Bird After Bird (26 page)

“I wuv you,” I scolded the reflection in the elevator doors. “What an ass.”

Chapter Forty-eight

Wren

Work was almost too easy. I knew several of my team members as former clients, and I’d worked with contacts at the big chains before as a trusted consultant. Now that Harold’s company was trying to leverage their market share in those stores internationally, I had the pleasure of explaining to people who trusted me on all sides how we were going to make more money, all around. It’s kind of like the Fortune 500 version of being a flower delivery person. Everyone likes good news wrapped up with a pretty bow.

Janice had already taken a running start at reorganizing the company business for efficiency and elegance. Time-honored brand names had taken on the air of expensive delicacies that appealed to the affluent shopper while seducing the coupon-clipping budget buyer. All we needed were assurances from chain buyers that they could increase our shelf space on the in-store plan-o-grams and commit to increasing their warehouse inventory, and we could begin the production research segment of the project. If we had to build new factories, establish new relationships with transport, packaging, logistics on the whole, we’d take it from there. There would be incentives to offer, deals to make, bribes to hint at and names to drop. And more than that, there would be lots and lots of numbers to crunch, and a lot of late nights at the computer verifying what my team had produced. After that came financing options, and then we’d move on to the stockholders and the bankers.

It took a lot of heavy lifting, but my talent was making all of it look like flowers. Making it work.

“I can’t do this without you,” Janice said.

“I’m sure you could—you just might not pull it off by the end of the quarter.”

She swatted me on the butt before she hustled to make a lunch meeting. “Cocky thing!”

 Janice was as proud to have me on board as a new mother is of her first child. It was the first job I’d ever had where I felt like I was making a difference from day one.

The only problem was when I was away from my desk. Janice had made sure I was invited to all the right parties, meeting new people every night of the week. “Unattached, Ms. Riley?” I must have been asked that a dozen times on the first night.

The first few times I said “Yes,” I felt my heart breaking, but I drowned it in cocktails and shop talk.

I spent the first weekend unpacking. Janice and Harold had pulled some strings to get me a flat in their building, and it overlooked Central Park. After placing Dad’s bird book in a place of honor in my bedroom, I gravitated to the window to take in the view. I got out my binocs and tried to spot anything.

Central Park was famous for its variety of wild birds, and I’d already subscribed to the NYC birding email loops, so I was getting alerts of rare birds once a day. I couldn’t see anything right away in the form of rare species, but I
could
see a small band of birders armed with gear checking off birds in the trees below me.

“To hell with unpacking,” I said, and slipped into my shoes. I grabbed my camera and keys and skedaddled across the street to introduce myself.

Within moments, I regretted it. They were on a mission to spot a rare albino Prothonotary Warbler and they made it clear my help wasn’t needed.

“I’m new in town, just trying to meet some fellow birders,” I said to a girl in glasses with stringy hair.

“Sure,” she said, not bothering to lower her binocs.

“I’m a pretty experienced birder,” I said, hating the tone my voice had just taken on. Was I
whining
?

“Uh huh,” Stringy Hair muttered. “See ya around.”

I felt like an idiot standing by after that, as if I had to beg to meet new people. I was meeting plenty of new people through work. I had my best friend in the same building. I was making seven digits annually.

I raised my binocs and looked to the South, away from where the other birders were staring. “Albino Protho,” I said, “Three o’clock.”

I felt the whoosh of their bodies turning in unison as I walked away. Screw those birders. Screw their little clique.

And screw me.

There was someone I wanted to call, someone I wanted to text, someone who would understand what I’d just spotted and what it meant to me.

I glanced at my phone. Seven texts from him I hadn’t answered. The first few were about my safety, and I felt awful for ignoring them, but reading them now reminded me why I could never call Laurie again. I’d burned that bridge. I’d worried him and I couldn’t expect him to forgive me for how I’d handled the break-up.

On the Monday after I’d left, he’d sent,
-I know you’re okay. I just want to say I’m sorry for whatever I did.-

A few days later,
-I just wish you’d tell me why, Wren. I wish I could understand.-

A week after that, just the word
–Goodbye.-

That one was the worst of all.

Chapter Forty-nine

Wren

Work continued to be easy, if unfulfilling, and Janice made good on her promise to take me to Broadway. We jogged the park together, too, in the mornings before work. I did my best to show her my gratitude. At least I thought I did.

“Wren, you’ve got to cheer up. You’re starting to make me regret hiring you,” she said one morning as we rounded the reservoir.

“Even after I brought in twice our goal on the Big C-mart’s shelves?”

“Yeah,” she huffed. “I don’t mean as your boss. I mean as your friend. You look like somebody died.”

“I do?”

