Page 66 of Other Birds
“I didn’t tell you to pay attention to what she wore to bed.”
“I’m stopping while I’m ahead.”
“Smart man,” Charlotte said.
Oliver winked at Zoey, who almost tripped down the stairs. Sometimes the dynamic of their relationship was so comfortably platonic that she wanted nothing to change, like when Oliver sat with her on her balcony in the evenings after work. Most of the time they simply stared out at the garden, every once in a while turning to smile at each other as if they couldn’t quite believe this was their life now, that they were actually adults being trusted to navigate this world on their own. But once, he’d reached over and taken her hand and kissed it for no reason she could think of. It was as if she’d touched something electric, and she’d found herself thinking she would be perfectly okay ifeverythingchanged.
Pigeon hadn’t so much as dive-bombed her at that.
After breakfast, they packed Mac’s SUV full of everything Zoey had spent the last few weeks buying, which included a mother lode of pillows that made the Tahoe look like there was a slumber partygoing on inside of it. Just before they headed out in a caravan, Zoey ran back to her studio to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Then she locked her doors, her stomach feeling fluttery.
She got to the garden gate but stopped before she opened it. She stared at the motley crew gathered in the parking lot—the magically large redheaded man, the blond woman with her painted skin, the beautiful green-eyed boy, and the famous writer with his Rip van Winkle beard.
Her family.
She glanced over her shoulder. She caught the movement of Lucy’s curtain, and she knew she was watching. Ever since the night Lucy had appeared to save them, Mac would leave by her door small containers of the most exquisite food. Oliver would leave cigarettes. Zoey bought her marshmallows from the Trade Street candy shops, never the same flavor twice. And Charlotte left small bottles of bath oil that smelled like patchouli. Zoey always stayed awake as long as she could when these things were left out, hoping to finally see Lucy. She’d been the only one that night who hadn’t actually set eyes on her.
Zoey turned her attention to the garden, where the dellawisps were arguing. Pigeon was there, somewhere. She was watching, too. And, like Lucy, she wasn’t coming out.
Zoey wondered if one day she might wake and think Pigeon was just a dream. She decided right then and there that if that ever happened, it wouldn’t matter.
A dream, a story, an invisible bird—it was all the same thing, really.
Not everything has to be real to be true.
“Goodbye, Pigeon,” she whispered, then opened the gate and walked through.
GHOST STORY
Lizbeth
I readSweet Mallowfor the first time when Oliver’s father, Duncan, told me it was his favorite book. That was before Oliver. It was the only time in my entire life wheneverythingwas good. Of course it wouldn’t last, because Lucy then stole Duncan from me. She was awful to me, just awful, and no oneeverbelieved me. Not even you, I’m sure. You probably think I’m making all this up. But Duncan was mine, my one true love. He was trying so hard to be clean, and she corrupted him with her addiction because she hated me. It resulted in both of them going to prison on those prescription-forgery charges. He died of an overdose as soon as he got out.
That was the end of that. The only thing I had left of him wasSweet Mallowand how much we both loved it.
Well, that, and Oliver.
But after Oliver was born, I didn’t have much to do with him other than living in the same house with him and my mother. My mother justlovedhim. She played choo-choo train with his baby food on a spoon and potty trained him and took him to day care. She paid alot more attention to him than she’d paid tomewhen I was that age. So I let them have their little lovefest and locked myself in my room all day and pretended to write. What I was really doing was stacking and organizing junk mail we received into boxes. I’d collected paper with writing on it since I was a child, but it got worse as I got older. I never truly understood why I did this, but it gave me comfort. Maybe I thought that if I just collected enough words, I could totally rewrite myself one day. When I wasn’t collecting, I was readingSweet Mallowover and over, lingering on passages that Duncan had liked best.
