The Weight of Feathers

Her everyday braid showed mostly the silver. Now her hair was loose to her waist, the black streaks free. She wore no lipstick or mascara, but a layer of powder evened her color. Blush warmed her cheeks.

Though she had no children, Lora Paloma had always looked, to Lace, like a grandmother. But not now, not in this dress and this light. Now she was a woman retired men might wink at. They would take her out for early dinners and almost-late dancing. Twice a year—Valentine’s Day and her birthday—they would bring her twelve red roses, perfect and identical as folded napkins.

The sun made her glow like she was made of scales. Her skin shimmered with something a little like that pale iridescence.

Lace remembered Cluck telling her that iridescence was a dangerous thing. When birds or dragonflies grew into the glint of their own wings, they were weak, more open to damage than creatures that were plain colors. Lace wondered if Tía Lora had spent the last few days alone in her motel room, fragile and still, so she could emerge beautiful and made of light.

“Mijita?” her great-aunt asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Me?” Lace’s laugh was soft as the color on Tía Lora’s cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

Behind the veil of blush, her great-aunt’s color drained. She turned and walked into the woods.

“Tía Lora.” Lace went after her, her heart tight and raw.

Now her great-aunt knew where she’d been hiding. She’d picked up the oak and earth smell of the Corbeau boy’s feathers.

Lace caught up and stopped her. “Why are you here?”

Her great-aunt looked past her. Her eyes fell on the funeral. The wooden casket. The boy who stood by the gravesite. Even in corduroys and a plain shirt, instead of those passed-down suits, he looked like a young copy of the old man they were laying in the ground. A print left behind.

“Tía Lora,” Lace said. “Tell me.”



à bois noueux, hache affilée.

Meet roughness with roughness.

The priest from Linden spoke, but Cluck didn’t hear the words. He watched a crow pecking at the grass, feathers shining like slices of water. It kept his eyes from the varnished coffin, a burst of carnations and filler fern splayed over the top.

His aunts must have told the florist nothing but that they needed a funeral spray. Pépère never would have wanted the fuss of baby’s breath and these ruffled, bloodless flowers. If there had to be flowers, his family should have covered the wood with the kind of wild periwinkles Mémère let take over their back garden.

His family’s scorn whipped against him like wind-thrown branches. He didn’t care. They could think what they wanted. He’d burned as many of his grandfather’s things as he had the right and the stomach to. His family would have sold Pépère’s clothes, or let them wrinkle and yellow at the bottom of a wooden trunk.

Eugenie stood at his side, her small, set face daring her mother and father and older brother to say anything.

The crow beat its wings and lifted off. Cluck looked over his shoulder and watched it fly.

A shape at the tree line moved like a shadow. For that second, he thought he saw her, Lace Paloma in a black dress so short his mother would not have let her cross a church nave. Then she vanished.

This shadow of her was haunting him, reminding him that his grandfather would not have died if Cluck had not been so caught up in her. All he could do now was what he’d done, given her up, just like his grandfather wanted. Cluck wouldn’t be with the same kind of woman who had told lies about Pépère, and he wouldn’t trap Lace in this family.

He turned back toward the service, wanting to shake off that glimpse of her shape. He squeezed his eyes shut so tight that when he opened them, flecks of blue light swam in the air.

Clémentine’s eyes flashed toward Eugenie. Her Is he alright? face. It was the same for her cousins, for children, for a stray cat they fed that always held its head tilted to the side.

Eugenie squeezed his hand. “?a va?”