“Finch.” I look at Scotland. “We don’t know that.”
“He is,” Finch says. “I can feel it in my soul. He has departed this world.”
Scotland shoves his hands into his pockets and turns away from us. He walks out of the little garden and heads over to one of the apple trees. “He helped plant these trees. I remember. Oh, I bet he wasn’t any bigger than you, Finch.”
“You knew Jake?”
He cocks his head to the side, twists his mouth. “I knew he was here, with his family.”
“Did you look after them, like you do with us?” Finch asks, finding a spot on the grass and plopping down.
“You could say that.”
“With your spotting scope?” She rolls a stick back and forth in her palm.
“The very same one.”
A red-tailed hawk sails overhead, casting a shadow that waves across the yard. Crow flaps off to a nearby white pine.
Scotland lowers down and sits cross-legged beside Finch, his knee touching hers. “You doing all right, little bird? I know how much he meant to you.”
“He was my friend,” she says. She places the stick in her lap and folds her hands across her chest. “‘O past! O happy life! O songs of joy! In the air, in the woods, over fields, Loved!’”
Whitman. I look at Scotland and shake my head.
“He was a good man,” Scotland says. “A very good man. With a kind spirit and a heart of gold.”
“And now we won’t ever see him again.”
Scotland reaches and holds out his hand and she takes it, her tiny hand swallowed in his fat, dirty fingers. “It’s terrible to lose someone you love, terrible. Makes you hurt in ways you didn’t know you could hurt.”
Finch begins to tremble, and I keep pruning, a little stumped by Scotland, as usual: this unexpected wisdom. And also just a little irritated at the way he is so at ease with extending comfort, how he just knew what to say, how he offered his hand. Over the years he and Finch have grown close—unavoidable, perhaps, given our lack of social opportunities, not to mention her general propensity to get so attached to people—but still, I don’t like it.
“It’ll get better, Finch. Right now the sadness is all there is. Maybe it feels like there’s something so heavy pulling at you that you’ll sink right down into the earth and never feel light again. But you will, in time. I promise.”
She wipes her eyes and then asks, her voice shaking, “How long? How long does it take?”
Scotland shakes his head. “I can’t say, Finch. Wish I could. It sort of differs from person to person. But time will tell. Most likely, you’ll just realize one day that you don’t feel as sad as you did the day before. And the day after that, you’ll be a little better, and so on. I’m guessing it’ll never fully go away, but it gets better.”
Finch looks at me, her green eyes wide in question, like she wants me to confirm that this is how things will happen.
I nod. “Sounds about right.”
Although I’m not so sure that’s how it happened for me. With Cindy, there was this initial feeling that reminded me of one of those amusement park rides, where you ride up and up and then they let you drop, all of this controlled with some grand mechanics, but still, the sensation that you are falling fast and hard and your body is dropping without your heart. That’s how it was. Like I couldn’t catch myself, like there was nothing to hold me up. But then things shifted and all of that feeling of being lost turned into something different, something savage and animal. Then there was only Finch and me, staying alive, and me holding on to her and taking care of her and knowing nothing could keep me from doing that.
“I have a loose tooth,” Finch says, remembering, and like that, her sadness seems to dissipate, float off into sky. There is some comfort in this, I suppose—the way a child can swing right up from grief. The way there is always something else, something beyond just the sadness. She opens her mouth and tilts her head, pointing and wiggling the tooth. “See?”
Scotland obliges, leaning in and taking a look. “Won’t be long,” he says, throwing me a glance. “You gonna put it under your pillow so the tooth fairy can come and give you a dollar?”
Finch cocks her head to the side, narrows her eyes. “I’m eight, you know.”
“No harm in pretending.” He nods in my direction, winks. “For your daddy’s sake.”
She grins. “I’ll put it under my pillow and Cooper will probably keep it, knowing him. I mean the tooth. He’ll put it in the yellow Raisinets tin on the shelf, where he keeps the lock of hair from my first haircut and his dog tags from the military. Won’t you, Coop?”