Flight Patterns (31 page)

I took his hand and squeezed, to let him know I understood how you can hate someone as much as you loved them. But how the love never went away.

The light from the sky had completely gone now, the sun swallowed by the waves of the bay. The words came to my mouth as if I'd always known them.
“Entre chien et loup.”

“I thought you didn't speak French.”

My eyebrows knitted together. “I don't. I just recall that one thing—something Birdie used to say when Maisy and I were small.”

“What does it mean?”

It took a moment to respond, to remember past all those years to
when Birdie and I would sit on the dock watching the sky. “The literal translation is ‘between dog and wolf.' It's used to describe when the darkness and light are equal so that you can't tell the difference between a dog and a wolf.”

“Birdie taught you that?”

I nodded. “It was a long time ago. Before everything changed.”

Something large splashed in the water beneath us, but neither of us flinched. It was almost as if our clasped hands meant we were protected from harm. Like when Maisy and I used to lie in my bed during thunderstorms and hold hands.

“Two thousand and five, right? The year they were going to make a movie here and Birdie was trying to fix up the house.”

I nodded. “Yep. She just collapsed in the attic while looking for something, and she hasn't spoken a word since.”

“Did they ever make the movie?”

I shook my head. “No. Everything was pretty torn up after the '05 hurricane season, so they moved on. Didn't really matter. Birdie was practically catatonic, and Maisy was pregnant again too soon after Lilyanna's passing. And then I left.”

I felt him watching me, our hands still clasped, and I welcomed the warmth, the closeness. It reminded me again of how much I'd missed being touched, and the reasons for my abstinence.

“It's my turn now, isn't it?” I asked, wishing the breeze would steal my words.

He didn't speak, allowing me to let go of his hand and walk away without saying anything if I chose.
I'm just a stranger on a plane.
Of course he wasn't, not anymore. I didn't know what he'd become to me, but I trusted him with my need to find understanding. And maybe even compassion.

I stayed where I was, looking up at the two glowing orbs in the sky, so close but not touching, the entire night sky their domain. “I was pregnant when I left. I was twenty-five years old, living at home and working as a barmaid on the riverfront. I got pregnant as if I were some stupid clueless teenager who didn't know any better. I know that's true,
because that's pretty much verbatim what Maisy said when she found out. Well, minus a few other things about my character that I don't care to repeat. She couldn't understand why I'd been allowed to get pregnant when she was the one who'd done everything right.”

“I imagine that dealing with Birdie and your unexpected pregnancy was pretty hard for both of you.”

I closed my eyes, tilting my face to the moon. “If only that were the worst of it.”

“There are worse things?”

The day at the Seafood Festival all those years ago came to me with sudden clarity. Seeing Lyle unexpectedly, seeing my newly rounded face and immediately realizing my predicament, and then Maisy, also about four months pregnant, turning the corner to see Lyle consoling me, promising to help make everything all right. “Maisy accused Lyle of being my enabler, of encouraging my choices. Of believing I was much more interesting and exciting than she could ever be—all those things my mother's inattention had fed her for years. I know it was the hurt over my pregnancy; I do. But she didn't think to ask if I was okay. Or if I needed help. Lyle did, and that made it worse somehow.”

James didn't show any surprise. “Were you?” he asked. “Okay, that is.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I was a mess.” I closed my eyes, blocking the shining planet from view. “We always hurt the ones we love the most, don't we?”

He didn't answer, and I thought of his wife again, and his best friend, and the kind of hurt a person could drown in.

“What about you? Did you ask Maisy if she was okay?”

“No,” I said quietly. “I knew better than to try, knowing I'd set myself up for more hurt. Maisy has always been very good at pushing people away. Like she doesn't believe she's worthy of love. Birdie taught us that, I think. I just took it in a far different direction than Maisy.”

We were both silent for a moment, the dock rocking gently beneath us. “What happened to your baby?”

“I gave her up,” I said quietly, watching as a night heron dipped slowly over the water, the moonlight tinting the top of its black crown with silver.

His hand squeezed mine, a reassuring gesture. “Is Becky your daughter?”

I wanted to tell him that it was none of his business, that part of the reason I agreed to let him come with me was because he said he wouldn't ask me any questions I didn't want to answer. But maybe he hadn't.

