I am the night bird, perched in the window seat. I reckon I love the concept of window seats. The world outside hums in black and white. It’s 2:00 a.m. The snow wears the moonlight like perfume.
My conversation with Delaney plays on a loop, powered by surprise, I reckon. Because I picture Delaney throwing up her hands at the kitchen table. Screaming at the party. Glowering at me in the halls at school. And I realize it’s all bluster.
Snow begins to fall, this boneless water turned mighty. It’s all bluster out there, too.
A world is a world is a world.
Or, as Jenessa says, “human beans.”
Not so different.
“HERE, BOY! WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUU!”
Some kid is outside yelling, and I wish who ever it is would shut up. Sunday is my day to sleep in, and after last night, and with an English lit and a physics test coming up this week, I need all the sleep I can get.
“SHORTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
I open my eyes wide.
No way.
The words are thick with tears. My bedroom door flings open and Melissa rushes in, her expression a mixture of pain and awe.
“You do know who that is, don’t you?”
The whole world stops as I listen, and I shake my head in disbelief, making it look as if I’m saying no, when I mean yes.
“SHORTYYYY! COME ON, BOY! WHERE ARE YOU!”
In what feels like slow motion, I rise from the bed and hurtle toward the window. The scent of scrambled eggs wafts through the open door, and the wood is cold beneath my feet.
“SHORTY!!!! You come here this instant!”
I stare out the window, then turn to Melissa.
“Your sister’s been out there like that the last hour or so.” Melissa sounds half-hysterical herself.
“I told you she could talk,” I say, adrenaline strumming my veins. It feels like that moment before a lightning bolt hit in the Hundred Acre Wood, with the hair on our arms standing on end and the air humming with electricity.
I watch Jenessa stomp through the snow, her curls whipping left and right. She disappears into the barn, but I can still hear her screaming at the top of her lungs.
“SHORTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
It’s been so long.
“What’s going on?”
“Shorty’s missing. We’ve been out searching for him since seven. When Jenessa woke up without him, she came running downstairs, talking. It was the damneest thing. She suited up, and she’s been searching ever since.”
“That’s a lot of land to search.”
I fly past Melissa and down the stairs, stuffing my feet into the boots I abandoned just hours earlier.
Hesitantly, not in her usual spear-head-dripping-with-toad- poison voice, Delaney calls to me from the kitchen table.
“The snowdrifts will ruin those boots, you know.”
I jab my hands into my mittens and coil the scarf around my neck, pulling the hat over my head and whipping on my coat.
“Use my snow boots,” Delaney offers. “They’re right there in the closet.”
“Thanks!” Quickly, I switch boots. “How about your sunglasses?”
“Go ahead.”
I take them from the table and flip them on. I trudge out the door, and Melissa is right behind me, zipping her coat as she picks her way carefully down the frozen steps.
“Shorty!”
My voice echoes off the snow, the whiteness dizzying. I cut around the house in time to see Nessa back out of the barn, her cheeks sparkling with tears.
I run to her and hold her. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”
We split up, Melissa going in one direction and Ness and me in another, checking under bushes and even in the scoop of the backhoe, scanning the horizon where the gray squints through a smattering of trees farther out. I sniff. Weather. It’ll snow again tonight, I reckon, if not this afternoon.
“It’ll be okay, Jenessa,” I say, squeezing her hand.
But she’s no longer the meek, dependent little girl, believing in my every word.
“We’ll keep looking until we find him,” I say, my voice firm.
“Alive,” Ness demands, her eyes darting around the hillside.
“Definitely alive,” I say.
He has to be.
Please, Saint Joseph? Ness can’t bear to lose this dog. It’s her one good thing in a long, long time. Please help us find him. Please!
“Here, boy!” Ness continues to yell, her voice crackling with the effort.
Saint Joseph, please! Ness and Shorty go together like beans and brown sugar. It’s like they were always waiting to find each other. They need each other! Please help us find him!
