So maybe Billy Kent had a reason to be wary of us, after all.
Maybe everybody did.
I cut through the graveyard on the way home. Autumnal, eternal, welcoming. The rain here was not as fierce; it died down to a steady, light trickle. The ground was soggy with wet leaves. Although it must have been after midnight by that point, the moon was bright in the sky and lit everything with a soft, yellow glow.
Vira had given me dry clothes to wear (black jeans,black turtleneck, black lacy bra) but those, too, were already damp. I propped the umbrella up against a grave and sat down on a stone bench. Because I couldn’t go home, because I couldn’t think ofwhereto go, so I figured I might as well stay there and make myself comfortable.
Vira had given me a spoon and a pint of Broken Hearts ice cream for the road, which seemed appropriate. I pulled the top off the carton and started eating. It was that perfect temperature: soft and creamy, not too melty. I was halfway through the pint when I heard the whistling, and somehow, though I didn’t think I’d heard him whistle before, I knew who it was.
Harrison Lowry.
He hadn’t seen me yet, and so I was gifted the rare pleasure of watching the movements of someone who thinks he’s completely alone. Harrison whistled a somber, depressing tune that sounded a little bit like the By-the-Sea shanty. He walked with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, which was just a little too big for him, in an adorable sort of way, in a way that made him seem a little younger than he was. His hair was wet and messy, and he didn’t have an umbrella with him. And he looked sad, distant—like he was in another world entirely. That was probably why he hadn’t noticed me yet, although he’d come to rest not ten feet away from me.
Not knowing what else to do, I cleared my throat.
Harrison jumped a mile, and then he saw me and smiledand put a hand over his heart. “Geez Louise,” he said, adding “geez Louise” to the list of things that made Harrison Lowry strangely appealing. “Georgina! What a strange place to meet.”
I felt an overwhelming happiness—that he didn’t run away the moment he saw me, that he didn’t seem that bothered at all to be so close to me, and that he even seemed, maybe, pleased to have run into me. I held the ice cream out to him, and he came and sat next to me on the bench and took it.
“Tell me,” he said, taking a bite of Broken Hearts, “what brings you to the graveyard in the middle of this rainy night?”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said. “You?”
“A little bit of insomnia, I’m afraid. I spent so many nights looking for Annabella that now I can’t seem to sleep. I didn’t want to wake my sister, what with all my tossing and turning.”
Ah, Prue.
Her name still sent a little rush of warmth down my arms, even though I hadn’t seen her since the funeral. It was nice to know that she was well, even in the chaos of everything.
Harrison chuckled, took another bite of ice cream. “I bet it gets old, dealing with all these bird lovers, doesn’t it?” he said after a minute. “I think we’re all prone to the sentimental. Even those of us who didn’t know her well.”
“It doesn’t get old,” I said softly. “It’s nice. What made you want to find her in the first place?”
“Just the idea, I think, of seeing something that so few people before me have seen... It became a bit of an obsession. My sister would say it’s abigobsession, I’m sure.”
“It’s nice that you have each other,” I said.
“It’s nice to have sisters, isn’t it? You would know,” he said, and looked at me out of the very corner of his eye, like he was trying to hide how eager he was to hear my response. Like he had heard something.
“I do have one of those, yeah.”
“It’s nice,” he repeated. He looked so suddenly sad, sitting there, and more like a little kid than ever, his shoulders hunched and his arms hugged around his knees and every inch of him completely dripping wet.
“I’m glad you don’t hate me,” I blurted out. I wished I could pluck the words out of the air and force them back in my mouth, back down my throat. But you can’t unsay things once they’re out in the world. Not even Fernweh women can manage that.
Harrison swallowed. He put the pint on the bench between us, resting the spoon carefully across its top. “How do I put this,” he wondered aloud. “All right. Georgina, I don’t believe for a second that your sister—or anyone in your family, for that matter—had anything to do with Annabella’s death.”
“How come?” I asked.
I really needed to learn how to keep my mouth shut unless it was to saythank you for not thinking we’re murderers.
“You’re all smart women,” Harrison said. “And it would be decidedlyunsmart to sabotage your only means of livelihood.”
“We wouldn’t kill the bird because without the bird there won’t be any birdheads, and without the birdheads there would be nobody to stay at the inn,” I translated.
“Exactly.”
“How come you’re the only one intelligent enough to figure that out?” I asked, even though I was thinking something more along the lines ofyou don’t know my sister; her motivations are a little harder to pinpoint.
