As one season gave way to the next, the legend of Norah Quinn faded. By May, the schoolchildren were x-ing out the remaining days until summer vacation, their minds preoccupied with swimming pools and trips to the shore, Little League and the seemingly endless nirvana of doing nothing at all. In time, they largely forgot about the girl that had once graced their lives, forgot the animal crackers and moving statues, the burning car and the lost minute. She was put away with the Easter decorations, the sweaters, and the rain slickers. From time to time, another child invited Sean to play but he was so sullen at Monopoly, so bored by cowboys and Indians, that he was rarely asked back again. Skimping on his schoolwork, he barely passed. He wanted nothing more than to be alone.
In summertime, his wish came true. His mother left him by himself when she went to work, and there was nobody who ever came around. He spent his days in idleness, trying to forget Norah, but he still missed and thought of her often, for it had never occurred to him that she would ever leave. When Father's Day arrived, he remembered a conversation with Norah about his missing father. “He hasn't abandoned you,” she had said, “but lost himself. Pray that he may find himself again.”
On an evening in late June, Sean rode his bicycle past the Friendship School and sat awhile staring at its utter emptiness. Dusk crept up unexpectedly, and fireflies began to flash like thousands of stars across the playground. Along the edge of the woods, a chorus of peeper frogs and crickets filled the silence with their music, and he felt a kind of panic at getting home after dark. His mother would be angry with him, so against his instincts, he took the path that ran past the Quinns’ yard. Under a quarter moon, he stopped at the fence bordering their property. Next door, the lights were off at the Delarosas’; he had not dared to say a word to the flower shop man since the incident on the bridge. The grass had grown high and wild due to neglect, for nobody was buying houses around there any longer, nobody was moving in, only moving out or dying off. Looming like a black box, the house was more shadow than substance, but he could still picture Mrs. Quinn watching from the kitchen window and Norah hopping the split rails as nonchalant as a cat. He closed his eyes to better picture her, and in the instant he opened them again, he noticed a flicker from her window as if a shadow had crossed the room. No light had been on when he first pulled up, he was certain, but now the window shone like a star. Inching closer, he saw the luminous spill from the second story, the curtains flapping gently in an intermittent breeze. Lured farther, he parked his bicycle against the fence and waded through the grass to the back door. One unanswered knock proved empty and ridiculous. He turned the knob and found the door unlocked.
The kitchen was largely as he remembered. The pictures on the walls were gone, but everything else looked the same—the scarred oak table and chairs pushed back as though a family had just gotten up from a meal. Going room to room, he found himself in an abandoned museum. In Dr. Quinn's study, the medical books stood steadfast and a stethoscope curled like a snake on an old hat rack. A few personal effects were missing from the living room, but left behind were the old sofa covered in a faded afghan, the reading lamp silted with dust, and beneath the coffee table, their old Monopoly, Tip It, a magazine from the middle of March. For a brief moment, he expected Mrs. Quinn and her sister arriving home from a late dinner, but the idyll passed. Staleness hung in the air, an odor particularly strong and sharp at the bottom of the stairs, where he debated whether to investigate further the source of that mysterious light. Along the bottom edge of her bedroom's closed door, the faintest shimmering line appeared through the darkness. He called out her name.
Something stirred at the sound of his voice, a surprised cry and then a fluttering scurry. Sean took the steps, pausing at each riser to listen again, but he could not be sure if the noise emanated from above or came from inside his own pounding chest. On the top step, as he was about to reach the landing, he risked her name again. “Norah,” he whispered hoarsely, and the response was unmistakable: drumbeat of wings, dozens flapping in panic, a rush of wind pulling at the closed door.
Angels, he decided. Angels behind the door and Norah among them. Or the seven Angels of Destruction come to end time, led by the angel in the hat and overcoat he had summoned in his nightmare. The wingbeats grew furious and crashing. Just don't hurt me, he said to himself as he turned the knob.
The sudden opening sucked in the air and sent feathers undulating in the cross-breeze, as though he had just walked in upon a fleeting pillow fight. The bed was a mess, the brocaded covers and blankets ripped and unraveling at the seams. A lit lamp lay knocked over on its side, the shade brown where the bulb had scorched the cloth. White droppings coined the bookshelves. Colorful strands from the blankets were threaded into a nest atop the bureau. Birds, he realized. Gotten in through an open window. Knocked over the lamp and bumped the switch. No angels present. He laughed at his foolishness, laughed at how afraid he had let himself be. He picked up the lamp and set it back in place, and as he pushed down the sash, he saw in the glass the reflection of Norah. Soft as a wingtip, something brushed his shoulder, and he pivoted quickly expecting by some miracle to find her there, but just as quickly, the prayer vanished and he was alone in an empty room facing his own image in the black window.
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