“Yes,” I said, the word escaping into the air, no heavier than a single drop of water.

“And her father?”

“A guy named Sam whose last name I never knew.” I looked down at my feet, spreading my bare toes against the pale wood of the dock, remembering Maisy and me as little girls, stealing Birdie's polish and painting our toenails on the dock. The memory made me want to cry. “I left to go on the road with a band who played at the bar where I worked, because I thought the lead guitarist looked like Jon Bon Jovi and I was looking for a way out of my life. When I told him that I was pregnant he made it clear that he wasn't interested in fatherhood, so he ditched me after a gig in Louisiana. I'd hitched a ride with another band that was performing at the Seafood Festival, hoping to throw myself on my grandpa's mercy—at least until the baby was born. I didn't think much past that.”

“And you ran into Maisy and Lyle.”

“She was pregnant again—due about a month or so after I was—and her doctors told her that had to be her last, whether she carried to full term or not.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice so I wouldn't fall apart. “Lyle was the only one thinking straight, so he took me to Marlene's. It was her idea to move me to her friends' house in New Orleans before anybody even knew I was in town, much less pregnant. I lived there until the baby was born in March. I moved in November—just three months after Katrina. Just to give you an idea of how little thought I gave to the whole plan.

“And then fate sort of intervened. Because Maisy's was a high-risk pregnancy, she'd been seeing a specialist in Panama City. But after
Katrina, he moved temporarily to New Orleans to help out after the storm. She was in New Orleans when Becky was born. And when she miscarried.” I stopped speaking for a moment, trying to find my breath. “It's funny, but even from the start I never thought of the baby as mine. I loved her, and wanted her to be healthy, but I never felt like more than a surrogate. And when Maisy lost her baby, it was like I'd been given a chance for redemption.”

“Redemption?”

“For Lilyanna. I thought Maisy would forgive me if I could replace the child she lost, and we could go back to the way we'd been before.”

James shook his head slowly. “I can't see Maisy just going along with it. She just seems so . . . responsible. A rule follower.”

“She didn't want to. Not at first. She'd actually changed her mind and was getting ready to drive back to Florida without the baby. And then they put Becky in her arms.” I finally looked up and met his eyes. “It's amazing what people will do for that one thing they want most in life.”

“So you never went back home.”

“Maisy told me not to go back, that she didn't want to see me again. I agreed only because it was the only way I knew Maisy would be happy—if I were gone. And I had planned to leave anyway, go someplace where nobody knew who I was. I wanted to go back to school, have a real career. Make a life for myself. So I promised I wouldn't come back. That I would never try to make Becky a part of my life.” I bit my lip, remembering the first time I'd seen her small, crumpled face, and how even then I knew I could never be her mother. “I'll always be her aunt. If Maisy wants her to know the truth when she's older, that's up to her. But there's never been any doubt in my mind that I made the right decision.”

“Have you ever told her that—that you don't regret your decision? That you will never change your mind?”

I shook my head. “I shouldn't have to. She's my sister.”

He rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. “So that was your price for flight.” He touched my chin, made me look at him. “Was it worth it?”

The price for flight.
I'd never thought of it that way, of my decision having any sort of value. But of course it did. Every choice meant giving something up to gain something else.

“I don't know. I got everything I was looking for. But I no longer have a sister.”

His hand left my face and I found that I missed his touch. “So Maisy knew what she wanted most in life. What about you? What was the one thing you always wanted?”

I gave him a rueful smile, thinking about what a wonderful psychiatrist he could have been. I went through a long mental list of all the occupations I used to write in my elementary school papers—veterinarian, astronaut, Olympic runner—until I settled on the one thing that had shadowed my childhood and Maisy's. “Not to be ordinary. Birdie once told Maisy and me that we never had to worry about being like her, because she'd never known the sorrow of being ordinary.”

“And now?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. I miss my sister.” I pulled our clasped hands apart and stood, suddenly restless. Facing the moon, I asked, “What about you? What do you want?”

I heard him stand, then felt him behind me, close enough that his breath teased my neck. “Is it my turn now?”

I smiled. “Sure.”

He was silent for a moment, as if he hadn't considered it before. “I want to know my place in the world again. I want to be happy. But in my life before, Brian and Kate were part of both. I don't know if I can separate them enough to start again.”

