Practical girl.
I was hauling my bag down to the living room, having decided to lug a few of my old books and dolls back for Nelia. All of a sudden, Sparrow started to cry. “I want to go too. With your best friend.”
Felicity asked me then, “I’ve been thinking. Can you wait until morning?”
“I wish, but the kids...”
“Just until morning. Then, we’ll go with you.”
“You can absolutely come! You could use the break! My dad would love to see you too...”
Felicity said, “No, I mean, we’ll come to stay. Not to stay with you! At least, not for more than a week or something. Patrick will find a good house for us.” She shrugged. “Florida is as good as anywhere, Reenie. Better. It’s where you are, it’s what Sparrow knows.” She would take her little girl to meet her great-grandparents todayand then close this book. “I’d love to see my brothers, but that’s a bridge I can’t cross right now. There’s nothing else left for me here, except memories, sweet and sour.” Felicity was right. Even her beloved mother was lost to her. I knew that Felicity would visit Ruth, but it was hard to imagine what good could come of it.
She got out her one-day-old iPad and said, “Other people can sell my place. Other people can pack the four or five things I want to keep. I want to live where I won’t be seen. I don’t mean to hide. I mean where I won’t be seen as something I’m not. I let men put things on me I never wanted.” To Sparrow, Felicity said, “You want to go back with Reenie and Miranda? We can do that. We’ll go to Disney World. Did Granny take you to Disney World?”
With her wide-eyed amber gaze, Sparrow was, for a moment, the image of her mother. She said, “There’s a lot of sin at Disney World.”
“Oh wait!” Felicity said. “Didn’t you know that kids don’t do sins? Not until they’re like thirteen. And even after unless it’s a really big thing.”
Sparrow said, “Oh!”
“I thought they told you that. Kids do naughty stuff, but they just have to say sorry.”
Sparrow said, “Oh!”
“Plus, they took all the sin out of Disney World a couple of years ago.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said Sparrow. “I might like to go. Everybody I knew went except me.” I had to turn away so Sparrow wouldn’t see my face.
Like Sam, I admired Felicity’s forward logic and her fearlessness. About everything except Jack Melodia, she seemed confident, even battle ready. When we turned to Sam, even he was short on ideas. It turned out that even as Sam stayed up late chewing on possible strategies, when it came to Jack, the universe had plans for his plan.
Seventeen
Great Horned Owl
Bubo virginianus.The great horned owl, also known as the tiger owl or the hoot owl, is a large owl native to the Americas. It is an extremely adaptable bird with a vast range and is the most widely distributed true owl in the Americas. A fierce and strategic hunter, the great horned owl can be an intimidating sight with its short wide wings, massive claws, and staring yellow eyes. Its “horns” are tufts of soft feathers near its eyes. Male owls fear the larger females, often taking hours to approach during mating rituals. Owls have fourteen bones in their necks, compared with a human’s seven bones, hence their ability to turn their heads nearly completely around. Silent in pursuit of prey, they eat even large birds such as hawks, also rodents and frogs. Their eyesight is so keen that it is the equivalent of humans seeing a mouse by the light of a match a mile away. Owls often live more than twenty years. In some cultures, the owl is considered the ruler of the night and the seer of souls, the guardian of those as they pass from the earthly plane to the realm of the spirit.
Before Sam ever got the chance to approach him, we learned about Jack by chance. To this day, however, we aren’t sure exactly what we learned.
Something none of us could explain happened once Nell visited Madison on behalf of Damiano, Chen, and Damiano. Little overachiever that she was, Nell had by then passed the barin both states, and she sometimes acted as Sam’s emissary when someone had to shuttle back and forth to wrap up small matters with cases at the base camp location of the firm. Nell had picked up her rental car and was headed for the office downtown when she passed my old workplace, Ophelia. On impulse, she circled back. She still had fond memories of the barroom brawl, a crazy that she still dined out on with friends.
When she ducked through the jingling curtain behind the front door, Nell noticed how dim and decadent it was, almost like a bordello, or like a haunted house. She had grown accustomed to Florida, where shopping centers in lime and coral stucco popped up overnight and were stocked within a week with shiny shoes and seventy-five-dollar T-shirts, if not a juice bar.
There were only two customers in that sleepy interval between lunch and the first show. As Nell waited for someone to appear behind the bar, she saw Archangel arrive, then Boston, then Rochelle. At last, Lily came out of the back room, adjusting the collar on her black button-down shirt. She looked right into Nell’s eyes.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“I’m here to apply for the bartender job,” Nell joked. She grinned. But Lily didn’t crack a smile.
“We aren’t hiring,” she said flatly.
“Lily! It’s Nell Bigelow. It’s Reenie’s sister.”
“I’m sorry?” Lily said.
“Reenie’s sister! Reenie Bigelow. The writer? Felicity’s friend? You remember that Reenie came here to write about Felicity. You know that Felicity went to prison but she didn’t...”
“I know that case, but I don’t know any of those people,” Lily said. “If you will excuse me, I have to get to work.”
