Flight Patterns (32 page)

“Who are you, Mr. Mouton?” My voice sounded like a small child's.

He leaned across the table and took my hands in his. “You know, don't you? You remember.”

I stared into his brown eyes, seeing the lavender fields. Smelling sweet honey.
The teapot
. He'd said something about a teapot, and I knew it was something I should remember—could almost picture in my head. A pattern that matched the one on the cup he'd brought me. Something to do with bees and a suitcase. And me crying for someone not to leave me.

He must have heard my gasp of recognition, because he sat back with a satisfied smile. “She remembers. She knows who she is.”

His words brought me back to the kitchen, to a familiar place and the two faces I loved most in the world. “I'm Birdie Bloodworth,” I shouted, angry tears hitting my cheeks. “Who are
you
?”

George put his arm around me and pulled me to him, and I buried my face in his shoulder.

“Please,” Daddy said, in a tone of voice I'd never heard him use before. “I beg of you. For my wife's sake. For our child's sake. Please reconsider.”

“Reconsider what? What is right?” The man coughed, his breath wheezing through his nostrils. “All I am asking is for what is right.”

“But my wife . . .” He stopped to look at Mama, but she no longer seemed to be listening. She was staring at the stranded honeybee crawling across the table, looking for a way out.

“Her daughter is everything to her. All of her hopes and dreams are in this one child. My wife and I can take care of her needs, and love her. She will want for nothing.”

The man coughed again, then settled back in his chair. “And my daughter is all I have left in this world. All the love I have left. This is not easy for you or for me. But there is nothing but the truth.” He doubled over in a coughing fit, the smell of wet pennies filling the air.

Mama watched him cough, saw him draw away a filthy handkerchief spotted with fresh red blood. Her shoulders slumped, like they did when her favorite cat had died, and I saw lines around her mouth and eyes that I had never seen before. They remained on her face until the day she died.

I remembered all that now. I stopped walking and looked down, realizing I'd walked several blocks from the house carrying a soup cup and wearing my nightgown.
Marlene
. Yes, I needed to see Marlene. To tell her I did remember the stranger's name. Mr. Mouton.

I blinked up at the moon, wondering whether there was more I was supposed to remember. Yes, something George had told me later.
This isn't something a person ever gets over, Birdie. But it's something we'll always share. Our secret.

My hands trembled and I clutched the soup cup tighter, my mind
threatening to spill one last secret, my heart just as determined to keep it safe.

The brief blare of a siren pulsed behind me and I turned. Lyle stepped out of his cruiser and came toward me. “Birdie? Are you all right? Maisy's been worried sick.”

I hid the cup in the folds of my nightgown, not yet ready to share it with anybody. Words continued to evade me, so I began to hum a tune from long ago as I used to stare at the bees on the soup cup, the words of the song in a foreign language that I knew but didn't.
Marie, Lucille, Lisette, Jean.

Lyle settled me into the front seat next to him, then slowly drove me home. I was so tired, as if I'd walked for miles instead of just blocks, and when I closed my eyes all I saw were bright purple fields of lavender.

The Marquis de Sade said, “All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost—the most legitimate—passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.” But a good beekeeper never takes more honey than the bee can afford to give, and never calls it stealing. That way the beekeeper remains noble, while the bee feeds its hive, stingers ready if the beekeeper becomes greedy.

—NED BLOODWORTH'S BEEKEEPER'S JOURNAL

Maisy

G
eorgia arrived at the house right before Lyle pulled up in his cruiser with Birdie. It reminded Maisy too much of the times their mother had been sent away, how she and Georgia would sit in the turret window of their mother's bedroom each night, waiting for her to return. It made no sense, of course. Birdie wouldn't have arrived by boat over the bay. Georgia had known it, but had made Maisy believe that Birdie was just over the horizon, trying to find her way back to them. It had taken years for Maisy to realize the lie, but back when she was small it had allowed her to go to sleep at night.

The hem of Birdie's nightgown was brown with dirt, her small
bare feet covered with dust. She was humming as she entered the foyer, her eyes startlingly clear. She held something down by her side in one hand, the object hidden by the folds of her nightgown.

“Where did you find her?” Maisy asked, checking to make sure Birdie was physically uninjured.

“About a block from Marlene's house. Any idea why she might be going there?”

“None at all. She's never wandered from the house before. I hope this isn't setting a precedent.”

“We might need to take her to another doctor,” Georgia said quietly.

We
. There was that old word again that had nothing to do with who Maisy and Georgia were anymore.

Too tired to have this discussion, Maisy said, “It's almost ten. I'm going upstairs to draw her a bath and put her to bed. There's no reason for you to stay. Come on, Birdie.” She moved to take her mother's hand, but Birdie began to walk with purposeful strides toward Ned's room.

