracking and trying to keep records, these happenings felt trivial and frivolous and showy.
What makes you think it’s even the same people, the librarian said, sliding the name of another family across the counter, and Margaret thanked her, and departed.
For there were always more children, more stories. It was like picking up seashells on the beach: one more, one more, one more. Each wave depositing another on the wet and gleaming sand. Each shell a relic of a creature once there, now gone. Bird was nearly twelve, and still there were more; she could continue this forever, traveling round and round. Counting the next and the next in an endlessly increasing line.
One day, overcome, she sent a postcard: no message, just a small line drawing. A cat beside a little door. A clue, if they would accept it; an invitation to find the note she’d left for them. To find her. As she dropped it into the mailbox, she imagined it winging its way from truck to sack to the porch of their house. She waited and waited, but no reply came.
Now and then she tried again, each postcard gaining another cat, or two, or five, smaller and smaller, until the entire card was full, the cabinet shrunk to the size of a stamp, then the size of a penny, then the size of a fingernail. There was never any reply. On Bird’s twelfth birthday, she took a risk, hunted down one of the few remaining pay phones, and dialed their old number. Disconnected. By this time Bird had lived a quarter of his life without her; perhaps he didn’t even remember she existed. Perhaps it was better that way.
It was then that she decided on a date: October 23. Three years to the day since she’d gone away. She would do it then. In September she sent a note to Domi. It’s time, she said. Can you find me a place to stay. Domi, of course, had offered her house, but Margaret had refused.
Somewhere faraway, she said, somewhere no one will look. Somewhere I won’t take you down, if I’m caught.
A week later she’d arrived in New York, made her way to Brooklyn and the darkened brownstone. The next day she went out into the city, cap pulled low over her face, in search of bottle caps.
* * *
? ? ?
I have someone, the librarian said.
Astoria: a small branch library. Margaret had been in New York for two weeks already, camped out in the darkened brownstone, making final preparations, filling her bottle caps. Two weeks left to go. She should stop collecting stories; already she had more than she could use. But she did not want to stop. What she wanted was to find every one of them, though she knew this was impossible, because there would always be more.
The librarian lowered her voice, even though there was no one else in the room, no one else in the building, nothing around them but half-empty shelves. Not a family, she went on. A child.