Page 46 of What You Never Knew

I rub the sleep from my eyes and reach for my phone to see if Ezra has texted me. He hasn’t. I could lie in bed and obsess over it, allow Leslie’s words to resurface and wreak havoc, but instead I force myself up and into my running clothes. I have to clear the fog somehow. I’ll go for a run, come home, and give him a call. Maybe he’s waiting for me to make the first move, since I’m the one who fucked up.

Standing against the counter, eating a banana and enjoying a cup of coffee, I commend myself. My mind-set about Ezra is healthy. In the past, if things went sour with a man, I’d just run away, move on to the next one. It was my pattern both before Leo and during. I won’t do that with Ezra.

Walking to the front door, I wonder if I might be able to convince him to come for dinner. I’ll cook this time, maybe dig a little deeper to get a better sense of him. I bend down to tighten my laces, do a few warm-up stretches, and then pull open the door, ready for my run.

It’s the smell that hits me first—rot, the meaty kind. Then the flies, so many I can hear the loud buzzing. My eyes sweep the verandah, and at first I’m not really even sure what I’m looking at. Dozens of small black specks. It takes a few seconds to connect the smell to what is laid out in front of me. When I do, I stumble backward and fall through the open doorway. Dark carcasses, wings folded tight against the body, black glassy eyes still and empty. A crowd of dead birds littered across the verandah floor.

Crab-walking myself back into the cottage, I shut the door with my foot and collapse onto the floor. My heart is pounding. I gag out of reflex, the smell lingering in my nostrils. How did they get here? What kills birds? Flying into a window, but not that many and I would have heard it.

Taking a deep breath, I order myself to get up. I can’t stay here all day. I go to a window that overlooks the verandah. Having glass separate me from the horror just beyond allows me to stand there and survey the carnage. There are exactly twelve birds out there, all black in color. Smaller than crows, but I can’t tell what kind of bird they are. The longer I stand there and stare at them, the more disturbing it is.

Feeling as though I might be sick, I turn away, pull my phone out of my pocket, and dial Ezra’s number. It’s the only thing I can think to do. It takes some explaining, but he when he finally understands that I have a verandah full of bird carcasses and that I’m scared, he says he’ll be right over. Through the window I snap a few photos. Then I retreat deeper into the cottage.

The sound of Ezra’s footsteps on the porch makes me brave enough to open the front door. He’s standing in the middle of the mess, his eyes narrowed in confusion, his mouth open in shock.

“What the hell?” he says.

“I came down this morning, and they were all here like this.” I take a tentative step outside. “I Googled and there are mass bird deaths, but not on someone’s verandah, and they were starlings, which I don’t think these are. Somebody must have put them here. Leslie Swann. She did this.” I point at the carnage in front of me.

“Okay, slow down, June. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

“You don’t believe me?” I accuse him. “You’re the one who called her a crackpot. Wouldn’t this classify as crackpot behavior?” I don’t give him a chance to answer. “She was here yesterday, Ezra, and I told her to get the fuck off my property.”

He puts a hand to his head and closes his eyes for a second as though it’s all just too much to deal with. “I believe you. I do. We’ll figure it all out, but right now I think you need to go inside and call animal control to make a report.” He gestures to the birds. “And I’ll clean this up.”

“Are you sure?”

He waves me away. “It’s nothing. I’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. Racoons, mice, moles, pheasants. If it’s wild and up in these parts, I’ve seen it dead and had to remove it from someone’s cottage.” I gratefully go inside and leave Ezra to clean up the dead birds.

Animal control takes my report but tells me I’ll need to call the police if I think someone did it deliberately. They say I could save one of the birds to bring in for an examination to determine the actual cause of death but I wouldn’t get the results for up to a month.

Frustrated and still shaky, I do the only thing I can think to do—go into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Hopefully Ezra will stay and have some. Only as I’m pouring water into the machine do I realize how badly my hands are trembling. The door swings open with a bang and I jump, splashing some over the sides.

Ezra arrives in the kitchen. “I’m not sure coffee is what you should be having right now.”

“I know. I’m pretty jumpy after coming down to that.” I thumb in the direction of the verandah.

“I don’t blame you,” he says, going to the sink to wash his hands. “That would be an awful thing to come down to this morning.”

“You didn’t pick them up with your bare hands, did you?”

He laughs, drying them on a tea towel. “No, of course not. I used a pair of work gloves. And the birds are in a garbage bag in my boat now. I’ll get rid of them for you, but I’m gonna take one by animal control to get it tested. And you should probably wash the verandah down with a few buckets of soapy water.”

“Animal control said it could take up to a month to get any results.” I throw a hand up in exasperation.

He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about that. I know someone that works there, and he owes me a favor. I’ll make sure we get the results faster than that.”

Affection for him swells in me, almost muffling the anxiety. Even mad at me he comes here and takes care of everything. What Leslie implied about him yesterday is literally blown apart. Ezra Keen is a good man, I’m sure of it.

“I’m really sorry about yesterday,” I say. “It was totally selfish and out of line. And I don’t think your dad killed mine. I was just asking questions, trying to get her to talk.”

He shakes his head again. “I shouldn’t have reacted so strongly. I know you’re dealing with a lot of new stuff up here and want answers. Just like I did. Still do.”

I sit down across from him. “So we’re okay then?”

He reaches out and takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “We’re good.”

I’m about to launch into a recount of my encounter with Leslie when his phone buzzes. He looks down at it and frowns. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go. I was right in the middle of a landscaping job when you called me, and I left a guy there on his own. Apparently, he’s knocked down the corner of a stone wall.”