It Wasn't Always Like This - Joy Preble Page 0,7

was now wilting in the overheated kitchen as it cooled, the icing dripping onto the cake’s platter. The museum sponsors were coming for supper, and Mrs. O’Neill had outdone herself.

“You watch Jamie and Lucy,” she told her oldest daughter. “Just for a few minutes. I promise.”

Emma nodded, because she knew her mother would go whether she agreed or not. Another thin dribble of icing slid from the chocolate cake. The air felt heavy and full. Her hair was curling wildly because her mother had been too distracted and busy to help her plait it, and besides, what did Emma care about her hair? Or anything except f inding a way to get her family to move back to Brooklyn where everything didn’t always taste like the sea. It made her feel like she was drowning.

A plan arose in her brain then. Emma was fond of plans, of f iguring things out and getting the right answer. She hated making mistakes, and everything about Florida felt like a mistake.

She skimmed across the kitchen and down the hall into the small parlor where her brother Jamie was playing a game of marbles with her sister Lucy. In her haste, she almost tripped over a cat’s-eye marble that had rolled toward the hall.

“Jamie,” she said, “take care of Lucy. I’ll be right back. It’s important, Jamie. Are you listening?”

He was, sort of, but she knew she had to hurry. She was already out the door before she realized she hadn’t told them not to touch the ham or rolls or cake. But Jamie was eight already, and Lucy had just turned six. More than old enough to be responsible for a few minutes. That was what Emma’s ten-year-old logic informed her.

Her mother might have gone to the aviary.

Emma caught no glimpse of her down the dirt road that led from their house to the museum buildings. The plan evolved. She would go to the aviary and f ind her mother—and if she saw them together, her mother and Mr. Ryan, she would . . . well, she wasn’t sure what she would do. But it would be something. And then her father would know and take them all home and leave this crazy business and this foreign place to the Ryans.

Only that wasn’t what happened at all.

What happened was Emma yanked open the door to the aviary without thinking about what was on the other side. There was a furious rush of wings and the bird was past her, shooting into the air before she could even take a startled breath and realize her mistake.

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh no!” She turned, latching the door behind her, but it was too late. The hawk soared into the bright blue sky, its jess trailing, wings wide and dark. Sweat trickled down the hollow of Emma’s neck. Her heart beat hard and sharp in her chest. Her ankles were itching like mad because she hadn’t even stopped to put on her shoes, and something in the grass had irritated them.

The hawk screeched—loud enough to make her wince, like it was taunting her.

She gaped at it, panicked, unable to move or think.

And then, as if out of nowhere, Charlie Ryan strode toward her. He was a slender weed of a boy back then. He calmly lifted his face toward the sky and whistled low and long. Above him, the hawk hovered, then circled. Once, twice. Then it landed with an oddly delicate grace on Charlie’s jacketed arm, talons curling then gripping tight. Its wings settled.

A dangerous thing, this bird. A heavy thing. Emma could see that now. A goshawk, Charlie told her now. That’s what it was called. Even though it hadn’t escaped, even though this boy had exerted some sort of magic control over it while she was still frozen with fear.

But Charlie didn’t f linch. He wasn’t even wearing that long glove—was it called a gauntlet? He knew how to be still, this boy, Emma thought. So unlike her father. How had she never noticed?

His eyes locked on to hers. There was a smudge of something on his cheek, but Emma barely noticed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got him. He knows I trust him. And he trusts me.”

Had his father taught him to handle birds? Or was this quiet, perfect fearlessness just inside him, this knowing about birds? He was her age, but he seemed so much wiser, older. Mostly it was the way he said the word “trust.” When her father described how he