She laughed. “As long as you’re on the job, you’re on fire, but…”

“I can’t stop thinking about him, Janice.”

“Then call him! Tell him you’re sorry!”

“I can’t do that.”

“And why the hell not?” She stopped running, and leaned forward to rest her hands on her thighs, catching her breath. I jogged back to her, and waited.

“Once I’m done with something, I’m done,” I said. I wasn’t sure I believed my own words, but I said it. Maybe I’d believe it if I said it aloud.

“Let me get this straight.” She straightened and began walking at a brisk pace. “You fell in love with the guy. He was perfect for you—seemed like you brought out the best in each other—and you blew him off and split town.”

I felt like she was stabbing me in the heart with a knitting needle. “Sounds about right,” I said. A pair of Double-Crested Cormorants flew overhead, drawing my attention for a moment before they landed in the water.

“Listen, Birdy…I know you’re trying to make a name for yourself, and believe me, no one gets that like I do. But what about
you
, girl? Don’t you deserve someone to love you?”

“I don’t know if I do, Janice.” And there it was. That was the truth of it. I hadn’t felt worthy of Laurie. “He was too sweet, Janice. I was going to hurt him, eventually.”

“Well, you made damn sure of that, didn’t you?”

As we wound down our run, a busker played the banjo on a park bench. I recognized the song. It was the last one Billy & the Boys had played that night at the vineyard.

I didn’t have much cash on me, but I gave him what I had. It was the least I could do.

Chapter Fifty

Laurie

The dreams were dark, filled with memories I’d been trying to forget for months and years.

A phone call from Donna that wouldn’t end. She just kept saying Sylvia and Boomer were gone, until I couldn’t hear myself think.

The rattle and hum of a truck as Rodriguez and I were called into the field to repair a Hum-V. The voice of our commander crackling over the radio. “Do not stop. Do not pass go. Do not collect civilians, Specialists Byrd and Rodriguez.”

My finger on the radio clicking it off.

The old lady with the broken leg, her foot dangling at the wrong angle, and as I lifted her up from the side of the road.

The explosion that rocked Rod’s body into fragments. The bullets that came too close right after.

The look in the old woman’s eyes as we rolled into a heap beneath the truck. The look on her weathered face as my buddy lay dying. The look that said “Why fight? This is the way of the world.”

Nothing that used to help me cope was working now. The Beer & Bait only reminded me of Wren and I hated the way the guys in the garage joked about things as though there were more to life than total devastation.

Total devastation
. I thought I knew what that was, from the war. I thought I knew what that meant, from the faces of Donna & Lew at Sylvia’s funeral. I thought I knew…

For the first couple of weeks after Wren took off, I couldn’t create. I postponed art classes and I put my sketchbook and pencils in the closet so they’d stop looking at me like I was neglecting them.

I fed Hap and let him in and out of the house, but I had no desire to walk him. I just let him run.

I stopped buying birdseed, too.

I went to the garage, I came home, and I slept.

Louisa checked on me eventually. “Thought you’d up and gone to Chicago,” she said.

“There is no Chicago anymore,” I croaked.

Hap whined at her feet, eager for someone to play with him. I’d cuddled with him at night but I didn’t have the energy to run with him. “Thinking of taking him back to Donna and Lew. I can’t seem to handle him anymore.”

“Laurence Byrd, are you serious? You’d give up your
dog
? What kind of person does that?”

 “An asshole.”

 “Laurie, you’re not an asshole.” She smiled, and hugged me. She was quiet a minute. “Wait. Did
Wren
call you that?”

 “Wren didn’t call me
anything
. She just left.”

Louisa’s face went white and she sat in the other easy chair. She patted her lap and Hap leapt onto it, snuggling against her. “I don’t get it. She seemed so perfect for you.”

“No such thing as perfect, L. You know that.”

She was quiet for a while, then she shoved Hap off her lap and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. She opened the fridge. “You been eating? You look skinny.”

“I eat lunch at work. Not very hungry.”

“C’mon, let’s go get something.” She crossed to my chair and started yanking me by my hand.

“Another time.”

“I’m not taking no for an answer, Mr. Byrd.”

I sighed. “Alright,
Miss
Byrd. But you’re driving—and you’re buying.” I had a couple of paychecks I hadn’t yet taken by the bank.

In the car, she tried to talk to me about Wren, but I shushed her.

She persisted. “Just listen. I knew before her dad died—you didn’t. She was damaged, honey.” I must have made an angry face, because she quickly backpedaled. “She’s a
great
girl, don’t get me wrong. I always liked Wren. Everybody did. But she changed when she lost her mom. She just sort of…stopped caring. She withdrew. She took part in all the school stuff, but she was above it, you know? Above scouts, above cheerleading, definitely above homecoming.”