Jenessa plops down in the snow, her face hidden in her mittens, her shoulders heaving.
“Don’t you dare give up! That dog would never give up on you, Jenessa Joelle Blackburn!”
She startles at the reminder of Mama, scowling at me. I know exactly how she feels.
If you lead us to him and help us bring him back alive, I promise I’ll come clean. I’ll own up to what I did in the woods. I’ll tell our father and I’ll face the consequences. Please, Saint Joseph. Please!
I pull her to her feet.
“Melissa! Girls!”
We spin toward our father’s voice.
I squint around the glare of snow, past the shiver of red maple to the clearing beyond. My father’s arms cradle a still form, and my heart leaps sideways with fear and hope.
Oh please, Saint Joseph, let him be alive! My promise stands! Please!
Ness breaks out in a run, clouds of breath trailing behind her. From here, I wait, wait to read her sisterly braille, sagging in relief when a smile breaks out and she shakes her fists in the air.
I love you, Saint Joseph.
So many different kinds of tears in the world. I continue my clumsy trek, plucking my boots from the snow and crashing back down, my calf and thigh muscles screaming. Behind me, I hear Melissa doing the same.
My father stops to open and rezip his coat around Shorty’s body, warming the hound with his body heat. Ness walks next to them, tearing her eyes from Shorty to share a kaleidoscope of emotions: worry, fear, exhilaration, shock, bewilderment, and, finally, joy.
I reach their side in four strides.
“What happened? Do you know?” My heart plummets when I glimpse a wide smear of blood on my father’s coat sleeve. “Is he going to be okay?”
Please . . .
“I found him out past the clearing. He was probably chasing rabbits. Seems his collar snagged on a section of the old fence I’d been meaning to tear down. Damn fence. I had to scare off two coyotes. Looks like Shorty’s been mauled. If Jenessa hadn’t gone looking for him like she did . . .”
We both turn to Ness, who coos to Shorty and strokes his head, quite a feat as she keeps stride with us at a half run.
“I had a dream,” she tells us breathlessly. I bite back tears at the sound of her voice, her clear, sweet voice. “Shorty needed me to come get ’im. I thought it was just a dream, but I woke up and he wasn’t there.”
My father meets my eyes over her head.
“Will he be okay?” Ness chatters. Her entire body vibrates with cold.
“I think we got to him in time. We need to get him to the vet, though. But I dare say you saved his life, sweetheart.”
Jenessa breaks out in a dance of joy. I feel light as snow.
“If you give me your keys, I’ll warm up the truck,” I offer.
He twists his body toward me, his coat pocket displaying a small bulge. I reach in, grab for the keys, and take off at a run, my breath melting into mist against my frozen cheeks. I tear into the driveway and scramble into the truck, starting the engine and blasting the heat.
“Mel, can you get Jenessa into the house? She’s frozen stiff!”
They rush over the hill, and I notice how Nessa and my father walk the sameway—Mama’s long legs, his long legs, with the similar placement of feet. She’s imitating him, without even realizing she’s doing it. Belonging to him, regardless of blood. I throw open the driver’s side door.
Jenessa shakes her head vehemently, curls snaking every which way, like Medusa.
“I’m going with you! Shorty wants me to go!”
I take Shorty from my father’s arms and slide across to the passenger side. I hold him on my lap, cradled like a baby, as my father drapes his coat over us. Ness runs around the truck and stands on tiptoe, framed by the window glass. I lean down and kiss Shorty’s head for her. He licks my cheek weakly, trembling down to his tail.
“Mel—get her warmed up, and then meet us at Doc Samuels’s.”
Melissa nods and turns to my sister, who stomps her boot and bursts into tears.
“If you don’t warm up, we’ll be taking you to the hospital, too, honey. Shorty will be fine—we’ll meet them there. You trust your sister, don’t you?”
