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think? A little scary?"
She moved slowly toward him. Picking up her doll, she cradled it to her chest and sat down beside him. He waited for her to speak, but she didn't, just sat there, staring up at him through wide eyes.
He pulled a small book from the pocket of his coat. "Perhaps I could read you a story?"
A lightning-quick smile pulled at her lips.
He opened the book and began to read to her, his voice strong and sure as he told her the story of Cinderella.
Somewhere about the time Cinderella was going to the ball, Lara wiggled a little closer to him. He thought for a second that she was going to rest her head on his
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shoulder, but she didn't, and surprisingly, he wished that she had.
When the story was over, she looked up at him, her eyes shining. "That was really a pretty story."
He wanted to reach out to her, push the tangled hair from her face, but he didn't move. It felt awkward, wanting to comfort her and yet not knowing how. He started to say something-he wasn't sure what-when a trembling squawk sounded.
A tiny bird fell from a nest above them, landed in a small, broken heap in the needle-strewn ground. It lay there writhing, its yellow beak snapping open and shut, its broken wing bent at an awkward angle. He scooped the frail little thing in his hand. "Poor baby," he murmured.
She stared at the bird as if it were a miracle. "C'n I touch it?"
Ian rested his hand on her bent knee. "Go ahead."
She stared at him for a long minute, then slowly reached out. Her pink, pudgy fingers whispered across the bird's head. She looked up at him, grinning. "Oh, it's so soft... ."
She bent closer to the bird and stroked its head, just as she'd done to her rag doll. "You'd better fly on home, little bird," she murmured.
"I think its wing is broken," Ian said.
Lara gasped and looked up at him. "Is the birdie gonna die?" she asked in a shaky voice.
His first reaction was to answer clinically: Yes. This bird would probably die. But when he looked in Lara's big, hope-filled eyes, he felt something inside him soften, give way. He realized for the first time that his honesty had always been a shield-he'd wielded it like a sharp instrument, using it to cut off discussions he didn't want to have, and avoid emotions he didn't want to feel. He'd cloaked himself with blunt honesty; now, sitting here at the edge of the woods with a retarded girl
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and her broken-winged bird, he saw that he'd been wrong.
There was two truths-ones that held hope and ones that did not.
"Maybe if he got fed every day, he could grow strong."
"We could put it back in the nest. He would get better there."
"Its mother wouldn't care for it anymore."
"Because its wing is broke?"
He nodded.
She looked away for a second, and when she turned back to him, her eyes were filled with tears. "Mommies don't like broken babies, do they?"
"Ah, Lara," he whispered, wishing suddenly that he could make things all right for this child with the big eyes and the quiet voice and the pain that lived so deep in her soul. He knew she wasn't talking about birds right now, she was talking about her own mother. Ian remembered the woman who'd dropped Lara off here- years ago. Back when Lara was a little girl with a ready smile and a giggly laugh.
Jesus, how could he dredge that memory up from his scotch-soaked past? But it was there, shivering in the darkness, waiting to leap out at him.
And he'd said nothing to her back then, hadn't taken her hand or dried her tears or anything. He'd just taken the woman's money and her daughter and said nothing. Not a damned thing.
