The cheap thing popped right open in my hands. I stared at it stupidly for a second, and then I started laughing. I closed the lock again, then I pulled and jerked at it, trying to re-create the angle of that sideways tug. It took me less than a minute. Damn that Candace. Joya and I had wondered if her giant bat ears let her hear the tumblers or if she’d been an international jewel thief in another life. I could have changed the combo to the infinite solution for pi and Candace still would have rummaged as she pleased.
Now Kai’s illustrated Ramayana sat on my breakfast bar with my other childhood souvenirs, and Julian was on his way. The braided bit of horse’s mane was gone, likely unraveled long ago, but everything else was laid out like a mini-museum of mother relics. The exhibits were pitifully few, but that hadn’t stopped me from straightening and reordering them nine times. He was a solid twenty minutes late.
If he showed, this would be our first face time since our disastrous introduction in my office, when I’d freaked out and Birdwine had threatened him. We’d messaged back and forth a little more on Facebook. I’d told him about getting his file from Worth, the expurgated version. So expurgated it was like a novel boiled down to haiku, but I’d attached the scanned-in pictures of Hana with our mother at the duck pond. He’d responded, Wow. Then an hour later, That’s a lot to process.
No shit.
These interactions gave me no real sense of the kid.
This morning, his message read: I keep looking at the pics of Hana. What should we do?
I messaged back, I gave Birdwine a plane ticket to Austin, my AmEx card, and carte blanche. He’ll find her.
Is he in Austin now? What can I do to help? Julian pressed, so I told him everything I knew. It wasn’t much.
Birdwine had checked in with me yesterday, after he visited Kai’s tiny apartment on Bellman Avenue. Her boyfriend, Dave Tolliver, still lived there. He thought her last name was Redmond, and that the kid was named Hannah Redmond. On February nineteenth, Kai and Hana had packed most of what they owned into his old station wagon and disappeared while he was at work.
This was a classic Kai breakup move. She’d abandoned everything that didn’t fit in the back of the wagon. I had Birdwine pay Tolliver for the car—it was only worth about twelve hundred dollars. In return, Tolliver gave Birdwine everything she’d left behind. He had four big boxes in his storage locker in the basement, mostly books and mail and photos, held hostage in case Kai resurfaced. Birdwine had sorted through it all piece by piece, reading the story in the lines between notes from her doctor, empty prescription bottles, scribbled phone messages, photographs, unpaid bills, and, of all damn things, a pamphlet about cancer. I tried not to imagine some chilly, white-jacketed stranger handing Kai a trifold glossy about the thing inside her that was killing her.
Instead, I told Birdwine, “When we moved like that, sometimes there was another man.”
“Maybe not this time,” Birdwine said. “It’s bad. How much detail do you want?”
“Keep it dry, like it’s any other case,” I said. The mere idea of the pamphlet—that such a thing existed—had almost undone me.
There was a silent moment on the phone, then Birdwine said, “But it’s not any oth—”
“Please,” I said. The single syllable came out sharp, staccato as a gunshot. “Bare bones on this, Birdwine, from here on out.”
“Okay. So. The cancer started in her lungs. She’s had emphysema for years, and by the time she figures it’s more than that, it’s everywhere.” Birdwine fell right into his regular rhythm. I knew his hands would be rolling in that way he had when he laid out a hypothetical. His voice was brisk, almost clinical, like I wanted. “Liver, bones, brain. She’s starting to have delirium, delusions. Her decision making is impaired. She’s on some heavy-duty medication, acting weird, and someone calls DFPS. That’s Texas-speak for child protective services. Dave says it wasn’t him, and I believe him. He had it pretty bad for Kai—he didn’t even call the cops about his car. Could have been someone from a homeschool playgroup Hana went to. I don’t think there was another man. They bolted because DFPS spooked her.”
The longer he talked, the more my heart raced, and my lungs had started to feel sticky. His story changed the odd parenthetical sentence written up the side of my check. (Obviously I don’t want you to come here). I’d thought it meant she didn’t want to see me, but the journey she mentioned in the first half of the note was literal. Perhaps she’d only told me not to come because she wouldn’t be there.
I said, “But Kai knew she was dying. It’s not like she’d take off on a pilgrimage to see the largest ball of twine. She must have had a plan for Hana.”
“Yeah, but what? Not one DFPS would approve of, or why go?” Birdwine asked.
I had no idea. Read in the light of dementia and heavy medication, Kai’s note read less like hippie-dippy mysticism, more like a dangerous combination of terrified and crazy.
“So what’s next?” I said.