Page 24 of Other Birds

Zoey smiled. Maybe itshouldhave affected her more, seeing where Lizbeth died. But, curiosity aside, she thought there was a strange detachment in going through someone’s personal belongings when she hadn’t known them in life. It was like Lizbeth Lime wasn’t even real, that she was just a story.

This was all just one big story.

Zoey tried to imagine what it would have been like if her own mother had left this much behind. When her mother and father had separated, Paloma had put all her belongings into a storage unit. She’d then, according to Alrick, proceeded to bilk him out of everything she could in the divorce. After she’d died Alrick claimed he hadn’t known about the storage unit until it was too late, and all of Paloma’s abandoned belongings had been sold at auction to strangers. Zoey could remember living in a fancy hotel room with her mother during the time her mother and father had been fighting over the divorce settlement. Paloma would often laugh and tell Zoey what a wonderful time they were going to have when they moved back to Mallow Island. She had signed the divorce papers the day she’d died. She had left seven-year-old Zoey in the hotel room, paying a housekeeper to check in on her, while she’d gone out fordrinks to celebrate with her lawyer, a man Zoey remembered had often spent the night with Paloma. The policeman who had taken Zoey to her father after the car accident had packed a bag of Zoey’s clothing. Zoey had later found a few of her mother’s things mistakenly tangled in her own—a pair of lavender-colored leather gloves, a twisted and knotted gold bracelet, and a tube of saucy red lipstick, the color of which was called Bye Bye Birdie. The policeman had also placed in the bag a photo of her mother he’d obviously found somewhere in the hotel room, probably because he thought Zoey might want to have it with her in the hard days and months to come. It was a kindness she would always be grateful for, because otherwise Zoey would hardly remember what her mother had looked like.

About an hour later, Zoey was going through old fan mail addressed to Roscoe Avanger, which Lizbeth had obviously read so many times that the oil from her fingertips had made the pages as thin as rice paper. She looked up suddenly when Pigeon, who hadn’t left the room since Zoey had discovered the bookcase, hopped across Lizbeth’s desk and knocked over a box of flyers for a decades-old Girl Scout cookie sale.

“Pigeon!” she said angrily. “Go back outside and make some new friends!”

“What?” Charlotte said from the living room.

“Nothing,” Zoey called back.

She set about picking up the flyers, and that’s when she found it.

She thought it was an old bill at first, which stood out because she’d realized by this point that the only method to Lizbeth’s madness was that each of her boxes contained similar things.

But it wasn’t an old bill.

She hurried out to show Charlotte, all sorts of explanations playing around in her head. “I found a life insurance policy.”

“Did she collect those, too?”

“No, it’s the only one. What ifthisis what Lucy’s looking for?” she said as she walked out.

“What are you talking about?” Charlotte called after her.

She walked around the garden to Frasier’s door, trying to hide the papers in case Lucy was watching. He opened on the third knock and she held the papers up to his face. “Lizbeth had a life insurance policy,” she said. “Not a big one, but Oliver is the beneficiary.”

“It’s probably expired,” Frasier said, not in the least bit surprised. He took the papers from her and adjusted his square glasses to read.

“It’s from last year. I don’t think it’s expired,” she said. “Do you think she was afraid this was going to happen? That she knew she was going to die? Or maybe she was in danger?”

“Lizbeth gave as little thought to death as she did to life,” he said, turning a page. Several dellawisps were taking advantage of the open door and were hopping into the office with an air of finding something to complain about, like they were tiny health and safety inspectors.

“Why would she have a life insurance policy, then?”

“She took out several policies over the years, when she could scrape together the money. Then she let them all expire. She did it for the only reason she ever did anything, to have more paper to put in her collection.” He finished reading, then folded the papers. “As if she didn’t have enough paper already.”

“Oh,” Zoey said awkwardly. “I see.” She thought she’d finally found the reason Lucy was breaking in. She’d started to imagine that Lizbeth had been so afraid of her sister that she’d taken out the policy in case Lucy did something to her, and that Lizbeth’s only hope for justice was for someone to find this and connect the dots before Lucy got to the policy and destroyed it.

It wasn’t a particularly proud moment, how deflated she felt. All Lucy had done was keep to herself, and Zoey had created something nefarious out of it. Not only that, she’d beenexcitedabout being a part of a drama that was, even in Zoey’s made-up version, extremely sad at its core.

She didn’t move, and Frasier waited patiently for her to finally work through what she wanted to say. It was Lucy who was breaking into Lizbeth’s place, Zoey was still sure of it. She’d smelled her cigarette smoke that night when she’d walked by her. But what if Lucy was doing it just to sit and grieve, surrounded by her sister’s things? And maybe the reason she was doing it at night was because she thought she wasn’t welcome. Maybe she was just waiting for an invitation.

“Is Lucy okay?” Zoey finally asked.

Frasier considered that seriously before he said, “That’s a complicated question to answer, when it comes to Lucy. Why?”

“She knows she can come in and look around any time she wants, doesn’t she? I wouldn’t bother her.”

“I don’t think she’d like that.” He started shooing the birds out of his office with a wave of the insurance policy. “Have you found anything else?”

“No. But I put a copy ofSweet MallowRoscoe Avanger signed for Lizbeth in the box for Oliver.” She stepped aside as the birds hopped out, puffy with indignation. “Listen, since Oliver isn’t coming home, is there an address where I can send the things I’ve collected for him?”

“Zoey…”

“Would you at least ask him?” she persisted. She had her own small box of things of her mother’s, and it meant everything to her. Surely his box would mean something to Oliver, too, one day. When Frasier hesitated, she asked, “What ifIask him?”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com