If These Wings Could Fly - Kyrie McCauley Page 0,13
Campbell and Juniper are safe. Or I can’t go.
The last thing in the world I need is to set myself up for one more heartbreak. Because in my living room there is a framed photo of Auburn High’s Homecoming King and Queen from nineteen years ago, and it’s a constant reminder of what ever after really looks like. Maybe classic lit had it right all along, and the romances just haven’t gotten to the real end of the story yet.
If you wait long enough, all hearts get broken.
Chapter Ten
THE CROWS DON’T STOP COMING. I feel their shining eyes watching us wherever we go. And every day, the eyes multiply by two and two and two, until the twos form thousands. They perch on fences. They cling to trees. They watch from rain gutters and church steeples and broken weather vanes spinning on barns. The rusted roosters turn not with the wind, but with the inconsistent, shifting weight of feathers.
One afternoon they arrive like a black cloud over Auburn, thousands at once.
I hear the complaints whispered everywhere I go—in the grocery store line, and by the secretaries in the school office. A mess. A nuisance. Why don’t they leave? And maybe it’s because we already had Joe, the strangeness of the bird a constant presence in our lives, but I find that I like the birds. I like their noise and their watchful eyes. I like the way they pay attention to the people of Auburn.
The first time I noticed Joe was two years ago this autumn; I remember because we’d just buried Grandpa, and even though our view hadn’t changed, everything felt different. We used to stay with my grandparents all the time. Their old farmhouse was our second home, our safe retreat from my father’s anger. It always worked in a cycle—the rage, the apologies, a few weeks or sometimes just days of peace, and then the buildup would begin again. And Mom was usually good at reading those signs, and casually suggesting we go stay with her parents for a night or two. But occasionally even she missed the signs, and we wouldn’t know the storm was coming until it was on top of us and Mom was ushering us out to her car and bundling us into car seats and showing up at my grandparents’ house in the dark of the night. Sometimes we would arrive crying and still scared, but most of my memories of our huddled walk into their home are marked by silence. A quiet understanding among the adults, and a familiar acceptance for us girls. Besides, by the time we got there, we were feeling safe.
But then two years ago a heart attack wrecked that carefully orchestrated balance. Grandpa was gone, and Nana slipped fast. Without Grandpa there filling in the gaps, we realized that Nana wasn’t doing very well on her own. So their house was sold to pay for an apartment in assisted living. I begged Mom to leave him then. To move us in with Nana, so we could take care of her.
When she refused, we didn’t speak for a month.
We visit Nana every few weeks, but I like to supplement those visits, so sometimes I tell Mom I’m staying late after school, and I wait on the corner for a bus that takes me thirty minutes to the neighboring town of Lincoln, where Nana’s apartment is. Today everything is gray outside the bus window: the clouds overhead, the building she lives in. There is a flash of black and gray on the building’s sign. Joe. It isn’t the first time he’s followed me here.
I step from gray into yellow. The walls are goldenrod, and in the waiting room is an ancient sofa covered in lemons, faded and soft on their edges where the fabric has been worn. I sign in, and the receptionist waves me up, recognizing me.
Nana greets me with a long hug. “Leighton! What a lovely surprise. It’s been weeks since you last visited.”
“Hi, Nana. I’m sorry. School started.”
“Don’t you dare apologize. Let’s have tea. When’s your bus?”
I put her kettle on for tea and crack her windows open for fresh air.
“An hour,” I say, and settle on the chair across from her. Some days she’s every ounce the woman I’ve always known, and today is one of those days. Her mind sharp and her memory untouched. “Mom doesn’t know today.”
She nods her understanding. She knows I sneak here.