The waves swayed beneath the dock, and I moved with them, feeling as if I were part of the water, a drop easily absorbed by the whole. “Bees will fly for miles in search of pollen to bring back to the hive, but they have such great navigation systems that they never get lost. That's why folklore has it that bees are the image of the human soul—because of their natural ability to always find their way back home.”

“So, according to bees, we should be able to find our way back, too, no matter how far we've traveled.”

I sighed. “Yeah. Something like that. I'd really like to believe it's true.”

“So you can come back here to live?”

“Not necessarily. Just back to the person I was meant to be.”

He moved to face me, taking both of my hands in his. “Do you want to know what I think?” His hands tightened around mine as if he were afraid I might bolt.

“Not really.”

“I can't help but think that maybe you and Maisy need to figure out what made Birdie the way she is so that you can understand that whatever happened in your childhood isn't your fault.”

“Right. Like that's even possible.”

His expression hinted of an apology even before he spoke. “And if you want Maisy back in your life, maybe you need to take the first step. Ask for her forgiveness. Even if you think you haven't done anything wrong.”

My breaths came in hot, angry gasps. “Then maybe you should call Brian and tell him that you forgive him.”

He stared at me calmly. “I guess I deserved that. And you're probably right. But it's always hard hearing it from someone else, isn't it?”

Without warning, he leaned forward and kissed me. It was soft and warm and electric, and over before I knew what was happening. He stared at me in the moonlight, waiting for me to say something.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to.”

I shook my head over and over, not really knowing why. “I think it's time you went back to New York.”

Turning, I began to walk quickly down the dock toward the yard, eager to put distance between us.

“You're not ordinary,” James called after me. “I don't think you could be ordinary even if you tried.”

I didn't stop until I reached Marlene's house, watching as the moon's shadows crept between the statuary, still tasting James's kiss on my lips and wondering why I wanted to cry.

The queen bee is the only bee in the hive that does not have a barbed stinger. This means she can repeatedly sting, like a wasp.

—NED BLOODWORTH'S BEEKEEPER'S JOURNAL

Birdie

I
stayed in my nightgown all day, sitting up in the turret window of my bedroom and looking out across the bay. I was aware of Maisy coming in to check on me and to offer food, and of her soft sobs from her room. Of Georgia, lying down on the dock as sunset approached. Something had happened, then. I stared off into the horizon, expecting to see heavy storm clouds. But all I saw was Venus and the moon, and the brightly colored bees flitting around a soup cup. And George. I felt him near me again, his hand in mine. Saw us fleeing from the thin man on the dock, the man who'd asked me to remember.

I held the soup cup lightly in one hand while the fingers on my other hand traced the flight patterns of the bees around the rim. It was hard to determine where the line originated or where the bees were headed, a circle with no beginning or end.

Marry me, Birdie. I'll help you forget.
I turned my head, expecting to see George, to tell him now what I didn't understand then. That some things can't be forgotten. You can push them so far back inside
your head that you think they're not there anymore, but they are, shimmering around the periphery.

He said that you knew who'd stolen your daddy's truck. And if they ever found it, they should ask you about it.
I could smell the dog scent and her breath on my cheek as Marlene had said that.
Marlene
. I needed to go see her, to show her the soup cup. Maybe she could tell me what I was missing, what knowledge was still lodged in the forgetting part of my brain.

It had been a while since I'd been to Marlene's, but my feet seemed to know where to go, even in the dark. I walked slowly, my eyes and ears focused inward to the year of the red tide again, of the beginning of George and me. Of him kissing me, hidden beneath the magnolia tree near the apiary, and seeing the thin man approach Daddy and embrace him as if they were old friends.

Mama was in her rose garden with her sprayer, murdering weeds, as she liked to call it. It was her own chemical concoction, toxic enough that weeds would brown and shrivel within hours. She'd let me watch sometimes, as long as I never got near enough to touch the clear, odorless liquid. It took only a little drop, she said, to kill a weed or a rose, and she had to be careful not to confuse the two.

George and I watched as she approached Daddy and the man. They talked for a few moments and Mama's knees seemed to soften, and Daddy had to catch her before she fell. Daddy held her around the shoulders and led the three of them inside.

