Chapter 6

The barn stayed black until the last truck pulled out of the lot.

Near midnight Elam cracked the doors and looked both ways down the empty midway.

"Clear," he said.

They carried Bex to his Ford between the shuttered trailers.

No gray coat by the gate.

No one at the fence.

Meryl drove her own truck, and Elam's headlights sat in her mirror the whole nine miles.

The farmhouse stood back from the rural route with one porch bulb burning.

It was near one in the morning when they got the door open.

Bex never came all the way awake.

"Not the couch," Meryl said. "There's a real bed. Back room."

She hadn't meant to send him to that room.

The words were out before she caught them.

Elam carried the girl down the hall, and Meryl opened the door she mostly kept shut.

Her sister's room.

Same quilt. Same yellow curtains. Dust soft on the windowsill.

On the dresser stood a small wooden bird.

Honey oak. Egg-sized. A chipped notch in the tail.

It had sat there since the funeral.

Meryl had cleaned around it for three years and never once moved it.

She picked it up now.

She gave it a small shake, and the pea rattled, soft and familiar.

Elam laid Bex on the quilt and eased her red sandals off.

Meryl set the dresser bird on the pillow.

She slid Bex's bird out of the girl's loose hands and laid it beside the first.

Two birds, side by side.

Same wood. Same wrong notch. Made by the same hand in the same winter.

Bex's eyes came half open.

She looked at the pair for a long moment without moving.

"Mama's other bird," she said, like she'd always known it was out there somewhere.

"Where'd that one come from, baby?"

"My sister made it," Meryl said. "A long time ago. Before you."

Bex thought about that.

She pulled both birds in under her chin and let her eyes fall shut.

Elam stood in the doorway.

"I'll sit up," he said. "You sleep."

"Nobody's sleeping tonight."

A set of headlights moved on the road.

Out here nobody drove slow at one a.m.

These slowed.

Meryl crossed to the window and lifted the curtain an inch.

The lights crawled to the mouth of the driveway and stopped there.

A gray truck. She knew its shape by heart now.

It didn't turn in.

It rolled on, slow, taillights shrinking toward the county line.

Elam came up at her shoulder.

"He's learning the house," he said.

Meryl let the curtain drop.

"Stay with her."

She went to the kitchen and stood with her thumb over the screen.

She thought about Dot's text and the school photo and the folded map.

She dialed the county sheriff's non-emergency line and said a man was circling her place, and she had papers that told why.

They said they'd send somebody out.

Back in the bedroom, Bex had rolled toward the wall.

Her lips were moving against the pillow.

Meryl leaned down to catch it.

"If you can't be safe, be small," Bex whispered.

Meryl's hand stopped on the quilt.

That was Arden's. Hers and Arden's. And it had come down to Bex, word for word.