Chapter 26

By the next day, the downpour of rain had turned to soft showers that played tag with the sunshine, and the lake had turned back into an overgrown path.

I paused in front of the bridge. The log was gone. Someone might have rolled it off the bridge, but knowing that log, it probably pushed itself off and floated away. The water ran several feet below the bridge now, looking close to normal. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the pounding of my heart.

I took a deep breath and shook the fear out of my body. Theron could be on the other side of the river, and that bridge wasn’t going to stop me this time.

I stepped onto the floor and grabbed a beam, then closed my eyes. I took another step, and another, forcing myself to breathe evenly as I made my way beam by beam to the other side.

Then it happened again.

River, honey, you stay right there.

It was the same voice I’d heard when I come to the bridge for Mr. Tricks, a voice from deep inside me.

Don’t go any farther on that bridge, she say, her voice fluttering with fear. Don’t be scared, baby. I’ll come get you.

The smell of tar and wet wood and moss and fish surrounded me, and the icy water washed over my bare feet, numbing them.

Why did you run out like that and worry me so? she say. Why did you go out here when I tell you to stay put?

It was too dark to see her. I could only hear her voice, so close to me that I knew every word and how it would sound before it come out. That voice—so like my own.

Mama! I cried.

Then someone with big hands and strong arms scooped me up and carried me. The hands set me down, and I heard Daddy’s voice. Don’t move, River. I’ll go back to get your mama now.

The voices and the vision had dissolved by the time I felt solid ground under my feet, telling me I’d reached the other side of the bridge. I opened my eyes and dashed off, my heart pounding, and leaned against a tree to catch my breath. That voice—so familiar, so close to my heart—and Daddy’s lingered in my mind.

My legs were still jiggly, but I needed to keep going. I looked around for a path, but all I could see was a narrow strip of dirt and overgrown grass to the left, so I began to follow it.

The foliage around me quickly grew thick. As I walked, the river roar faded, and the twitter of birds and the crackle and thud of branches breaking and falling in the woods surrounded me.

I walked and walked, always making sure I stayed on that path, stepping over poison ivy and thorns and slippery vines, looking down so that low-hanging branches wouldn’t poke my eyes.

That’s how I saw it—a white feather in a tangle of brush, and then another feather. I picked them off the brush. I took out the feather that was in my pocket and compared it with the two I just found. They were all the same shade of white and all the same texture and pattern. They could have come from Mr. Tricks. His feathers could have blown here, he could have been on this bush, or he could have gotten caught here. Or was still here, hidden. Maybe even dead, I thought, and shuddered, but I had to look. I had to do everything possible to find Mr. Tricks.

I pulled away the bushes, my hands shaking, and picked through the vines until I had searched the whole area. I saw a salamander and some shiny beetles on the ground, but no signs of Mr. Tricks, and I sighed with relief.

Then I put all three feathers in my pocket and continued walking along the path. I climbed over one stone wall covered in moss and bittersweet, and another farther along. And then far in the distance I noticed something tall and wide and dark through breaks in the foliage. A shack, maybe, but as I got closer I saw that it was as big as our garage. Then I walked out of the forest and into a meadow, and I saw that the shack was actually a house. Even closer, it had charcoal-gray shingles and faded white shutters and a porch. Several feet away stood a shed off to the side. Then I heard the smooth rush of the river nearby and realized it was coming from behind the house. I’d walked a long way but had been following the river all that time.

It had started sprinkling again, and I watched the house and listened to the rain drum gentle against the shingles and the roof. Something so familiar about that house sat in the deep core of me. I knew it like I knew the sound of the voice I’d heard on the bridge. It was the house of my mind—except it wasn’t only in my mind, because that house existed here in the forest, and it had been waiting for me.

It looked deserted. No one went in or out of it, and no curtain drew aside, so I stepped up to the porch and knocked on the door. No answer. I opened the door and went inside and I let my eyes adjust to the dimness.

I walked to the kitchen, where the smell of onions and oregano and apples surrounded me. There was the same long counter and deep sink that I knew. And the same pantry, though nothing, no tomato cans or chocolate bits, sat on these shelves.

The dining room was empty too—no big table, no desk, and the rug was gone, but it was the same room. Everything about that house was exactly the same as the house in my mind except for one thing—the house in my mind was bigger and taller and wider and deeper than this house.

Then I walked to the staircase, and climbed the stairs, recognizing the fern-patterned wallpaper all the way to the second floor. The bedroom at the top of the stairs was dark. I clicked the light switch, but no lights went on, so I opened the curtains, and dust rolled off them and swirled in the dim light. On the dark wood floor was the outline where the bureau had stood.

I heard the front door open downstairs, and then footsteps on the staircase. Someone was coming up! There was no bed to hide under anymore in this room, so I slipped into the closet and left it open a crack so I could see out.

The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stepped inside the room. My pulse drummed in my ears, and a scream started working its way up my throat.

“River?” asked a familiar voice.

Theron.

I burst out of the closet and ran into his arms, hugging him tight. “Theron,” I say, crying into his chest. Even though he looked thin, his arms felt as strong as always.

Above me I heard a whirring noise, then a coo, and I looked up to see Mr. Tricks flapping and fluttering, until he perched on the windowsill and tucked his wings against him.

“He learned to fly,” I say, laughing. Then I held out my hand to him, and he tilted his head and blinked.

“Mr. Tricks,” I whispered up close, stroking his head with my thumb. “Meadow Lark will be so happy to see you.”

“I hoped you’d come looking for me,” Theron say.