Maisy reached the door at the same time as Georgia, right behind Birdie, who hadn't paused to knock. Ned was awake, sitting in the chair facing his apiary, where he'd been since that morning, when Florence had brought back his beloved beehives. He'd been agitated, watching as her team unloaded the hives from the truck, shouting something unintelligible if they got too close to the two hives that had remained behind.

Birdie lifted her hand and placed something in their grandfather's lap. He stared at it without recognition, his bushy eyebrows knitted together over his nose. Georgia stepped forward, then stopped, her fingers pressed against her mouth as if she were keeping a secret.

Maisy peered around her and saw the soup cup, its elegant curves and handles exactly like Georgia had described them, the brilliant colors of the bees in flight as vibrant as if they'd been painted yesterday.

“Is it the same one?” Maisy asked.

Georgia simply nodded, her fingers still pressed against her lips. Almost as an afterthought, she said, “Where did it come from?”

Maisy moved around Georgia to stand next to the chair. “Grandpa? Do you know what this is?”

He stared at it without seeming to see it, but Maisy noticed his grip on the arm of his chair, the pulsing of a muscle in his cheek. She had a quick flash of memory of the teacup and saucer as they'd exploded on the ground, and the look on Grandpa's face when he'd seen the ring of bees in flight. Which meant he recognized
something
.

“Grandpa—do you know where this came from?”

He lifted his head, his eyebrows still knitted. But there was a spark of something in his eyes that told Maisy that he
knew
.

Georgia reached down and took the cup, then very slowly turned it over in her hands to study the mark on the bottom. “It matches the soup cup in James's grandmother's set. Exactly.” She took a deep breath. “It could be the missing cup.”

Maisy was already entering her passcode into her phone when Georgia spoke again. “What are you doing?”

“I'm texting James. He and Caroline might want to come over and see it in person. And I'd like to see the picture from her grandmother's china myself.”

“Don't. Please.” Georgia reached for the phone, but Maisy held it away, just like they'd done as children playing keep-away. “It's the same,” Georgia repeated. “They don't need to see it tonight anyway. You can wait until tomorrow.”

“
I
can't wait,” Maisy said, quickly tapping the screen on her phone. “Because if it's the same, then your job is done here.” Which wasn't the complete truth. There was one thing no one had acknowledged yet—the
how
. If that set had belonged to James's family back in Switzerland before the war, then how did a single piece of it find its way to Apalachicola?

That it had been hidden for so long made it obvious to Maisy that it had been hidden for a reason. And maybe that reason was something they weren't prepared to know.

She felt a stab of remorse when she saw Georgia's face blanch.

“Please, Maisy. It can wait until tomorrow. I don't want to see James.”

The look on her sister's face made Maisy want to undo the text, but a response had already been sent back. She looked down at her phone. “They're on their way over.”

Birdie had begun humming to herself, the odd alphabet tune that Becky had recognized as a French children's song. Georgia bent down next to her chair, holding up the bowl but keeping it far enough away that Birdie couldn't grab it. “Where did this come from? I saw it once before, remember? In your closet. You told me to keep it a secret. Why?”

Birdie's humming became words that fit into the notes, each word enunciated and clear to make sure they were heard.

“Those are names,” Maisy said. “Girl names in French,” she said in surprise. “I'm pretty sure those weren't the words Becky sang.”

Birdie reached for the soup cup, but Georgia clung to it, holding on with both hands as she brought it closer to Birdie, letting her touch it. With her index finger, Birdie traced each bee as she sang the names.

Maisy met Georgia's eyes over their mother's head.

“Grandpa?” Maisy tried again. “Have you seen this bowl before? Do you know where it came from?”

He looked up, tears brimming in his eyes.

“I don't like this. I don't like this at all,” Maisy said, stepping back and bumping into something hard and solid.
Lyle
. She'd almost forgotten he was still there. His hands settled on her shoulders and squeezed.

Without warning, Birdie grabbed the cup from Georgia's hands, and for a moment Maisy thought she was going to fling it against the wall or smash it to the floor, because the look on Birdie's face wasn't the schooled, placid expression she wore most of the time. It was a mixture of grief and anger and even confusion, as if she didn't know where the cup had come from, either, but was pretty sure Grandpa
did
, because she pressed it into his hands, then moved his head with her fingers to make him look at her.

She stopped singing and sat perfectly still, forcing her father's
attention. She opened her mouth and it seemed the entire room went silent, holding its collective breath. Grandpa's bottom jaw worked itself back and forth, trying to form words, his grunts resembling syllables and consonants, and drowning out any sound Birdie might have made.

