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“I know, baby. But I promise, I’m fine. It’s nice to get some fresh air. Are you cold?”
“A little,” she shivers.
I turn around and wrap my arms around her. “Come with me and I’ll keep you warm,” I whisper in her ear before we walk to the pool and the sun loungers. We have towels in a locker up here, and I take one out and wrap it around her shoulders.
“Thank…” she starts to say, but then she looks over my shoulder and her flushed cheeks suddenly turn pale.
I turn around to see what it is that has spooked her.
“What’s that in the pool, Liam?” she whispers.
I blink at the small, dark mass in the pool. We usually have it covered, but I’ve been swimming up here the past few days because it’s good for my recovery. “It’s a dead bird, baby. That’s all. I’ll fish it out later.”
“Is it a Blue Jay?” she asks with a tremor in her voice.
I release her from my embrace and walk closer to the pool and she follows a few steps behind me. “I think so. Why?”
“There’s blood.”
“Yeah,” I agree as a small pool of blood surrounds the bird. “We’ll get the pool cleaned.” I turn to her and frown and her entire body is trembling from head to toe and she is so pale, I’m worried she’s going to pass out.
“Jessie.” I walk back to her, wrapping her in my arms again and holding her close to me. “What is it, baby?”
“Do you get many Blue Jays dead on your roof?”
I look down at her. “Not really. But this is New York. There are birds everywhere. I’m pretty sure we’ve had a few dead ones up here before. It probably drowned in the pool or something.”
“But it was bleeding.” She shivers in my arms.
“So?”
“So, like someone hurt it. And then they put it here.”
“We’re ten floors up, Jessie. It fell out of the sky. Maybe someone shot it and it flew away?” I look down at her and the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach begins to grow. This isn’t about a dead bird.
I walk us over to a sun lounger and sit down, pulling her onto my lap. I brush the hair back from her pale face. “What is it? It’s just a bird.”
“No. It’s a Blue Jay,” she stammers.
I frown at her as she stares into the distance.
“Jessie. I need you to tell me what’s going on, baby. Because you’re freaking me out.”
She turns and looks at me. “Sorry,” she says with a shake of her head, as though she has come back to reality.
“Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what’s wrong?”
She swallows hard and nods her head, but it’s a few seconds before she speaks. “When the Wolf kept me prisoner, I had no one to talk to. I never saw another living soul the whole time I was there. He didn’t like animals, and he used to shoot the raccoons or the birds that came into the yard. It was like a sport. He would lie on the roof with his sniper rifle and pick them off,” she shudders and I pull her closer. “One day, I found an injured Blue Jay. I made it a nest from branches and leaves and I nursed it back to health. I understood that as soon as it could fly, it would leave the yard, and I wanted it to, because he would have shot it anyway. So, I knew that I was never going to keep it. But for two weeks, I cared for it every day and I lived for my hour outside where I could check on it and make sure it was okay. It was so nice just to have another heartbeat around, you know?” She wipes a tear from her eye and I swear my heart is about to break into pieces. “It was doing really well. It was almost ready to fly, and then one morning I woke up and it was on the pillow next to me.”
“Jessie.” I squeeze her tighter.
“He had sliced off its head, and left it there with blood dripping onto my sheets.” She wipes her cheeks again as the tears run down them.
I pull her against my chest, and she sobs in my arms. While I hold her there, I look at the bird in the pool. It still has its head. No doubt, it was shot or injured and it flew up here and died. But my girl is spooked and I can’t blame her after what she just told me.
When she stops crying, she looks up at me and I wipe the tears from her face with the towel. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she nods. “You think it did just fly up here and die, Liam?”