I looked at Mama's face as they passed. She didn't look like herself, but instead like a person who was thinking about a lot more things than what was right in front of her. She must have been distracted and forgotten that she carried the spray bottle, because she brought it into the kitchen.

The arguing began as soon as the door closed behind them. Not between the stranger and my parents, but between my mama and daddy. When the shouting grew louder, it was my mother's voice that was raised. It seemed as if the stranger and my father had said all they could say and Mama could not let that be. I heard my name and
cringed, unused to hearing it in a raised voice. And then there was just silence.

Curious, George and I went inside. The three adults sat at the kitchen table, the man with a book in front of him, something thin sticking out of the top. The man smiled at me and I felt George pulling on my arm in warning, as if I should be afraid. I wasn't, even though Mama and Daddy were sitting as far away as possible from the stranger. I recognized the man, and not just from seeing him on George's dock.

Daddy introduced the man as Mr. Mouton, a man he'd met while on his travels to France before the war, although Daddy didn't explain why he was in Apalachicola. Mr. Mouton looked at me the whole time no matter who was talking, and I didn't find it odd because I wanted to look at him, too, and figure out why he seemed familiar. He didn't mention that he'd seen me the day before, or that he'd given me the soup cup. I didn't say anything, either, figuring he had to have a reason.

As George and I sat down at the table, Mr. Mouton pulled from the book what looked like a postcard and slid it across the table toward my daddy. It was a photo of the bridge that crossed the bay on one side and a picture of a beach on the other and had big red lettering on the top corner: “Welcome to Florida.”

“You remember this, yes?” he asked my daddy. “You sent it to me after your visit. I keep for a long time, because we are friends. And then I give it to Yvette to keep it safe.”

“But that was so long ago,” Daddy said, using his arm to wipe his forehead. It wasn't warm inside the kitchen, but patches of sweat darkened his shirt.

“Yes,” Mr. Mouton agreed. “It took me a long time to come back for it. They sent me to a camp—and I was there for two years.” He paused and coughed into his hand, a deep, rattling sound of dry bones knocking together. “I would have died except I remembered what I'd left behind. What I promised to come back for.” His eyes moistened and I felt mine tearing up, too, as if this stranger and I had shared more than just a few moments in each other's company.

He looked away from me, directing his words to Daddy. “Yvette died, you know. After her son-in-law found you here because of the postcard and brought you something precious. It seemed to me that you must have known, all those years ago, that this postcard would bring us together again. That it would bring me back to something I lost.”

I'd never seen Daddy's back so straight, or Mama's lips so white.

“And now it's time to give it back.” He smiled as he said it, but I could tell it wasn't meant to be funny.

“It's been ten years,” Daddy said, his words rasping like a razor on a shaving strop. “You could not be so desperate if it took you ten years.”

“Ned.” Mama put a hand on his arm, her eyes sliding in my direction. George held my hand under the table and I was glad. I no longer recognized anybody sitting at my own kitchen table.

“I was starved in the camps, no food. Took many beatings. My health when they set me free—not so good.”

He thumped his chest as if to prove his lack of health by the hollow sound, but he didn't need to prove anything. His pale skin and protruding cheekbones were enough. I had the oddest feeling that I should crawl into his lap and put my arms around him in an attempt to comfort.

“I stay in American hospital in Germany for almost a year because I cannot walk. My heart not so good anymore.” He shrugged. “Two years later I'm strong enough and I go back home and find only burned buildings. My bees gone, the château open to the sky and home only to bats and mice. Another five years to find where Yvette and her family had gone, two years to earn money for passage to America. I promised to come back. And I did.” He looked at me, his eyes soft and like there was a young man locked inside an old body, and when he looked at me it was as if he believed I held the key.

I looked at my parents, hoping for reassurance, or at least an explanation of what was going on, but their expressions were closed to me, their eyes focused on the stranger as if to try to draw his attention away from me.

“It's been ten years,” Mama repeated, her voice cracking as if she
was close to tears. “You can't just . . .” Her eyes slid to me. “We have a good family here, a good life. We are all very, very happy.” I was surprised to see tears slipping down her face. Daddy placed his hand over hers, then dipped his head. “She doesn't remember any of it.” Mama almost hissed the words.