I’d always known that Roscoe Avanger lived on the island, but I never dreamed I would ever get to meet the author of my and Duncan’s favorite book in the world. But then Idid.Next to meeting Duncan, it was the best day of my life. Roscoe had been renovating the Dellawisp at the time and had gone to Sugar and Scribble Bakery for lunch. Before finally growing out his hair, he used to disguise his signature bald head with a hat and obscure his face with glasses because he hated when people bothered him in public when he was trying to do normal things. But I’d spent so much time staring at the author photo on his book that I recognized him right away. I ran up to him, bumping Oliver along in his stroller. Oliver didn’t complain. He didn’t complain about anything. Sometimes he was so quiet I forgot he was there. Oliver being there was the only bad thing about that day, but I’d had no choice but to have him with me because my mother had died of a heart attack in her sleep just months before, and had left me with him. That had never been the plan. She’d always said so. I wasn’t ever supposed be responsible for Oliver.
Roscoe was annoyed by my intrusion and didn’t mince words telling me to leave him alone. He knew it wouldn’t matter how harsh he was. He was secure in the knowledge that when a reader falls in love with a book, they have no choice but to fall in love with the author, too. But he seemed to soften when he saw Oliver staring at him. He bentdown to talk to Oliver, offering him some of the cheese Danish he was eating. Then he suddenly offered me a job. Just like that. I know he felt sorry for Oliver, even though he should have felt sorry forme.He had no idea the things I had to put up with in my life.
My job for him at first was just going through his fan mail, back when readers wrote actual letters to him. I would be in tears at some of them, how beautiful they were. I had finally found my true family in that daily pile of envelopes, a family of readers who wished books were their real lives, just like me. Their love of the book reminded me so much of Duncan. Roscoe told me to get rid of the letters once I went through them, but I kept them all in my boxes. Later, as Roscoe grew older and more cranky about the internet, I started moderating his official online fan club and social media groups.
I moved into the Dellawisp with Oliver not long after the renovations were complete. Roscoe gave me one of the condos for free, because he seemed to think the run-down house I had inherited from my mother was in too bad a shape for Oliver to live there. He didn’t seem to care that I’d had to grow up in that awful house. Still, it was a generous thing to do, so in return I felt it was my duty to keep tabs on the Dellawisp residents just so Roscoe would know how awful they could be and that I was really the best there. Roscoe called me a snoop, but he did the same thing. There is no bigger snoop than a writer, even though sometimes he made me feel like the least interesting person in his world.
When Lucy finally got out of prison, I began to get calls from police and social workers when she was found sleeping on beaches and park benches on the island. I always hung up on these people, telling them I had no idea what they were talking about. But I knew exactly why she was back on the island. Oliver. Just like my mother, she probably thought she could be a better mother than me. My relationship withOliver was complicated. It wasn’t that I liked having him around, it was just that I was… used to him by then, I suppose. And I hated the idea of Lucy thinking she could just show up and make him love her more than he loved me like she did with Duncan. Like she did with our father.
Probably because of how much I complained about the calls, Roscoe found Lucy and gave her a condo that he had just bought back after someone moved. He didn’t make any money off of the Dellawisp. He has plenty of that. He just likes being able to choose the residents by how lonely or interesting he thinks they are, like they’re all potential characters in his next book. But it was the exact thing I didn’t want, her anywhere near Oliver.
I was shocked the first time I saw her. Oliver was, too, by the way he watched her with his big green eyes from behind a tree in the garden when she first moved in. Whether he was scared of her, or fascinated by her, I don’t know. Prison had changed her. Deep lines were around her mouth and eyes, giving her an air of menace. And whereas once she’d been lush and curvy, now she looked like she’d been whittled down to nothing but gristle. She was no longer pretty and that made me happy, as if the less she was, the more I was—something true only in the universe of sisters. The day she moved in, I hissed to her that she should never, ever look at me or Oliver, that I didn’t want to hear a word out of her, because if she did, I would have her thrown out faster than she could sayDuncan.It took her a long time before she nodded, as if she was having trouble understanding my words.
Roscoe was immediately intrigued by Lucy, I could tell. But when he found out the truth, I knew he would think differently. The story is all there in my old diaries, which I could never find. Everything about Lucy stealing Duncan, and Oliver being born, and my mother’sbrilliantplan to have a second chance at raising a child.
And how not one of themeverstopped to think about how their actions would affect me.
Once Roscoe reads the diaries, he’ll love my story.
