The Weight of Feathers

“Your cousins?” Then it registered. “The guys at the liquor store. Those were your cousins.”


“You really think I’m here to spy? Go ask my family where the pink mermaid went. They’ll tell you I’m not with them anymore. Or they’ll pretend I’m dead, or I never existed, I don’t know. Go ask them.”

Water glinted at the inner corners of his eyes. His jaw grew hard, eyes stuck on the pinecone. “I think I know enough, thanks.”

He took a step away from her.

“Cluck.” She reached out and clasped the curved-under fingers on his left hand.

“Don’t.” He pulled his hand away, not rough but decisive. Final.

Her guilt over hurting him drained away, and the empty place filled up with anger. He took every time their lips brushed, her body up against his, and threw it all out like scraps of ribbon.

“I don’t want to see you around here again,” he said.

“Or what?” Lace asked. “You’ll get the shotgun and take care of me?”

“No. That’s your family, remember?”

The burn on her forearm pulsed. He’d seen the dead crows. He knew about her uncles with the Winchester. She dug her nails into her palms, thinking of Cluck finding one of those birds, eyes dull as black beach glass.

“At least we’ve never killed anyone in your family,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Twenty years ago.”

“You’re kidding, right? Why would my family sink the trees they were performing in?”

“I’m guessing they didn’t mean to, and whatever they meant to do went wrong.”

“Like what?”

“Like drown everyone in our show,” she said. “The flooding at the lake messed up our part of the river. It was calm, and then halfway through the show it was white water. It could’ve killed half my family.”

“And the next time my family turned around, all of you had taken over the lakefront. You perform where a member of my family died. And a member of yours. You perform in your own family’s graveyard. You get that, right?”

“There wouldn’t be a graveyard if it weren’t for all of you. You killed my great-aunt’s husband. Did you know that?”

“Did you ever think your great-aunt’s husband was the one who did it?” Cluck asked. “What other reason did he have for being there?”

“The same reason your brother knew exactly what our tails looked like. He spied on us. Just like my great-uncle spied on all of you.”

Cluck dropped his hands. “I’m so glad you have it all figured out.”

Sadness crept back into his face. The feeling of wanting to kiss him struck her, hard and sudden. To show him that her touching him had been in defiance of her own family, and she had not cared. To slip back into the rhythm of her mouth and fingers responding to his.

She was hollow with the knowledge that if she had any other last name, he would’ve let her.

“For the record,” Cluck said. “Every burn you have, you can thank your family.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“My grandfather worked for the plant until your family got him fired,” he said. “If he’d been there, this wouldn’t have happened. He would’ve pushed for the damn overfill pipe. That was his job. To keep things like that from happening. You want to blame someone for that scar, blame your family. Because they did this to you before you were born.”

“My family’s not the one who put the net in the river,” she said.

One slow blink, and the anger in his face fell away. “What?”

Lace thought of Magdalena, fighting the nylon net, and Lace fighting one of her own, a string of their last air bubbles floating across the eight years between their half-drownings.

“The night you found me,” Lace said. “I’d gotten caught in a net. If I hadn’t, I would’ve gotten out of the water a lot faster. I could’ve gotten home.”

“How do you know it was a net?” he asked.

“Last time I checked, blue nylon doesn’t grow in rivers.”