Homing (19 page)

She called Johnny Parker from the payphone on the corner, and he said, “Baby, I thought you'd never call. You come right on over.” And she did.

* * *

For two whole days, Harold sat on the mound beneath the lilac tree and cried. He cried so plaintively Leah worried that he would die too, that the next time she looked out the window, it would be to see his dull grey bird carcass heaped on Sandy's grave. But near the end of the second day, he went quiet. She ran to the window to make sure he was alive. He looked at her once, took wing and flew away. She knew she'd never see him again.

* * *

It was three days now, and still no birds. Nathan couldn't believe it. He paced, he sat, he twisted his hands, he thought about Winston Churchill and still no birds. No birds, no notes, no Leah, no Rebecca, no anyone he knew. The closest thing he had to a friend these days was that hip-hop kid in the dirty parka, and even he didn't come around much anymore. Nathan sighed, drove his hands into his pockets. He supposed he'd have to think seriously about getting home soon. Rebecca would be worried, and though he liked the library, its charms were beginning to wear thin. Nathan was tired of being ignored, he wanted to go home, where people knew who he was, where they cared about him, where they missed him when he wasn't around. He curled up in the bushes and thought about how to get home, how to figure out where home was from here.

* * *

Leah filled another bag with clothes she didn't need. She hoped they'd send a big truck and a crew of able-bodied guys. She had so much she wanted to get rid of.

* * *

Henry raided James's closet for more good dress duds. He felt great in James's clothes, and in James's house, and he allowed himself to fantasise that James and Emily would never come home, and that he, Henry, could simply slide into this new, ready-made life. He loved going up and down the stairs, having a bathtub, doing laundry in the basement. He loved the solitude. He loved not fighting with anyone but himself, and then only if he really felt like it. He loved stretching out in the whole bed, getting up when it suited him, playing guitar if he wanted all day long. He realised he didn't miss Tina, not for herself. He was hurt that she'd cheated on him, mad that she couldn't even admit it, sorry for her that she'd had to turf him out rather than deal with herself. But he wasn't sorry for himself. Getting kicked out was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. Since — well, since he'd hooked up with Tina in the first place. He whistled while he dressed, looked at the clock. Whoops, he was late. Oh well, Johnny Parker would expect that. And besides, he'd be all distracted by the new girlfriend. Henry had to admit there was a curiousity about her. He'd never heard Johnny Parker go on and on quite the way he was inclined to with this one. Charlotte was her name. He was keen to get a look at her. He took a last look in the mirror, raised an eyebrow at himself, then clattered down the steps, grabbed his coat and flew out the door.

* * *

Nathan sat up short. He suddenly remembered who he was waiting for. It wasn't Rebecca at all. It was Leah. He was done for. She was never on time. He might as well make himself comfortable. He curled back down beneath the bushes and tried to go to sleep. He'd long since given up trying to make any sense of the notes he'd been sent, but it comforted him to have them close. They were flattened out now and dirty from having been whipped about in the windstorm. But he'd managed to corral them all together again in the bushes. He let his eyes linger on each one in turn.

A long flight, only sorrow at the end.
A gathering storm, you kept time with your breath.
The bell in the night calls us and we come.
The tether slips, you slide, you soar.
After midnight, in the silence, intensive, the machines turned
away discreetly, as if to grant you privacy at last.
A feeling of relief in the quiet room. The heat subsides.

“Good night?” he asked as they passed in front of the library, on their way home from drinks with Henry.

“Good night,” she nodded. “I like your friend.”

“Henry,” he said. “Yeah he's a good cat. Guy's been through some hard times lately, for sure, but it seems like things are turning around for him.”

“It's exciting about that producer,” Charlotte said.

“Could be,” Johnny said. “Could be very positive. As long as he keeps a steady hand on it now. So long as he doesn't freak-out.”

Charlotte nodded. “Seems like it,” she said.

* * *

Where the hell was Leah? Nathan groused to himself. He'd been waiting half the night, and it looked like he was going to have to wait the other half as well. As long as it didn't rain, he'd be okay. But still, he would rather be anywhere else. His patience with the library had finally worn thin. He grooved himself deeper into the dirt between the bushes and the wall and closed his eyes again.

* * *

Leah slept fitfully. In her dream it was that night, that terrible night outside the library. She was drunk, stinking drunk, and she could feel Nathan's eyes on her, but every time she turned around, he'd look away. He was driving her crazy. She was old enough; she didn't need a babysitter. And anyway what was he good for? He'd gone and left her. Oh, she was mad. She'd leaned on the wall at the library and tried to stop the spinning in her head, but every time she looked up, Nathan. It had been the same all goddamn day, and she was sick of it. There he was, with those big eyes, those big haunted eyes, and he would never look right at her. But he would be there, just standing there. Suff ering, because of her. Finally, it was enough.

“Fuck off,” she roared, her hands thrown up in front of her face. “Just get the fuck away from me! I can't stand it anymore. I don't want you here, so leave me alone.”

And just like that, she felt him leave.

She had thought, when he still lived, that when he died, she would know it. Would feel him go, maybe even see him once before he left. But when that time came, she was oblivious. She'd been asleep, deeply so, and had been torn from unconsciousness by the bright light of her bedside lamp, and her mother's hand on her back. It's time. Time for what, she wondered, groggy and disoriented. And then she remembered. Ah. Time.

But in this dream, and on that night in front of the library, she had indeed felt him leave. A cold wind, a tearing sound, and then she was without him. Drunk, and thinking she was happy, she stumbled home. It wasn't till she got to her front door that the goosebumps started, the prickling horror.

