“And did she?”
He looked at his hands, the mounds of seeds in each open palm. “No.”
We stopped talking after that. Down the path, I could see others standing, arms in the air. I raised mine higher.
Finches. Blackhead Grosbeaks. Those were the birds that would land in our hands if we were patient, Heekin had told me. I glanced over at him in his maroon Members Only jacket, zipped up tight. He had nicked his neck—shaving, I assumed—and a dab of dried blood held a torn tissue in place, making me think of Dereck’s gloves. Those flecks on the material, that unexpected story of how he’d come to ruin his fingers, my visit with Father Coffey—all of it had lingered in my mind during the long wait on Saturday. Since a deadline at the paper kept Heekin from meeting sooner, I’d spent the day before at home with Rose. The two of us had not spoken since the incident with the money, so the only sound in our house had been the chiming clock at the top of each hour as time slipped away, bringing me closer to the moment I’d have to face Rummel and Louise. This morning I told Rose I was going to the library—a reckless lie, considering the place was closed, but I knew she’d never check—then I met Heekin at the end of Butter Lane. Now he had driven us to the Bombay Hook Nature Preserve across the state line in Delaware, and with only twenty-two hours remaining, I was beginning to think he’d be no help after all.
“Can I ask how you found that letter?” Heekin said. His speech, I noticed, just as I had on that initial call, was nothing like the long-winded sentences he wrote and nothing like the stuttering, rambling man my father once complained about.
“It was in my sister’s room. I was looking for one from my uncle, actually. I wrote him weeks ago, but never heard back.”
“So it was nowhere special then? My letter, I mean.”
It seemed like such an odd question, I couldn’t help but feel a flutter of annoyance. “Sorry, but no. Somehow it ended up under Rose’s bed, which was why I thought it had been meant for her.”
He sighed. “Well, we should stop talking or they won’t come. The quiet and stillness attract them, same as the globules your father used to claim appeared to him.”
A breeze moved past, shaking the last stubborn leaves that clung to the bare branches. A chill moved through me again that had less to do with the cold, I suspected, and more to do with the sense of betrayal I felt toward my parents. When no birds came after some time, I broke the silence. “Obviously, you didn’t believe him.”
“Your father? No. Not in the end. Did you?”
I thought of the light in the basement that had yet to go out, of those pictures he showed during his lectures, of the story he told about his fateful first meeting with my mother. “I did and I didn’t. It was hard not to, though, when you listened to him talk.”
“I know that feeling. The first time I went to see them, your father did most of the talking up onstage. He had the gift of gab. But your mother, she had a greater gift.”
We were quiet again, waiting. Not far away, a small bird with black and white feathers perched in a cedar tree but showed no signs of coming closer.
“Where did you write your uncle?” Heekin asked, ignoring his own instructions to keep quiet and sending that tiny creature away.
“Tampa. His address there.”
“Well, that explains why you never heard back. Your uncle moved, Sylvie.”
“Moved? Where?”
“Not far from here, actually. A couple hours away.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a reporter, remember? Maybe not the best one out there, but I’ve covered every detail of your parents’ story for the paper. A number of times I even tried to talk to your uncle, but he refused. Same as your sister when I reached out to her.”
On the ride to the preserve, in his wheezing, beat-up Volkswagen, Heekin had told a story that was fast becoming familiar: Not long after my parents’ deaths, he stopped by our house only for Rose to turn him away. She said he’d been nothing but trouble for my mother and father and she didn’t want to see him again. But he had not mentioned anything about my uncle. “Why did you want to talk to him?”
Heekin shrugged. “Other than you girls, Howard was one of the few people in your parents’ circle I never once interviewed. Not while writing the book. Not after they were gone. I just thought he might know something.”
“But he was in Florida that night,” I said as the note in Rummel’s folder floated into my mind. “What could he possibly tell you?”