As he passed by, she stepped out of the car.
Ethan? she said, and he turned, startled. Uncertain. Scanning her face for something familiar.
It’s Domi, she said, and watched recognition flood his eyes. I’m here about Margaret, she said, and then, before he could speak, she added: And Bird.
* * *
? ? ?
He’d come home to an empty apartment that Monday, and his chest had seized. So it had happened, he’d thought in a panic: despite everything, they’d taken him at last. Noah, he called out, flicking on the lights in the living room, then the bedroom, circling the apartment again, as if Bird were a misplaced key he’d simply overlooked. Only then did he see the note on the table, the drawing, the scrap of paper reading New York, NY. After all these years, he still recognized her writing, quick and pointed and sure, and he understood.
He could not call the police: as soon as they began to investigate they would see the link to Margaret, they would dig gleefully into Margaret’s file, and begin one on Bird. He could go to New York, but then what? All he could do was wait. If Bird found Margaret, he assured himself, they’d contact him. He did not allow himself to think and if not?
Tuesday morning, he called Bird in sick from school; he called himself in sick from work. If Bird came back, he would be there. He spent the day pacing the apartment, picking up his dictionaries, setting them down again. Again and again he looked at the drawing Margaret had sent: the cats, the cabinet. What had this told Bird? At dinnertime he forgot to eat. Where was Bird? Had he found Margaret? And if he hadn’t—？ That night, half dizzy, he dreamed himself back in his old apartment with Margaret, the Crisis still whirling around them. In the morning, woozy and sleep deprived, he awoke alone, below Bird’s empty bunk, and he called them both in sick again. Exhausted, he half dozed over and over; each time, he woke certain he’d heard Bird’s voice, but no one was there.
Friday morning, he headed back to work: he was out of days off. In the library, he wheeled his cart through the stacks, taking extra time to line up the books with care, to restore everything to the precise place it belonged. When his shift was over, he lingered, dreading the empty apartment. Instead he headed to the southwest corner of D level, combing the shelves until he found it: the thin book with a cat on its cover, and a boy who looked something like Bird.
This retelling, he discovered, was different from Margaret’s. In this version, the parents had too many children, the boy was sent off to study with priests, the building was not a house but a temple. Perhaps she’d misremembered, or maybe she’d changed the story to suit her own purposes. Or maybe, he thinks, there were simply many versions of this single tale. What did it tell Margaret and Bird that it did not say to him? He read it again and again, until the library closed, looking for the message, for the clue that would unlock everything and tell him where his family was. But the book revealed nothing.
He was still thinking this over as he walked home in the darkness. Whatever the meaning, it was not in the words themselves but somewhere else, and it was then that Domi had stepped out of her car and called his name.
* * *
? ? ?
In the small hours, they drove back toward Connecticut, the traffic evaporated, everyone home with blinds drawn. In some places the streetlights were already winking out, but in Domi’s car, they sped along the highway, frictionless. For long stretches theirs was the only car in sight, and they glided through the darkness in the small bubble of light cast by their headlights. As if there were nothing and no one else left in the world. For a long while Ethan didn’t speak at all, and Domi, as if to fill the silence, chattered away. She had told him the most urgent things already, of course: what had happened to Bird, about the townhouse, the plan. Where they were headed. With these most pressing things covered, though, she found herself coming back to the smallest of details. How Margaret had looked when they’d first seen each other again. I could tell, Domi said, I could tell she’d been happy with you. In the life she’d had. Because she was so sad to lose it. You could see it in her eyes.
She described it all for Ethan, as best she could: Margaret’s notebooks, her journeys from one family to the next, until he could almost see it, her tracks like fine lines of stitching crisscrossing the map, trying to suture something torn asunder.
You should’ve heard it, Domi said, you should’ve seen it, her voice just—
She waved a hand in the air, and the car wavered over the yellow line and back again.
Just coming out of the air. Everywhere. And people standing there, listening. I looked out the window and I saw them, just standing. Like statues. It was like she’d turned everyone to stone.