“Nor have I,” he admitted. I realized this was the first time I had been alone with Harrison. He looked completely devastated and suddenly a lot younger than I knew he was. He put his face into his hands and sighed heavily, his shoulders rising and falling. Then he looked at me and rubbed his eyes. “What do you think happened to the eggs?” he asked quietly.
“The eggs?” I thought back to the Elmhursts’ barn, to Annabella lying in the dirt with pieces of her nest strewn about her. “There weren’t any eggs.”
“I know. But I also know that Annabella only builds her nest when she’s ready to lay. She’s never been found before she’s laid her eggs. Not once.”
“So what are you saying? That somebody took them?”
“Or broke them, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. I just think it’s weird they weren’t there.”
“I don’t know who could have done this.”
“It couldn’t have been a birdhead,” Harrison said.“They all love her too much.”
“Hey, you’re a birdhead too,” I pointed out.
Harrison smiled weakly. “Fine—weall love her too much.”
“But it couldn’t have been an islander. We love her just as much.”
“What about that really pregnant woman I’ve seen darting around here?”
“I don’t think the babymooners snuck out of the inn in the middle of the night to murder a bird,” I said.
The truth was, I had no idea why someone would want to kill Annabella. She was responsible for the fiscal success of our tourist season, a source of pride, our sole claim to fame. I couldn’t imagine anyone on By-the-Sea would have wanted her dead.
“We’re the only newcomers here,” Harrison said thoughtfully, a little quieter. “It would stand to reason...”
“I don’t think you had anything to do with this.”
“I’m only saying, it would be an obvious conclusion. New birdhead comes to the island; Annabella ends up dead.”
“Nobody is going to think that.”
“Well,somebodykilled her,” Harrison said. Then he looked at me quickly, a little worried. “I think I’m panicking a little. I don’t know. Perhaps I’d better get some sleep too. Is there any more of that tea?”
“Go see my mom,” I said, pointing toward the kitchen.“She’ll take care of you.”
I went out to the backyard. Abigail and Eloise had gone, but Vira was still there, sitting alone, a dark smudge in the middle of the rapidly darkening night.
She held a bright-yellow umbrella, a tiny refuge against the downpour of rain.
I sat down beside her, and she put her arm around my shoulder.
“Fuck, Georgina,” she said.
I couldn’t answer her. I had begun to cry, and I thought in that moment I would never, ever be able to stop.
It rained throughout the night. When I woke up, it was still raining and the driveway was under a half inch of water. The door to Mary’s bedroom was slightly ajar, so I went in. She was asleep on top of the covers, still dressed in that black sweatshirt from yesterday. I woke her up and brought her into the bathroom, then handed her a towel and ran the bath. She didn’t protest, just waited patiently while the water filled and I sprinkled bath salts on the surface, something of my mother’s invention that smelled of lavender and camphor and made the room hazy and warm.
I shut my eyes as she undressed and got herself into the tub, and when I opened them she was submerged to her neck, her head tipped back and her hair spilling over the edge of the tub, already damp and frizzy from the moisture in the air. I sat on the toilet so I could make sure shedidn’t fall asleep and drown. She washed herself methodically with a bar of peppermint soap, raising her arms one by one over her head, lifting her feet gingerly out of the water. Her movements were slow and heavy, like she was in pain. The water was milky enough that I couldn’t see into it, but once, when she lifted her neck to wash her face, I saw what I thought was the dark edges of a purple bruise blossoming on her back. When I looked again, it was gone. An effect of my mother’s bath salts or a trick of the eye, I couldn’t be sure.
When she was done, I handed her a towel and she stepped out of the tub and onto the tile floor. She looked smaller, like she’d lost weight and inches overnight. My poor sister, who loved Annabella as much as I had, who had to imagine, as I had imagined, a murderer flinging the bird against a pole, breaking the fragile, hollow bones that held her together, twisting her wings, ruining her flight forever. I knew that great terrors could shrink a woman, and I knew that my sister would never be the same. That maybe none of us would.
I moved from the toilet so she could sit down, and then I towel dried her hair and combed it with my fingers, braiding it into a long plait that I twisted into a bun on the top of her head. She smelled like lavender, like fear.
“I never knew how much I cared about a little bird,” she said when I’d finished with her hair.
“It’s all going to be okay.”
