It’s not worth the risk, she says. In her own ears her voice is leathery, coarse and cracked.
But the bottle caps, Bird says. All the ones we just hid. And those ones you already hid.
It doesn’t matter. We’ll leave them.
But it’s important. Bird shakes his head, as if she is trying to fool him. Isn’t it? Whatever you’re doing, I know it’s going to help.
It doesn’t matter, Margaret says again. Forget it. Forget the whole thing,
She rushes to him, clutching him close, cradling his face in her palms, because it is unbearable to remember him in danger, to imagine him ever being in danger again, let alone putting him there herself. Whatever it takes, she and Ethan had promised each other all those years ago, and she still means it. She will do whatever it takes to keep their child safe.
Except. In her arms, Bird stiffens, then pulls away.
But—he says.
His brow furrows, a look she knows because she’s felt it on her own face her whole life: trying to unknot what people do and what they say and what they mean. She’d inherited it from her mother, who had probably inherited it from her mother, and here it was on her child’s face, too, staring back at her. An unintended legacy.
Birdie, she says. You’re all that matters. I don’t want to do it anymore. I just don’t want to take any chances.
But you said—he begins, then stops again, and she hears everything he isn’t saying aloud. But all those kids. Like Sadie. And their families. Isn’t that why you left?
We’ll find another way to help, she says. Something else. I don’t know what. But something less risky.
Her mind is full of hazy, incoherent plans.
We’ll figure something out, she says. Some way to stay together, somewhere to hide. Maybe Daddy can find a way to join us. Domi could help. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Bird.
She is babbling now; she can hear it. She grabs at his hands with both of hers, as if he is sinking, or she is, and this might keep them afloat. They are still jammed together in the hallway, the tiny space thick and hot with their breath, still speaking in whispers, but it feels to both of them as if they’re shouting. All she wants is to not let him go.
None of this matters anymore, she says.
But even as she says it, she can see his face hardening, small embers in his gaze. How, she reads in his eyes, can you look away now that you know?
So it doesn’t matter, he says, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.
And she knows: it is too late to convince him, because she has already told him the truth.
Bird, she says, but the sheer disappointment on his face crumbles her voice into sand.
You’re a hypocrite, he says.
He hesitates for only an instant, then plunges ahead anyway.
You’re a terrible mother.
Margaret flinches, but Bird seems to feel it, too, recoiling as if she’s struck him. In his face she sees a mirror of what must be happening on her own: nostrils tense and trembling, eye rims suddenly hot and red. With a sudden jerk, he pushes her away. Then he is running up the stairs, and she doesn’t follow. She feels as wrung out and emptied as if she has vomited and vomited until nothing is left inside.
* * *
? ? ?
In the dark, Bird falls into a stormy sleep.
He dreams a sharp and jagged tangle. Machines broken and rusted, gears inextricably meshed. Bottles of ink shattering in his hands, dying his fingers a watery blue. Someone has given him a building to hold up, and if he walks away it will collapse. He has caught a snake in a pillowcase, and he stands, bearing the writhing sack, nowhere safe to release it. In the last dream, just before he wakes, he is surrounded by other children, crammed so close he can feel their warmth, hear their breath, smell the sweat on their skin. But none of them speak to him or even look at him. Each time he reaches out they drift away soundlessly, a silent sea parting. Their eyes turning everywhere he is not: down at their dirty palms, over their shoulders, up at the clear and cloudless sky.
He wakes in a panic, burrows into the sleeping bag, tugs it up to his chin. Now he remembers: the bottle caps, the police cruiser, the argument. Everything his mother had told him over the past two days, all the reasons she’d had to leave, and how quickly she’d thrown all that aside. He thinks about the years without her, he and his father all alone, missing her. Once he’d have traded anything, everyone, to have her back.
He can’t see anything, not even a crack of light from the hall. He listens for his mother, but hears nothing. Even the noises from outside—though there must be some—are muffled and muted to nothing more than whispers and faint hums. Somewhere she must be here, but he doesn’t remember the way to her room, and in the unrelenting dark he isn’t even sure he can find his way out. It is as if no one is there at all.