There was a knock on the front door, and Lyle went to answer it as if he still lived there. After a moment James and Caroline appeared in Grandpa's doorway, Lyle behind them.

“Hello, Ned,” James said. “Mrs. Chambers.” He nodded at Maisy in greeting. “Georgia.” She didn't turn around.

Grandpa didn't seem to have heard his name, his gaze never leaving Birdie's face. He seemed to be waiting for something from her. A look, or acknowledgment. A single word. And then he shook his head, and another sound came from his throat, this one sounding like
Don't
.

Maisy leaned forward and carefully took the soup cup from her grandfather's lap and held it up for Caroline and James to inspect. “Is it the same?”

Caroline flipped through her photos on her iPad until she found the right one, then turned the screen around so they could see. “What do you think?”

Georgia studied the photo while carefully avoiding James's gaze. “It looks identical. The order of the bees, the colors, the lines indicating movement. It's all the same.” She reached over and slid her finger across the screen to turn to a photo illuminating the mark on the bottom of the cup. “Same markings, too.” She pointed to the “H&Co.,” the capital letter “L,” the word “France.”

Georgia faced the visitors but avoided looking at James, making Maisy wonder what had happened between them. In the past she could have guessed, but now there were parts of her sister that Maisy didn't recognize anymore. And, she realized, that wasn't such a bad thing.

“It's time for Grandpa to go to bed,” Maisy said. She began guiding everyone from the room, but Birdie stayed where she was, her hands now holding both of her father's.

“I'll come back in a few minutes,” Maisy said, leaving the door
open a crack. She felt an odd disappointment, as if she'd been watching a movie where the screen went black before the ending. There was something important, something major they were missing.

They all stood in the foyer, looking at one another, hoping somebody had an answer. Lyle spoke first. “I need to go. I'm on duty at the Magnolia Cemetery again, deterring vandals. Call me if you find out anything.”

Maisy held the door open for him. “Thank you. For finding Birdie and bringing her home. I'm sorry. . . .”

He put his hand over hers. “You don't need to apologize. I'm here to help however I can.”

Maisy hesitated, not yet ready to close the door, but knowing she should.

The sound of Birdie singing came to them from Ned's room, the names in the same order, the monotony beginning to irritate Maisy.
Marie, Lucille, Lisette, Jean.

Frowning, Caroline took the soup cup from Georgia and stared at it for a long moment before she began singing along with Birdie, her fingers moving from bee to bee with each name. She smiled slowly with recognition. “She's singing the names of the bees—they're all girls, of course. Even I know that all worker bees are female.” She closed her eyes and waited for Birdie to start at the beginning again, then sang out loud with a strong soprano voice, “
Ah! Vous dirais-je, maman,”
the lyrics fitting seamlessly into the notes.

Her eyes popped open in astonishment. “I can't believe I remember them; it's been so long. But those are the original words. The verse with the names of the bees was taught to me after I'd learned how it was supposed to go.” She nodded her head slowly as she thought. “Yes, that's right. Grandmother taught us both versions.”

Lyle stepped back into the foyer, his eyes narrowed. “That's French, right?”

“Yes,” Maisy said slowly.

“I don't understand.” Georgia scrubbed both hands over her face as if to clear her thoughts. “How is it possible that my mother and
Caroline's grandmother knew the same made-up lyrics for a French nursery song? Lyrics that name the bees on an extremely rare set of china?”

Georgia turned to Caroline. “What was your grandmother's first name?”

James answered, as if he were trying to get Georgia to look at him. “It was Ida. Why?”

Georgia's gaze touched briefly on his face, avoiding his eyes. “Just grasping at straws, I guess. When Birdie sings that song, it's usually followed by calling out the name in her sleep or singing it.”

“Yes, it was Ida,” Caroline corroborated. “Although that might be the Americanized version of her real name. Elizabeth can look at her birth certificate and let us know—she's big into genealogy and has obtained a lot of family documents. I'll text her now. She usually doesn't go to bed until after midnight.”

She was already reaching for her purse when Georgia held up her hand. “There's no rush. Her name's not going to make any difference in the valuation of the china. I already have all I need.” She indicated the soup cup Caroline still held. “You can keep that if you like. It goes with the rest of your set. I'll have you mail me the photos so I can include them in the valuation for your records.” She swiped her hands on the skirt of her lemon yellow A-line dress, as if all the little details floating around them like dust motes could be easily dismissed. “My job here is done.”

Lyle took a step forward. “Not quite. We're still waiting on the complete report from the coroner. And your grandfather hasn't been able to answer any of our questions yet.”