“What happened? Is she okay?”
“I don't know how to tell you. She wasn't my granddaughter. We were just pretending—”
“I've known that for a long time.”
Margaret cleared her throat and looked over his head. “When she started to go around claiming to be an angel, I was concerned at first, but not too much so. Lots of children imagine things, like to pretend.”
“But I saw her, Mrs. Quinn. I saw what she can do. She made the clocks stop. She drew fire in the sky. She made whole flocks of birds appear.”
“You know what you think you saw, Sean, but maybe you were imagining too.” She moved to put a hand on his shoulder and then reconsidered. “Ever since your father left. I'm sure it's difficult.”
“It isn't about my father. She showed me the stars in her throat.”
“She is a sick child, Sean. A runaway. I'm not sure how she got here, and I wasn't in my right mind either. Seeing things that were not there. I wasn't myself, not till my daughter came home.”
He checked the urge to cry. “Can I see her when she gets back?”
“What I'm saying is, she's gone. She asked me to tell you—”
“You sent her away? How could you?”
“For her own good.” She paused as if not quite believing her own words. “Where she'll be better off.”
“But she isn't crazy. She is an angel.”
Margaret looked past him to the horizon.
“She saved you. She brought your daughter back. How could you?” He ran down the steps and out into the yard.
“Sean, please,” she called after him.
“How could you? I hate you! How could you not believe in her?”
“Son—”
“I hate you!” he shouted again and again, and then he ran all the way home.
THE DAY WAS ending, the light weakening, and outside his window a crescent of birds took flight, heading to shelter for the night, propelled toward darkness. Sean rolled over on his side and looked at the cardboard circus wagons, the feathers, the blue teacup. He wondered how she had departed. The man from the State—sinister beneath his fedora—coming to bind her in a straitjacket and drive off in a wagon with the other caged runaways. Mrs. Quinn, her sister, and her daughter standing on the front porch waving goodbye, their handkerchiefs fluttering in the breeze, and when they could no longer see her, turning back to the house like mourners leaving a funeral.
Or this time Norah did not hesitate. Climbing onto the rail, she steadied herself above the blue river and stared into the brightness of the sun. Like a bird she bent her knees into a crouch, unfurled her gigantic wings, and leapt into the air. The wind rushed beneath her as she beat higher and higher into the sky, and within minutes, she was small, then smaller, like a balloon floating away, and he followed with his eyes till she vanished into a point and then nothing at all.
Around dinnertime, his mother came to check on him, and when he claimed not to be hungry, she laid her hand upon his forehead, and he wished she would stay longer, stay forever, for the coolness of her touch was the only balm against the fire in his mind.
25
The For Sale sign went up the week before Easter, but he did not see it, for he took the long route to and from school, avoiding the shortcut and the Quinns’ home altogether. Her absence in the classroom was burden enough to bear, and the sight of that house each day would have tortured his memory. Sean also took no part in the sacralization and mythmaking that arose among her third-grade apostles. Those who had turned away now crafted a gospel of their fragmentary remembrances, conflating episodes, granting her powers she did not have, neglecting the significance of those she possessed. Days after the confirmation of the Quinns’ departure, new stories began to circulate. Some, mostly children, accepted her claims and in retrospect regretted how Norah had been treated. Others, particularly the adults, were glad to see the Quinns leave town. No one knew where they went or why, not even the Delarosas next door. It was reported that the owner had left the rooms furnished, vanishing without so much as a goodbye to neighbors or friends or anyone at all. The house, furniture, and land were being sold by one Diane Cicogna of Washington, D.C.