I didn’t have anywhere to go in the morning, anyway. The tour was finished. I’d been fired from concessions. And I couldn’t go back to the costume shop after taking the ring. Everything was over.
The night was shadows and wind and the smell of a storm on the way, a night for crying until the tears were gone but the ache was left. A night for imagining that you could step out onto the windowsill and say hello to the dark, say I am sad and have the wind say I know. You could say I am alive and the trees would sigh back We are too. You could whisper I am alone and everything ends and the stars in the sky would answer We understand. Or maybe it’s ghosts telling you all these things, saying We know, we’re alone too, we understand how everything and nothing ends.
I was almost asleep when I saw him. When I heard the wind and opened my eyes and there was a boy, a kid, standing at the windowsill holding the ring.
Ben, I said, with my mouth. Ben, my heart beat. Right there. Messy hair. Pajamas. Face that looked gray because there was no light. Was he real or a ghost?
I didn’t care.
He looked at the ring.
And then I noticed Ben’s hand, the other one not holding the ring. He had a spoon, a wooden cooking spoon. He was not flicking it back and forth. As I watched, he set it on the windowsill.
Ben, I said louder.
“Cedar?” Ben said, with Miles’s voice. He sounded scared.
Why would Ben use Miles’s voice?
“It’s me,” he said. “Cedar, it’s Miles.”
“What?” I said.
And then he flicked on the light and I knew. It was Miles. Not Ben.
Of course it was. Of course that’s who it had been all along.
“Where did you get this?” Miles asked. He opened his hand and held out the ring.
I didn’t answer.
“You have to take it back,” Miles said. “It looks fancy.”
“Back where?” I asked, which was a stupid thing to say.
“Back where you got it,” Miles said. He stood over me. He looked tall. He looked like Ben, a little.
The storm outside picked up, pushing the trees to and fro. I heard a smack of scattered raindrops against the window.
“You’re the one who’s been leaving things on the windowsill,” I said.
Not Lisette.
Not Leo.
Not Ben.
Miles nodded. “I’m sorry if I scared you. Usually you don’t wake up.” He looked worried, his eyes searching mine. I’d called him Ben.
“All the things you leave,” I said. I stopped. “It’s all stuff Ben would have liked.”
“Yeah,” Miles said. He glanced over at the spoon. “And you left me that lollipop. He liked lollipops.”
Right.
“So why leave those things for me?” I asked.
“Because I kept seeing stuff he would like,” Miles said, “and I didn’t know who else to give it to.”
I scooted over in the bed. “Come here,” I said. I didn’t sit up, but Miles sank down next to me. He was eight and I was twelve and we were too old to snuggle like kids but we did anyway. I put my arms around him and buried my face in the back of his hair and he smelled like Miles, Ben’s brother. Sweat and strawberry shampoo and clean pajamas.
The wind made a low, deep sound, one that went through my bones and every board of the house. The clouds moved and the moon came back.
And then, almost in slow motion, an enormous dark shadow went past my window.
The tree, I thought, as it creaked and ached and my heart pounded. The tree is coming down.
Some of its branches scratched, and I swear I saw a vulture going down with the tree, terror in the bird’s glinting eyes. And then a bigger branch came in, right through the window. The diamonds, dark, shattered all over the floor.
Miles and I both jumped up.
I stood there dazed for a second, and then I remembered my mom working down on the deck.
“Mom,” I said, and I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, Miles right behind me. My heart hit against my rib cage, my feet slammed on the steps. I shoved open the back door against the rain and the wind.
All I could see were branches and splintered wood. The vultures circled above us, agitated, swooping down. “Get away!” I screamed at them, and I ran out into the rain and broken branches and slippery leaves. Was she under the tree? The whole world was a forest. How could one tree be so enormous?
“Cedar,” Miles said, and his voice was a sob.
“Stay back, Miles,” I said. “Stay back.”
And then I heard my mother’s voice.
At first I didn’t understand. I thought it was in the leaves. I thought she was under the tree. I started grabbing at the wet branches. But then she called out, “Cedar!” louder, and I turned around, and she was coming toward me, the back door open, spilling light, Miles with her.
“It’s all right,” she said, “I wasn’t outside. I went down to the basement to get more sandpaper.”