Nessa nods, crying in loud, gulping sobs. My father peels out as Melissa holds my sister firmly by the shoulders. I turn to look out the back window, watching her guide Nessa up the porch steps and into the house.
I remember Ness as a baby, how I had to use my own body heat to warm her during those endless nights in the camper when she cried and cried for Mama, not realizing the mama she cried for was me.
It makes me shiver inside, just thinking how lucky we were.
Now, if only Shorty can be that lucky.
We sit side by side in Doc Samuels’s waiting room, my cheeks and toes burning as they thaw. We handed Shorty over on arrival, unloading him into the doctor’s arms. Now, in a back room, Shorty rests comfortably beneath warming blankets, his wounds debrided and sewn.
Turns out that coyotes hadn’t mauled the old hound after all. It was the barbed wire that had ripped his flesh when he fought to free himself. The coyotes must’ve smelled the blood.
I shudder at the thought of what could’ve happened if my father hadn’t gotten to Shorty in time.
“He’s doing fine,” Doc Samuels says, coming out to talk to us half an hour later. “You’re lucky you found him when you did.”
Doc Samuels looks me over with interest. “You the one who saved ol’ Shorty?”
I shake my head. “My sister knew he was in trouble. It’s like they have a psychic connection or something.”
“Love is like that,” he says, his eyes flitting to my father and then back to me. “The cold kept him from losing too much blood. Most dogs with body temperatures that low wouldn’t have survived. That’s one tough dog.”
The doctor leaves us in the waiting room after pointing my father toward the full coffeepot. My father pours a cup and passes it to me, and I drink it black like he does, only caring about the way it warms my hands and my insides simultaneously.
He looks over at me every once in a while but says nothing. I can feel it in the room, though, beside the National Geographic magazines on the table, the laboring heater in the corner, the threadbare couch we sit upon. It surrounds us both, like an aura: our amazement over Jenessa’s talking.
And now it’s my turn. A promise is a promise. I turn to him, my eyes on his boots. I take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Remember you asked about Jenessa and what might’ve caused her to stop talkin’?”
It’s like I’ve revered. Like I’ve never left the woods.
He takes a sip of coffee without breaking eye contact.
“I know why,” I whisper.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me an hour, a day, a week from now, once I tell him. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Folks don’t do the right thing because it’s easy. They do it because it’s right.
“I figured as much,” he says, his tone even. “I was hoping you’d tell me when you were ready.”
He tilts his head and studies me, and in that gesture, I feel his genuine respect for our time in the Hundred Acre Wood. I let the strange feeling wash over me, enjoying it while I can.
I’m too old to act like a child. I know it now. Too old to play hide-and-seek with what’s important. It’s like the girl I’m going to be finally catches up with the girl I am, right there in Doc Samuels’s waiting room.
I owe it to that girl.
The door busts open, followed by a wave of cold air. Melissa and Jenessa stomp snow from their boots as Nessa turns to me, her eyes red and swollen.
“Where’s Shorty? Is he going to be okay?”
I go to her and hold her close, her body shaking in my arms.
I untangle myself and drop to my knees.
“Look at me,” I say, taking her tear-stained face in my hands. “Shorty’s going to be good as new. They’re keeping him warm and letting him rest after cleaning and sewing his wounds. They have him sedated.”
She looks at me blankly.
“Sedated means ‘calmed down with medicine.’ Like he’s slow and sleepy.”
Nessa laughs, squeezing me so hard, the breath escapes me. Then she runs to our father, who lifts her in his arms and spins her in a circle before sitting back down with her on his lap.
I get up and turn to Melissa, smiling shyly.
“We were thinking you two could take Shorty home. Doc Samuels said he’s ready,” I tell her.
She looks at my father curiously, then back to me. “We could do that.”
I watch her search the office, knowing her well enough by now to know what she needs.
“Coffee is fresh, over there on the table,” I say. I walk over, fill a cup, and take it to her.
“Thank you, Carey.”