The man's face became serious. “But children never truly forget.” He turned to me and took my hand, rolling it into a ball inside his own fist.
“Souviens-toi toujours que mon coeur t'appartient et que tu seule peux le libérer
.
”

He smiled and I smiled back. I'd heard those words before, and even believed that I knew what they meant. He opened his fist and wiggled his fingers like petals on a sunflower. I remembered this part, remembered what I was supposed to do next. Watching my hand as if it didn't belong to me, I saw it open slowly, my fingers dancing in a smaller imitation of his.

And then my voice repeated the words I knew in my heart but not in my head.
“Souviens-toi toujours que mon coeur t'appartient et que tu seul peux le libérer.”
I looked at my parents, their surprise mirrored in their faces. I knew those words, had heard them many times but couldn't remember where. I knew I'd heard this man say them before, a long time ago. But it also seemed that I'd heard them in the soft tones of a woman's voice, a woman with dark hair and soft skin.

“Adeline?” I said, the name suddenly familiar on my tongue. It was a name that brought back mixed memories—joy and sadness, homecoming and abandonment. Of a time that I always thought of as
before
. Before the darkness that fell inside my head.

Mr. Mouton looked confused for a moment and then his eyes widened in recognition and a smile traced his lips. “Yvette's oldest daughter, yes? She took care of you like a mother when Yvette became ill. Her husband brought you here.”

A memory of me at the wooden table, filled with the beautiful china, and Adeline braiding my hair and singing to me. We were both crying and I couldn't remember why. And then I saw the suitcase by the door and knew that it was time to say good-bye.

I looked at my parents in confusion, but they were staring hard at the thin man, as if he carried some horrible disease. “I don't understand,” I said.

Nobody responded, but George placed his hand in mine and squeezed.

“She doesn't remember,” Daddy repeated, but it sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

Mama covered her head in her hands and began to sob. Daddy patted her back, the anger in his eyes slipping into sorrow. “We thought you were dead. For five long years we tried to find you. We sent letters to every government official we thought could help. We even sent one to the president. There was no record of your death, but there was no record of you surviving, either.” He was silent for a moment, the room still as a tomb, so that we heard the buzzing of a trapped bee, its body thumping against the glass window of the door.

I tried to stand, but George pulled me back into my chair. “Please,” I said, looking across the table at my parents, who wouldn't meet my eyes. “Please tell me what's going on. I don't . . .”

Daddy held up his hand, silencing me. He leaned closer to Mr. Mouton. “I could not give my wife the children we wanted, but we had more than enough love to share.” He settled his gaze on me for a moment. “And when our daughter arrived, we had a family to give her, and all the love we'd been storing up for all our lives. You don't have any of that—no wife or home. Bad health. It wouldn't be right, taking her from everything she knows. From her family. From her friends.” He stared straight at George.

George shifted next to me, as if he was understanding something I couldn't quite grasp because I was seeing a picture in my head of bees and fields of lavender, and I was running as fast as I could through it, feeling chased but too afraid to turn around and find out by whom.

But I'd always been that way, Mama said. Ever since I was a little girl, when things upset me or something happened that I didn't understand, I'd disappear into my own imaginary world, where everything happened just as I wanted it to, and the real world would slip away like so
much dust. I'd been doing that for so long that I didn't remember when I'd started. I'd stopped trying to remember, because every time I thought about it my heart hurt as if it were being stung by a hundred bees.

The man's face was still and serious as he listened to Daddy, but after waiting for a moment to make sure Daddy was finished speaking, he said, “The teapot. You still have it, yes? Adeline said she told you to keep it safe. She gave me a cup to show to my little girl, to see if she remembered, just in case there is no more teapot. That is her history. Of three generations of her family, and their position on a grand estate. That is all she needs. And a father who loves her. We will manage. It is in our blood. I have survived thus far, yes?”

“Then you won't listen to reason?” Daddy's voice was thick, as if a sock were stuck in his throat, preventing the words from coming out.

“What other reason is there besides a father who loves his daughter and has worked for ten years to keep a promise he made to her?”

I will come back for you; I promise. However long it takes.
He'd said those words to me a long time ago. Or maybe I'd just made it up like so many of my stories.

Daddy's jaw quivered. George slid back his chair and stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders. He was only thirteen but already over six feet, with wide shoulders and muscled arms. It almost seemed as if he were trying to be intimidating.