while Tom looked after Coco. Gaia stirred around eight o’clock in the morning. I sat beside her, making sure she was tucked in properly and that she could focus on me. If she wasn’t able to focus it was a sign that she was delirious or dehydrated.
“I’ve lost Louis,” she said tearfully. “I don’t know where he went. I took him outside and he must have run away.” She burst into tears then. “Just like Mumma.”
“Do you think you dropped him outside?”
She nodded.
“Well, I can go outside and have a look. He can’t have gone far.”
This appeased her. I dabbed her tears with a hankie and told her I’d go and look later on.
“You look very sad,” she said, once she’d settled back down.
“Well, that might be because I was very worried about you,” I said. “You gave me a fright. Do you want to tell me what you were doing running off like that? Hmm?”
“I think . . . I think I was having bad dreams again,” she said.
“About what?”
“About Mumma going for a swim.”
She had mentioned this swimming business before. It had to be significant. Maren had said that Aurelia killed herself by drowning. As far as I knew, nobody had told Gaia this—the party line was that Mummy had had an accident—but there had to be a connection. She was processing it. “OK. And why do you think Mumma went for a swim?”
She thought about it. “I don’t know. She saw something out the window.”
“What did she see?”
“I didn’t have my glasses on.”
Déjà vu. She’d said this before, I was sure. “And then she went out for a swim?”
She nodded.
“There was an elk print in the house, so I think she went outside to give him a bowl of porridge. And maybe he went into the water and she followed.”
She was getting more animated and trying to sit up, so I told her to lie back down and keep warm. “You need to rest, Gaia.”
She looked sad all of a sudden. “Where’s Dora?”
“Dora’s in her den, in the playroom,” I said. “Shall I go get her?”
She gave a small nod. “Remember not to let Daddy know she’s here, OK?”
It was a dangerous thing to still have the bird in the house. She’d grown into some sort of crow, or perhaps raven, with sleek navy-black feathers, round black eyes, and raptor-like claws. I figured it was cruel to keep her in a box all the time so I cordoned off a corner of the playroom with heavy curtains attached to the ceiling and held together with clothes pegs, both to keep her contained and to prevent Tom from seeing her. I propped a big branch against the wall for her to perch on and put bed pads on the floor for all the poop. She was very tame. She even responded to her name, which Gaia loved. She liked being held and stroked, particularly under her chin, and she’d cheekily decided that mashed-up chocolate biscuits were her favorite food. What was it Ibsen said? A forest bird never wants a cage? This one did. She had zero intention of flying away. I’d taken her out to the back porch and tried to fling her toward the forest a handful of times, but each time she merely hopped back and followed me into the house with her little gangsta waddle as if to say, This my crib, yo.
I went into the playroom, placed Dora in her box, and brought it through. Gaia sat upright and whispered for me to get her some pine nuts. Soft-hearted creature that I am, I obeyed. She put the nuts in her mouth, scooped Dora up in cupped hands, and let her peck the nuts from between her lips.
Side note: I’m aware that this was not very hygienic, and while I’d tried hard to think of a way I might circle this back to some kind of Montessori methodology, I was sure it would be perceived by both Tom and Maren as completely unsanitary, not to mention indulgent, because it was. I tried not to think of what would happen if Tom walked in. But Dora clearly made Gaia feel better. She laughed when she played with her, as did Coco—though Coco was always laughing—and her face looked brighter. In the grand scheme of things, I believed anything that brought a little sunshine back into Gaia’s life was to be embraced.
“Look!” she said happily as Dora snuggled beneath Gaia’s chin for a snooze. “She