Malone took off his clothes and hung them in the wardrobe, noting the rosy fragrance once more. At least it didn’t smell like cat. He had a feeling Charlie thought the room was his. That would change. The cat gave him the creeps. Or maybe it was the house. Or the women. Maybe it was just Dani, and the little girl she’d been.
“Poor Dani Flanagan. Strange little Dani Flanagan,” he said aloud, and felt ashamed of himself for saying it. To call her strange was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. Words like “strange” reduced men and women to their oddities. To flat, unfeeling objects to be studied and dismissed. People deserved more than that. Dani Flanagan deserved more than that.
He crawled into bed and turned off the lamp, not caring that it was barely 8:00 p.m. He was bone-tired, and he did not want to think anymore. He wanted darkness and oblivion. But there, in the quiet of his new surroundings, his mind flew back to the long train ride to Cleveland, little Dani Flanagan beside him.
She was being sent to family, and he’d been given the assignment to accompany her.
She knows you now, Murphy had said. It makes sense for you to go. Her family will have someone there to meet her at the station. You just have to see that she gets there.
Dani held the birdcage on her lap, and the kitten inside seemed happy enough in his makeshift home. She got smiles from other passengers and a few comments at the incongruous occupant of the cage, but she was shy about making eye contact and replied mostly with a smile and a yes or no if she had to speak at all. Maybe it was weariness. She started nodding off right after the trip began. The whirring and clacking of the wheels chased thought away.
He made a pillow from his overcoat and set it on the top of the cage, and she leaned against it and slept for two hours, only rousing when the cat started to cry. She lifted her bleary eyes to his, as if she’d forgotten where she was, and he was struck again by their color, so distinct, one from the other.
He saw the moment she remembered. It would be like that for a while, that awful shock and pain each time she awakened. But eventually, even in sleep, she would know they were gone. Malone didn’t know which was worse—to escape and return or to constantly remember.
“Do you think I could take Charlie out of the cage for a while?” she asked.
“No, Dani. If he gets loose, it won’t be good.”
“He’s thirsty.”
“I’m more worried about you. Are you hungry?”
She nodded. He brought out the sandwiches he’d purchased at the station and gave her one, along with a bottle of lemonade. He had water in his flask for the kitten.
“Cup your hand, like so.” He showed Dani how to make a little well in the palm of her hand and then opened the door of the cage just far enough for her to ease her hand through. Charlie lapped up the water with his tiny tongue, and Dani laughed, delighted.
A woman joined them in their car soon after. Her eyes were hollow and her mouth pinched, and she stared at Dani as if she didn’t like the look of her. Or maybe it was just the cat. She sneezed several times and asked the attendant if she could be seated somewhere else. When she rose to leave, her shawl fell from her shoulders and Dani shifted to pick it up.
“Ma’am?” Malone said, calling the woman’s attention to her wrap.
The woman turned back around and yanked it from Dani’s outstretched hand.
“I’m sorry about your Jimmy,” Dani said, her voice ringing with sweet sincerity. The woman blanched and her knees buckled. Malone reached for her arm, fearing she would fall, but she straightened almost immediately.
“What did you say, girl?” the woman cried.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Dani said, amending her words slightly.
“She’s got the devil in her,” the woman hissed at Malone, like he was to blame, but tears were streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t get away fast enough.
He looked down at the girl, incredulous. “Why did you say that, Dani? Who’s Jimmy? Do you know that woman?”
“No. I don’t know her.” Dani wouldn’t look at him.
He waited for her to expound, but she pulled out the last bite of her sandwich and pinched a piece off for Charlie, offering it to him through the bars.
“Dani, who’s Jimmy?” he pressed.
She sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Someone she lost. Someone she loved. He died. She’s angry. And sad.”
“I see. But how do you know that?”
“Her shawl told me.”
“Her . . . shawl . . . told you,” he repeated, his voice flat.
“Yes,” she said.
He sat in stunned silence.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Malone. Mother said it’s better if I don’t tell my stories. But that lady was so sad . . . and the words just came out.”
“Your stories.” He felt like a babbling idiot, repeating everything she said, but he couldn’t catch up. “They’re just stories?”
“I suppose. But they’re true stories, I think.”
“Tell me another one.”
“I can’t think of them by myself.”
“How do you think of them?”
“I have to touch something.”
“Like what?”
“Cloth. Sometimes other things. But usually cloth. Cloth talks to me because I’m a Kos.” She pronounced the word “Kosh” and said it like it was a grand thing to be.
“A Kos?” There he went again.
“My great-great-grandfather Kos made garments for the emperor.”
“The emperor of where?”
“I don’t know. A place not in America.”
“Huh.” He thought about that for a moment but circled back around to Dani. “So the woman’s shawl told you that she lost someone named Jimmy.”
“It’s kind of hard to explain.” She looked at him, eyes pleading. “I didn’t mean to say anything. I know better. My brain is tired. Sometimes when my brain is tired, my words come loose.”
“And you say things you don’t mean?” he asked, hopeful.
“No. Not things I don’t mean. Things I shouldn’t say.”
“Why shouldn’t you say them?”
“Because people don’t understand. And they are afraid of me.”
“When I gave you Bunny—the little cloth rabbit—you said it was Mary’s,” he prodded softly. It had haunted him.
She nodded. “That’s why I gave it back to you when you left.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. Then he held it out to her. She seemed hesitant to take it.
“Go on,” he urged, and she obeyed, closing her hands around the little toy.