Following Mr. Schwarber through the garage, I refused to
let myself think about what might happen when I got inside. "Be
cautious," El Brujo had said, settled big as a throw pillow on
my lap, and I knew she was right. Worrying about what might
happen was worse than useless because, well, it was less than
the shadow of a passing breeze until it actually happened.
If, y'know, breezes had shadows...
But, see, the thing was: Serena was right, too. Still
clinging to the front of my jacket, her tail jittering in rhythm
with her words, she was muttering, "All will be well! All will
be well!" over and over again. Blind baseless hope is one
thing, but evidence-based optimism, that was something else.
Mr. Schwarber pushed the door from the garage into the
kitchen open. "Honey?" he called. "I'm home!"
An exasperated snort from somewhere ahead. "Daddy! That
wasn't even funny twenty years ago! Why do you always--??"
Rolling into the kitchen behind him, I saw Deena there in
the doorway, her eyes going wide, her arms tightening around the
big pillow she was clutching. "Oh, God," she whispered. "Gus,
I--" Her voice caught, and she more slid than stepped out of
sight into the next room.
The anguish on her thin, pale face made me shake, but El
Brujo shifted against my legs, murmured, "Be steadfast, August,
and listen more with your heart's ears than your head's."
I blinked at her, but the movement of Serena's tail
fluffing drew my attention to her, the squirrel swinging around
to stare at El Brujo. "That is excellent advice, El Brujo!"
El Brujo's whiskers spread in a feline smile. "Well, Miss
Serena, I am a professional, after all."
Mr. Schwarber was motioning for me to move forward, so I
grabbed the wheel rims and pushed us through the kitchen into
the hallway. Where I had to stop, of course, the step from the
hallway down into the front room a good six inches, I figured,
and not the sort of thing I felt confident I could get myself
down in anything like a dignified manner.
It was a nice front room, though: bookcases, a chair, a
table with a lamp, a coffee table, a TV, a sofa straight ahead
under the big window, the curtains drawn. Deena sat kind of
huddle up on this sofa, her feet tucked up so her legs and the
pillow is her arms formed a barrier between her and me. She had
her mouth pressed into the pillow, too, though her eyes peered
through her bangs directly at me.
So I said, "Deena, I'm so, so sorry." Because I knew she
was going to say it even though she had nothing to be sorry
about.
She didn't say anything, though, and as much as seeing her
made my throat want to squeeze shut like a vise, I used the
breathing techniques El Brujo had taught me, made everything
relax as much as I could, and let more words trickle out: "I
wanted to impress you...with my crow trick and didn't think...
just didn't think. Taking down your museum, too, I...I'm sorry
I made you think about that."
It was maybe the most words I'd managed to say with my
human voice in a decade, and for all that I was sounding like a
bullfrog by the end, I would've gone on trying to make my
apology if she hasn't pulled her mouth away from the pillow and
said, "It's just--"
She stopped, her gaze flickering away from mine, focusing
on the couple or five magazines stacked on the end of the coffee
table. "Every time I think I've hit rock-bottom, that I've
fallen as far as I can, I...I do something or say something or
stumble over something that sends me tumbling even further."
Her fingers dug into the surface of the pillow, and I
didn't have to see the needle tracks on her arms to imagine the
feeling of them catching on the inside of her long-sleeved
shirt. "After all the lies my life has been the last few years,
admitting my thing, coming here to get clean, knowing I had to
or I'd die, and the first thing they say is I gotta get rid of
my museum! And then when I admit that it's an anchor tying me
to the past, you look at me all sweet and innocent and offer me
that pebble. And that crow?"
The last word came out with a sob, and she clenched her
eyes. "I knew it was a trick, knew it had to be a trick,
knew you must've, like, trained the crow to do that, but...
but...but--" Her eyes popped open, deep and haunted and gouging
my heart from my chest. "When I was using, it was...it was a
fantasy world, see? I wanted magic and fairies and elves and
talking cats and birds 'cause real life was so...so--"
I couldn't tell if I was breathing anymore, if my heart was
still beating even. Then Deena sucked in a ragged gasp of air,
and I felt my own lungs do the same. "But I need reality." She
lowered the pillow, gulped some more air. "'Cause trying to
ignore it came real damn close to killing me."
The clock ticking in the kitchen was the only sound for a
long couple of seconds. "So I'm sorry I panicked," she said,
and a ghost of a smile tugged her lips. "And I hope I didn't
upset you or your crow too badly."
My jaw worked, my thoughts swirling with thorns and nettles
about how right she was, about how cats and squirrels and dogs
and crows, they don't talk in real life, about how anyone
who thought they talked to animals must be either stupid or
crazy.
But "We'll both get over it," is all I said out loud, El
Brujo and Serena both cold and unmoving as stones against me.
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