“Glad to hear it. Do you mind if I take a look?”
I walk over and reluctantly hand him the pages. The place where my hand held the paper is wrinkled and damp. It’s impossible to miss the look on his face as he scrutinizes the top sheet, looking up at me and then back at the page.
I lean forward to see what he’s stuck on, following his line of vision. It’s just my name at the top, like Mrs. Haskell told me to write.
My father looks up again, his brow furrowed.
“What’s wrong, sir?”
“You were supposed to put your age on here—”
“I did. See there—” I motion at the page, uncomprehending. “It’s right under my name.”
“But you put down fifteen.“
“Yes, sir.”
My stomach does a wobbly cartwheel, realizing something I haven’t yet. It did the same when I saw him in the woods.
He lets out a long, slow breath, which smells like toothpaste and cigarettes.
“You were born fourteen years ago, Carey.”
Blood beats in my brain like a drum.
“Fifteen, sir.”
My father looks away, squinting into the afternoon light. He shakes his head no. The room shrinks around me, like I’m Alice and I ate the tiny cake. My eyes refocus, and my mind uses all its energy to wrap around his words.
“Fifteen,” I say again, emphasizing thefif, as if I can make it true by repeating it.
“Fourteen. I’m sorry, Carey.”
The hallway is a blur as I run down it, out the front door, and through the parking lot. Can’t breathe. I squat behind his truck, panting, my T-shirt sticking to my back.
No! I can’t be fourteen when I was fourteen already! Mama couldn’t have been that screwed-up!
My mind fills with the whooshing and crashing of the Obed River. The whispering trees, calling for me, wondering why I’ve left them. I’m just like Mama.
I want to go home! MY home!
The eaglets. I concentrate on the eaglets. Ness and I watched them every day after they’d hatched. She was still talking then.
“Oh no!” Nessa cries. “The eaglet’s nest is fattin apart. Look, Carey. It’s bwoken!”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes it is. Look at it!”
I gather her onto my lap, her cheeks slick with tears.
“No, Ness. Over time, the mama eagle pulls away the straws one by one until the babies are left balancin on the branches“
“You’re lyin, Carey Blackburn! Why would she be that mean?”
“It’s not mean. It’s love. If the mama kept bringin them food and they stayed in their comfy little nest, they’d never be brave enough to learn how to fly or to venture out into the world.”
Jenessa takes in a ragged breath, thinkin it over. I play with her hair, waitin’.
“The baby birds are just like us. Right, Carey?”
“How do you mean?”
“Brave, like us. Our mama isn’t here. Does that mean we’re flyin’, too?”
I give her a squeeze. She doesn’t know it, but she’s my wings.
“You bet we are, baby. In our own way, we’re flyin’, too.”
I wonder if the chipped water jug is still there, and the kettle. I think of the key in the hollow hickory. What if someone else finds it?
I hate Mama. HATE her. What kind of mother forgets the age of her child? What kind of mother can’t even keep a birthday straight?
“Hey, you.”
My father stands above me, blocking the sun. He nudges my cowboy boot with his work boot.
“I’m sorry, kiddo. I don’t know why she would’ve lied to you, unless it was to keep you two disguised.”
“Or she forgot.” I don’t look up. “Jenessa’s still six, right?”
“Yes. She got that right.”
I hug my knees to my chest, my arms aching, I hold on so tight. We share the silence for a bit—six minutes, according to my wristwatch—and then he fixes to go back into the building, stopping after a few paces to turn back to me.
“Don’t you go anywhere, you hear? I don’t know if you’re thinking about running, but your sister needs you here.”
I look up at him, my face swollen and tear-stained.
“I need you here. And Melissa would skin me alive if I came home without you. She’s pretty attached to you two, if you don’t already know it. She’s expecting me to bring both her girls home.”
I swallow my emotions in an audible gulp. He walks back over, nudges my foot again.
“Are we clear?”
I nod, as mute as Jenessa. Then I watch his feet walk away, although it still feels like he’s walking toward me in all the ways that count.
I wonder, in the darkest puzzle piece of my heart, if he’d say those words if he knew, really knew, about the white-star night.
Jenessa would never tell. It had sucked the words right out of her.
I carry the secret close as skin or breath or pee. It rode in the truck with me as surely as those three garbage bags. Even with hours and miles between us, the truth hunkers down fat as a tick tucked into the moistest, darkest place.