I can see Melissa’s SUV out the window, a ribbon of exhaust weaving like a kite tail behind it.
“You left your car on,” I tell her.
“I know. Delaney’s in there. She was worried about Jenessa and wanted to come with us.”
We both look outside. I see Delaney’s foot propped up against the passenger-side window.
“She’s not an early bird.” Melissa laughs, shaking her head. “She’s probably asleep.”
Melissa remembers the coat folded over her arm.
“Here,” she says to my father. “I thought you’d need this.”
It’s his heavy work coat, the one he wears in the barn when he’s tending to the animals at night. It’s perfect, actually, for where we’re going.
Melissa pulls my father’s scarf and hat from inside her coat and hands them to me. They’re both warm and smell like her, like Beautiful, the perfume she wears and had bought for me, too, that day at the mall.
Once my father’s coat is on, I hand him the scarf and hat. Melissa takes the bloodstained coat, the smears dried into rust.
“Where are you two off to?”
I can’t believe the words leave my lips so easily.
“Back to the woods. I left something important behind. We’re going back to get it.”
She looks at my father and he smiles at her, a special smile she sails back to him. It’s a language that reminds me of sisterly braille, or the unspoken bond between Jenessa and Shorty.
“We’ll be back after supper,” he assures her.
Jenessa slides from my father’s lap and shuffles over, her eyes full of question marks.
“Are you sure, Carey? I’d never tell.”
She whispers her words, dry as the rattle of winter leaves, and I ache at the sound of her retreat.
“I’m sure. It’s time,” I reassure her, managing to keep my voice steady. “You stay with Melissa and wait for Shorty. Make sure he stays warm on the drive home.”
Nessa takes my hand in both of hers.
“Are you coming back?”
My heart breaks into new pieces, and her clasp tightens.
“I hope so. I mean, I plan to.”
“Will you play me Brahms’s Lullaby tonight? Instead of Pooh?”
I think of the violin shoved to the back of the closet shelf, how the parting scooped out a piece of my heart, like Melissa’s melon- ball scooper. I’d shunned the violin because music is its own truth; there’s no lying in the playing. Mama is woven into the notes, as are the woods. But I’d overlooked the bigger picture: It’s the best part of Mama. The best part of the woods. The music transcended the dreariness, the hunger, the cold. Just like the truth transcends.
I look into those eyes I know as well as my own— better, even— and once again, I’m tearing up.
“I swear to Saint Joseph—”
“On a hill of beans,” Jenessa says, finishing for me.
“Will you sing if I play?”
My voice breaks, and I “smile through diamonds,” as Jenessa calls it. I think of how, in one day, because of one dog, our whole world has changed. It’s been years since she’s sung for me. I’m not even sure she remembers.
“I remember,” she assures me, her eyes solemn. “I will.”
I walk her over to Melissa, and they stand side by side, watching us leave. My father holds the door open, and with one last look at Jenessa, I walk through it. The leather strip of sleigh bells rings from the door handle, quite merry for the moment at hand.
Ness leans against Melissa’s body, encircled by her arms.
I wave at them through the glass and Ness waves back tentatively, but like I told her, and more sure than I’ve ever been about anything, it’s time.
We walk past the SUV. My father sees Delaney and pantomimes writing, mouthing the words lit test to her. She scowls at him. I catch and hold her gaze through the window glass. Her eyes are still worried, and not just for Shorty.
But I gave my word. Pinkie promise. Anyway, I don’t want to be the kind of person associated with fear. I know fear too well, and I know its power. I don’t want that kind of power. Not over Delaney or anyone else.
As I pass, I make a motion of locking my lips and throwing away thekey—throwing her the key. We’re sisters, whether she likes it or not.
I climb into the truck, with her eyes still on me. She flicks me a smile—the same smile from last night as she admired the photograph Ryan took of me.
I can only imagine those same eyes tonight, once she, like everyone else, knows the truth.