She looked so small and still and broken.
Then I heard someone scream and realized it was me.
16BIRDY
Six months earlier
It was me who said no. I politely turned down Carter’s offer of a drink—the only pub in the village looked closed anyway—but I did let him walk me back up the hill to my grandmother’s house. Even doing this is out of character for me. I don’t need a man to walk me home, especially one ten years younger than I am. I tend to keep myself to myself these days, but maybe I have missed human company more than I thought. When we reach the old front door at Spyglass with its curious bird-shaped brass knocker, I take out the key but hesitate before using it. Carter looks hopeful. Cocky but still unsure of himself. I find myself wondering how young is too young.
“Thank you for telling me about my grandmother.”
“You’re welcome,” he says, standing a little too close. “If you ever come back to Hope Falls and fancy that drink—”
“I won’t be coming back.”
“Got it.” He nods, smiles politely, and starts to turn away.
“And I don’t drink… but if you want to come in I’m sure we could find something else to do.”
His strong hands paw at me as soon as we are inside the house, quickly unbuttoning my shirt and jeans as though worried I might change my mind. I won’t. I’ve been imagining us doing this since wemet. We stumble into the quirky-looking lounge where everything is a shade of blue, and collapse onto an old velvet sofa. Carter might be young to be a cop, but he clearly knows what he is doing in this department. His tongue is inside my mouth and his hand is inside my knickers before I have time to think too much about what a bad idea this is. I stare up at the dark blue ceiling covered in stars as he kisses my lips, my neck, my breasts, before moving lower. I’ve never been intimate with a man ten years younger than me before.
I think I like it.
“You have tattoos all over your arm,” he says, stating the obvious when I pull off my shirt. I liked him more when he didn’t ruin things by speaking. I flinch when he reaches for them. I don’t know why some people think it’s okay to touch a person’s tattoos.
They’re not fucking kittens.
I got my first piece of body art—the swallow—when I was thirteen. It was designed to disguise a cigarette burn my foster mother gave me for Christmas when I was ten. She dug her long nails into my skin to hold my hand in place, burned me, then smiled when I cried. The tattoo hid the hurt. Something ugly can sometimes be turned into something beautiful.
I’m impatient to feel Carter inside me, but he looks serious all of a sudden, as though he can somehow sense that people have hurt me. Or tried to. “If there’s anything you don’t want me to do just say so and we can—”
“I don’t want you totalk. Is that okay?” I say, pulling him toward me.
Carter is a fast learner and doesn’t need to be told twice.
He has a lot of energy but takes his time taking me. On the blue velvet sofa, up against the mantelpiece, on the floor. He picks me up as though I weigh nothing, and I wrap my legs around him, holding him in place. He seems enthusiastic to try me on for size in as many positions as possible and I’m here for it. We make use of the wingback armchair in ways I’m guessing Granny never did. The onlything that spoils it is remembering my diagnosis and wondering if this might be the last time I sleep with someone. It’s hard not to feel down when you start collecting lasts instead of firsts.
“Can I ask you a question…” I say afterward as we lie naked on a sheepskin rug.
“I think after what we just did, you can ask me anything,” Carter replies, lying on his side with his head propped up by one strong arm, staring into my eyes as though he might be in love. His face is stretched into a broad smile as though he just won the egg-and-spoon race. “I mean, that was the best sex I’ve ever had.Ever.It was incredible, right?” he says.
It wasn’t bad.
“Sure. How do you think my grandmother knew when she was going to die?”
From the expression on his face, that was clearlynota question he was expecting.
“I don’t know,” Carter says. “The letter she sent to the police station said she was going to die on Friday the fourteenth and the coroner concluded after I found her that she did. Buthowshe knew… maybe when you’re that close to the end you just do? She was almost a hundred—”
“So you believe she predicted her own death?” I ask.
“The only thing I believe is that there is a lot we don’t know we don’t know. Death is never right on time in my experience. I don’t know the answer, not sure we ever will, but maybe your grandmother knew something we don’t.” Or maybe a company called Thanatos predicted her date of death, she believed them, and somehow that caused her death.
It can’t all just be a coincidence, there’s no such thing.
Before we can continue our deep and meaningful post-shag discussion, my phone rings. I reach inside my bag to see who is calling, then I choose not to answer.
“What was that?” Carter asks.
