“I admit . . . I was surprised,” Dani confessed.
“By what?” Lenka asked.
“By him.” Dani lifted her empty glass and set it down again. She might as well air it all out right now. Her aunts did not like talking about Chicago. Or her parents. But she should tell them about Michael Malone, if only to set their minds at ease.
“I met him a long time ago,” Dani explained. “He was the policeman who escorted me here from Chicago after . . . after Mother died. He was very kind to me. He was the one who gave me Charlie, and he took very good care of me on the train. And so it was a surprise to see him today. A strange coincidence. But a welcome one too.”
Zuzana and Lenka stared at her, their mouths gaping. Zuzana shut hers with a snap.
“Goodness gracious,” Lenka breathed. “What a shock that must have been.”
“Does he know who you are?” Zuzana asked.
“Yes. I told him when I showed him the room. He remembered me immediately. Of course, he knew me as Dani Flanagan, so you must forgive him when he calls me by that name. But . . . I think he was as stunned as I.”
“Unbelievable,” Lenka marveled, and Zuzana sniffed.
“That doesn’t mean you know him. You were a child. We know nothing about him now,” Zuzana argued, determined as always to be the voice of dissent.
“No, Tetka. You’re wrong. I know a great deal about him. And he . . . knows . . . about me.”
Malone took off his clothes and hung them in the wardrobe, noting the rosy fragrance once more. At least it didn’t smell like cat. He had a feeling Charlie thought the room was his. That would change. The cat gave him the creeps. Or maybe it was the house. Or the women. Maybe it was just Dani, and the little girl she’d been.
“Poor Dani Flanagan. Strange little Dani Flanagan,” he said aloud, and felt ashamed of himself for saying it. To call her strange was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. Words like “strange” reduced men and women to their oddities. To flat, unfeeling objects to be studied and dismissed. People deserved more than that. Dani Flanagan deserved more than that.
He crawled into bed and turned off the lamp, not caring that it was barely 8:00 p.m. He was bone-tired, and he did not want to think anymore. He wanted darkness and oblivion. But there, in the quiet of his new surroundings, his mind flew back to the long train ride to Cleveland, little Dani Flanagan beside him.
She was being sent to family, and he’d been given the assignment to accompany her.
She knows you now, Murphy had said. It makes sense for you to go. Her family will have someone there to meet her at the station. You just have to see that she gets there.
Dani held the birdcage on her lap, and the kitten inside seemed happy enough in his makeshift home. She got smiles from other passengers and a few comments at the incongruous occupant of the cage, but she was shy about making eye contact and replied mostly with a smile and a yes or no if she had to speak at all. Maybe it was weariness. She started nodding off right after the trip began. The whirring and clacking of the wheels chased thought away.
He made a pillow from his overcoat and set it on the top of the cage, and she leaned against it and slept for two hours, only rousing when the cat started to cry. She lifted her bleary eyes to his, as if she’d forgotten where she was, and he was struck again by their color, so distinct, one from the other.
He saw the moment she remembered. It would be like that for a while, that awful shock and pain each time she awakened. But eventually, even in sleep, she would know they were gone. Malone didn’t know which was worse—to escape and return or to constantly remember.
“Do you think I could take Charlie out of the cage for a while?” she asked.
“No, Dani. If he gets loose, it won’t be good.”
“He’s thirsty.”
“I’m more worried about you. Are you hungry?”
She nodded. He brought out the sandwiches he’d purchased at the station and gave her one, along with a bottle of lemonade. He had water in his flask for the kitten.
“Cup your hand, like so.” He showed Dani how to make a little well in the palm of her hand and then opened the door of the cage just far enough for her to ease her hand through. Charlie lapped up the water with his tiny tongue, and Dani laughed, delighted.
A woman joined them in their car soon after. Her eyes were hollow and her mouth pinched, and she stared at Dani as if she didn’t like the look of her. Or maybe it was just the cat. She sneezed several times and asked the attendant if she could be seated somewhere else. When she rose to leave, her shawl fell from her shoulders and Dani shifted to pick it up.