“There,” she whispered.
Something rustled the leaves. To my surprise, a little gray-and-white songbird alighted on a branch nearby. We held our breath in tandem—I felt the seize of muscle, so closely was her back pressed to my chest.
Hadshedone that? I knew the bees were attuned to her, but never in our weeks of bird-watching had a bird come so closeas this. The monster tuned our awareness to the rapid pulse of the tufted titmouse’s heartbeat. I didn’t even mind. There was no temptation, no hunger.
Not for that, anyway.
“No,”the monster murmured softly into our shared mind, almost teasing.“You hunger for something else now, don’t you?”
As Eva peered through the camera’s viewfinder, my eyes dropped to her mouth. The bow of her lip, the soft parting of breath.
Suffer me, then.
Eva snapped a shot of the bird, then lowered the camera to her lap. She looked back at me, our faces drawn closer than I’d planned on. Just a breath and my lips would graze her nose.
The monster preened at the sudden speeding of her pulse.
“I’ve always envied them.”
Eva stilled. “Songbirds?”
I nodded.
“Because they’re free?” Eva asked.
No. That’s why Mom loved them. She wanted,needed, wings.
“Some species migrate at night,” I said. “Daytime thermals affect the atmosphere, but after dark, the air cools. It makes it easier for them to find their way back home.”
Eva’s gaze dipped. “That’s really cool.”
Was she looking at my mouth?
The monster gave me a little nudge.“If you can touch her, you can taste her, little death-touch.”
Cheeks flushed, I plunged on, unwilling to take romantic advice from the creature in my head. “They have a biological compass?” I hadn’t meant to make it into a question. I just felt nervous. “It brings them back home.”
Eva twisted toward me more fully, letting the Minolta hang from her neck. “You’re thinking about your mom, aren’t you?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised she’d picked up on that.
“Where was your home before you came to us?” she asked.
Home had never been a where at all. I shrugged, scuffing rough bark with the toe of my shoe. “I didn’t really have one, bee girl.”
What I did have was a lifetime of days spent on the road with Mom. Some of those memories were good, others dull. Far too many were sharp with the disappointment that no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the one person I loved most to see me. I couldn’t get her to look past her need for escape and find a home in what we already had.
Eva bit her lip. “That isn’t fair.”
No. I supposed it wasn’t.
Suddenly antsy, I moved to dismount the log, but before I could, Eva caught me by the shirt. “I don’t think any home worth its salt would run from you, Arthur.”
I huffed. That was easy for her to say.
“What?” she pressed.
“That just isn’t my experience.”
