Ted

The path winds up into the fall day. The air has mushrooms and red leaves in it. The trees are thin-fingered against the sky. Rob is warm at my side, hair escaping from his hat like tufts of flame. It has been three months since that morning in the forest, but it could be a lifetime ago.

The stories all fit inside each other. They echo through. It started with her, Little Girl With Popsicle. And she deserves a witness, so that’s why we’re here.

It is only a quarter-mile or so from the parking lot to the water, but it takes us a while. I shuffle rather than walk, mindful of my healing wound. You can really damage yourself, if you can’t feel pain. ‘Put your scarf on,’ I tell Rob. I wanted a friend to look after us. The weird thing is, now that I have one, all I want to do is to look after him.

The trees open out and we are at the water’s edge. It is cool today; the sand looks dirty and dull under the grey sky. There are some hikers, some dogs. Not many. The lake gleams, black glass. The water is too still, like a painting or a trick. It’s smaller than I remember. But of course it’s me who’s changed.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say to Rob. What can the living say to the dead? Little Girl With Popsicle is gone and we don’t know where. Mommy isn’t really under the sink, and Daddy isn’t in the tool shed.

‘Maybe we don’t do anything,’ he says.

So I just try to focus really hard on the little girl, and remember that she was here once and she isn’t any more. Rob’s hand is on my back. I send my best thoughts for her out into the water and the sky and the dry fall leaves and the sand and the pebbles under us. I hold you in my heart, I think at Little Girl With Popsicle, because it feels like someone should.

I take my shoes off, even though it’s raining. Rob does the same. We bury our feet in the damp sand. We watch the lake, where the drops strike circles on the glossy black skin of the water, which grow, move out and out into infinity.

At last Rob says, ‘It’s really cold.’ He is a practical person.

I shake my head. I don’t know what I expected. There’s nothing here.

We walk back towards the car in silence. The path winds downhill, back towards the parking lot. There is something bright on the rain-spattered trail. I bend to pick it up. A long, oval shape, rounded and smooth to the touch. It is green as moss, shot through with veins of white. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘what a pretty pebble.’ I turn to show Rob. As I do the ground suddenly gives way beneath my foot with a graceful slide. Loose earth and stones skid away from my feet and the world is upturned. I fall, striking the earth hard.

Something tears inside me. It is like being killed again. But this time I feel the shockwave, deep and purple and black. Sharp notes are played hard and raw on my nerves. The feeling bursts through, fills each living cell of me.

Rob leans over me, mouth twisted with distress. He says things about the hospital.

‘In a minute,’ I say. ‘Let me feel it.’ I would laugh, but it hurts too much.

It is the pain that lets him through, I think. The barriers between us are coming down.

I put it in our pocket, he says to me, clear and young.

Little Teddy?

In our POCKET but you THREW it in the TRASH.

I get a hand into my pants pocket. There is blood coming from somewhere. It has made a mess of this shirt.

‘What are you doing?’ Rob says. Cold grey threads of fear run through his voice. ‘You’re bleeding.’ He takes out his phone.

‘Stop.’ I am almost yelling at him and that hurts a lot. ‘Wait!’

My fingers meet paper. I take it out. The Murderer. My list has been taped back together. The last name stares at me. Mommy.

Little Teddy does not mean the murderer of the birds. He probably doesn’t even know about that. He is talking about another murder.

I been TRYING to show you, Little Teddy says. But you didn’t want to know.

His memory hurtles towards me, carried on the pain. A rush of feeling, colour, wet earth, moonlight on empty streets. It’s like watching a movie with scent and touch.