The Lazar house was across town. Wunder rode his bike. He pedaled fast and with every rotation of the wheels, a new question came to him. It seemed to him that this was the letter he had been waiting for, the one that would hold answers. Here was a mother whose children had been saved. Here was a mother who had written to his own mother. Here, he hoped, was the end of his search.
When Jayla opened the door, he felt like a primed pump. He felt like an overwhelmed dam.
“Hi, Wunder!” Jayla cried. “Are you here to interview me and Jayden again?”
“No, Jayla,” Wunder said. “Not this time. I need to talk to your mom.”
Mariah Lazar was younger than Wunder had expected her to be, tall with long dark braids. She smiled when she saw him, the small, sad smile that Wunder was used to seeing now. She leaned on the door frame.
“Wunder Ellis,” she said. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”
“You brought us a casserole,” Wunder said.
She nodded. “I did. Sorry about that; I’m a dreadful cook. I also lead a grief group at the community center, although there aren’t many people in it.”
Wunder thought of the letters he had delivered, the dozens of people around town who had lost someone. “Why aren’t there?” he asked, surprised.
“It’s easy to connect over the things that make us happy. It’s much harder to reach out when we’re sad. Even though that’s what we need.” She held her hands open. It looked to Wunder as if she was inviting him to hug her and also showing that she wasn’t hiding anything up her sleeves. “I’m hoping your parents will come and join us. When they’re ready, of course.”
“My dad has been working all the time,” Wunder found himself saying. “And I don’t know if my mother will ever be ready.”
“People handle grief in different ways,” Mariah replied. “Some want to be surrounded by friends and family. Some want to keep busy. Some want to be alone. Which is fine—for a while.”
Wunder thought about telling her how his father seemed so lost and so lonely when he was at home. He thought about telling her how his mother still spent most of her time in her room, about how she would try to ask him about his day, then end up crying. But then he remembered why he was really there. He remembered that he was looking for answers.
“Jayla and Jayden were miracles,” he said. “But you run a grief group. And I have a letter here for you. So I know that something else must have happened to you, something very unmiraculous.”
Mariah took the letter. She let out a small sigh. “It was before the twins,” she told him. “I lost a daughter, like your mother lost your sister.”
Wunder knew who it was. It came to him right in that moment. He could picture the gravestone: no dates, the flying bird.
“Avery,” he said.
Now it was Mariah who looked surprised, but she didn’t ask him how he knew. “Avery.”
Then he couldn’t hold back anymore. “But do you think she’s gone?” he said. His voice sounded strange, not the flat, crushed voice of the last few weeks, but jagged and sharp, a broken voice. “Forever? Have you ever felt like she could come back? Or do you just feel sad? Do you just feel angry? Do you just feel lonely and confused all the time?”
He was out of breath. He stared up at Mariah Lazar, gasping in the cool air, and she looked down at him, no longer smiling, but not upset either.
“Those are a lot of questions,” she said. “And I would have to say that the answer to all of them is yes.”
“How can it be yes?” Wunder asked. “How can it all be yes?”
Mariah straightened up from the doorway. She leaned toward Wunder. “I have to believe,” she said, “that there are things I don’t fully understand about life and death. When I lost Avery, yes, it felt like she was gone. Gone for good, gone forever. And then some days”—she bent her neck so that she was even closer to him—“some days I will hear a bird sing or feel a raindrop and it will seem, for a moment, like she’s here. But it’s so quick. It’s not much.” She opened her hands again. “But some things help. Jayden and Jayla help. And that’s why I started the grief group.”
“That’s how you remember the dead,” Wunder said.
“That’s how I remember Avery,” she agreed. “There are so many beautiful and true ways to feel close to our lost loved ones.”
Wunder felt tired. He felt too tired to ask more questions. He liked what Mariah Lazar had said. But it wasn’t enough. None of it was enough. “Thank you for talking to me,” he said.
“You’re welcome, Wunder,” she said. “Anytime.”
She waited until he was on his bike before she shut the door. She shut it very gently. He didn’t even hear it click closed.
And Wunder knew as he pedaled home that the answers he was looking for weren’t going to come from the families of the miraculous dead. He knew that he had spent enough time trying not to believe and he had spent enough time trying to find answers on his own. The only thing that would be enough was to talk to the witch—to ask her why she was there and what she wanted from him and who she was. To ask if she was his sister.
But still, still, still he didn’t know if he could.
Because if none of it was enough, then she was his last hope. She was his very last hope.