I closed my eyes so I could concentrate on the sound of his voice. “I hoped you’d be in this house,” I say, and loosened my hold on him, though this time I would not let him go. He backed against the wall and slipped his hands in his pockets.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“A few weeks,” he say. Then he grinned his beautiful grin, the one I hadn’t seen in more than three months and I wondered if I’d ever see again. “I just couldn’t stay away. I wanted to come back home. I just didn’t know how to.”

“I do, Theron. Everything’s okay now. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Theron looked out the window and then say, “Let’s go outside.”

We left the house, and he led me to the shed. Mr. Tricks followed us all the way.

Inside was a little table and a narrow bed. I looked around. “This is where you sleep? What do you eat?”

“Mostly fish,” he say, “and berries.” Then he looked steady at me and asked, “Have you ever been here before?”

I nodded. “Sort of,” I say. “Sometimes I have dreams about the house. I started going to it in my mind after you leave us. That’s when I start talking different too. It makes Mama sad, or mad—sometimes I can’t tell which.”

“Well, it’s because you sound like . . . ,” Theron say, but he didn’t finish.

“Like what?” I asked, but he just shook his head, so I finished for him, because I knew the answer. “Like Mama’s friend—June.”

He looked at me for a few seconds and then nodded.

“She was my first mama, wasn’t she?”

The time that passed while I waited for him to say yes or no moved thick and slow, but finally he say, “June was your mother. Surprised?”

At one time I thought that knowing who my mama was would make me faint or dance or throw up. But it didn’t, and I shook my head. “No. I think I’ve wondered all along, but I didn’t see it until today.”

There was more I wanted Theron to tell me. “Do you know if . . . did she wear fuzzy blue bedroom shoes—slippers?”

He shrugged. “She could have. Why?”

“Well, once when I was dreaming about this house, I was under the bed and saw blue slippers walk around the room. And the person wearing them talk to me, and she sound like the way I’m talking now. Then when I crossed the bridge today, I had a memory, and the same person was talking again. Daddy was there too. He was rescuing me . . . and rescuing her.”

“Why was Daddy rescuing you?” Theron asked.

“Because,” I say, thinking, “the bridge was flooded with water and June come to save me so I wouldn’t drown.”

Then Theron asked, “Where were you running from?” His face looked like someone ready to catch a person falling out of a window.

The one word that would answer all my questions come to me as quick as spit. “Here. I come from here. I lived in that house?”

He nodded. “They’re not dreams. It all happened to you,” Theron say, and looked at the floor. “Someone should have told you by now.”

“So . . . why didn’t they? Why did Mama and Daddy lie to me all this time?” I looked up at Theron and say, “Why did you lie to me?”

“I wanted to tell you, but Mama and Daddy didn’t want you to know. They just wanted you to forget all about the bridge and the flood and almost drowning. They didn’t want you to worry about anything. So I had to promise not to tell.”

I knew it would take me a while to understand that, but at least now I knew. “I always felt like a song in the wrong key,” I say.

I looked out the window to my house. Everything I knew about that house come back to me. The smells in the pantry, the pattern in the carpet in the dining room, and that voice—my first mama’s voice—as close as my own heartbeat. There was something else I needed to know.

“Theron, what was June’s middle name? What did the R stand for?”

“What do you think?” he asked me.

“Rose—just like mine.”

I felt something I’d been holding in with all my strength break and flow, like water finding its path. My tears made my eyes ache, and then Theron hugged me, and his shirt smelled like his bedroom at home—pine and his own skin smell. “It’s a lot to understand all at once,” he say in my ear.

“I missed you so much, Theron.” I sniffled and turned my head away so I wouldn’t get his shirt gooey.

“I missed you, too.”

“Is that why you come back?”

“Yup,” he say softly.

“Now you can come home,” I say, hugging him tighter.

His arms stiffened. “No, I can’t.”

“Theron, it’s true,” I say, pushing away from him. “Daniel Bunch told me everything.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“That it was him driving the car that night, not you. And he swore you weren’t drunk. So everything’s okay now. You can come home.”

Theron stood up and walked to the doorway. “Daniel shouldn’t have said anything.”

I knew what else Theron was thinking—that Mama and Daddy wouldn’t want him there, so before he could say anything about that, I told him, “Mama and Daddy will have a party for you, Theron. Everyone misses you so much,” and I took his hand. “Believe me, they know what they lost when you left.”

Theron stuffed his few belongings into his backpack. “This might sound crazy, but I’ve seen that girl before—the one on the bridge.”

“Meadow Lark? You mean around town?”

He shook his head. “About three weeks ago, I was up in Conway. I thought someone on the street recognized me, so I dodged into a pet store. There was this girl with orange hair looking at parakeets. But not just looking—she was talking to them.”

“Meadow Lark? How did she get up to Conway?”

“She was the same girl, I swear. And after that I couldn’t get her out of my head because she reminded me so much of you. That’s when I knew I had to stop hiding and come home.”

We had left the house I knew so well, but now I could go back to it without dreaming. Theron held Mr. Tricks under one arm and me under his other, sheltering us from the rain. I realized that if I had tried to write a wish for that moment, I would have failed, because walking home with Theron was so much more wonderful than I could have imagined. My heart knew what it hoped for, and in looking for my brother, I had found the missing parts of myself.

“Where did you find Mr. Tricks?” I asked.

“He showed up one night and made himself at home,” Theron say.

I reached over and petted Mr. Tricks’s head.

“Oh, he had this in his beak.” Theron reached into his pocket, and then he pressed something into my palm. It was my little emerald ring.