And it was only the next morning that she really saw what she had done. She'd chalked up to her hangover her nervousness, her unease at the thought of being outside. Grimly, she'd shoved her feet into her boots and struggled the three blocks to the organic market for carrot juice and whole grain raisin bread. Some people craved fried potatoes and endless cups of black coffee after a night on the town, but Leah always hungered for virtue in the aftermath.

She was grubby and unbathed, intending only to grab her juice and bread and shuffle home again. But as soon as she pushed open the door, heard its little bells chime, she was met with Psychic Sue. Leah took a deep breath. Psychic Sue was exactly the wrong kind of intense for Leah's state of being. She insisted on having only deep conversations, and on making deep eye contact. Leah was feeling more surface. She wanted a shallow connection, the kind where you waved then looked away quickly.

Granted, Psychic Sue had been somewhat more tolerable since the reading she'd given Leah, but there were still parts of that whole thing that were beyond puzzling. Her brother had had no kids, wasn't even married. Perhaps he'd intended to propose to Rebecca, but he got sick before he had the chance, and was too responsible to ask her to tie herself down to a cancer patient once he was diagnosed. So Sue's predictions about her nephews seemed impossible to say the least. And then there was her own supposed Cheshire Cat grinning future husband. That in itself was an unbelievable crock.

Leah shook her head. It didn't have the desired eff ect of clearing her thoughts. If anything, the sudden movement clouded them. Psychic Sue was right there, and about to say hello, when the look on her face changed from happy to deeply disturbed.

“Hey Sue,” Leah had said. “How's it going?” She steeled herself for the inevitable conversation about whatever healing techniques Sue was learning and experimenting with.

“Hey.”

Leah raised her eyebrows and waited for more. It was impossible that she could get off so easily.

Sue's eyes kept darting to Leah's left shoulder. She looked increasingly distraught.

“What's up?” Leah persisted. It was nothing short of bizarre that
Sue wouldn't engage her. Perhaps Leah still reeked of alcohol. That was very likely, she considered.

Sue took a step away from her, still glancing repeatedly at Leah's shoulder. “I have to go,” Sue blurted at last.

“Okay,” Leah said. She couldn't smell the vodka herself, but obviously, Sue could.

“I have to go to a consciousness raising class,” Sue said. She abandoned her cart, pulling her knapsack out of it and pushing past Leah in a hurry.

Leah shrugged. She got her juice and bread and headed for home.

As she made her way, she thought about Psychic Sue's odd behaviour.

She used her cell phone to call Charlotte. “Weirdest thing,” she said. “She was so twitchy and strange. She said she had to get to her consciousness raising class.”

“A psychic needs to have her consciousness raised?”

“I know,” Leah said, “it's like, wouldn't you be hoping to have it kind of, I don't know, blunted, if you were a psychic? It just seems like it would be a lot of work all the time.”

Charlotte hooted.

“And she kept staring at my shoulder. Or, like, over my shoulder, like we were at a cocktail party and she was looking to see if there was anyone else she'd rather talk to.” Leah heard her words as they came out of her mouth and hung in the air between her lips and the cell phone. “Oh god.”

“What?” said Charlotte.

“Oh my god.” She flipped the phone closed and started to run. She ran as hard as she could until she got home, and then she slammed the door shut.

Leah hadn't been outside since.

* * *

Henry couldn't sleep. It wasn't a bad thing, but it was unusual. Henry could always sleep. But lately, his songs had been waking him up early, nagging him out of bed in the grey light of dawn, hassling him till he had the guitar on his knee, the strings beneath his fingers. I am here, the guitar seemed to call, where are you? The presence of the
pigeon in his life, that brief interlude, was like a dream to him now. A strange and magical tide that had risen and then receded, leaving behind a film of happiness and good fortune over everything Henry touched. The songs he was writing were like magic, Dave O'Dell's card on James's bureau was a lucky charm, a magical talisman. He was well and truly free of Tina and ready, so ready, for whatever was coming next. He kept that scrap of paper with its pencil-scratched spell on it taped to the side of his guitar, crowning the list of songs that was growing every few days. It was all going Henry's way. And it was about time.

He ran his fingers over the strings, loved the sweet sound they made with so little eff ort on his part. An old favourite to get started, he decided. The song had been in his head for weeks now. He couldn't explain it and he didn't care. He leaned back in the little rocking chair, opened his mouth and sang.

* * *

She awoke in horror. Heart pounding, mouth sere. Nathan, Nathan. It took a moment to realise what morning it was. That the horror was not fresh, though it felt so. That he'd been missing for three weeks. That she was the one who could help him, except that once again, she'd chosen to stay home.

The phone rang and Leah shifted in the bed. She didn't feel like speaking with anyone. There were only a few people it could be, anyhow. Charlotte maybe, or maybe Laurie at Bite This with an assignment or a question. The phone rang four times, then stopped. Leah stretched glumly, then checked the voicemail.

“This is an automated message from the Halifax Regional Public Library system,” a robotic voice said. “You have one overdue book. The book is called” — and here another voice broke in — “‘How To Deal With Ghosts' by Peter Pietropaulo.” The robotic voice returned. “Please return this book to any branch of the Halifax Regional Public Library system at your earliest convenience. Thank you.”

Leah clicked off the phone and wished she could as easily click off the dreams that still lurked at the back of her mind. Stupid Pietropaulo and his stupid book. What good had it been to her? Here she was, worse off than she'd been the day she borrowed the damn thing. No
closer to freeing Nathan, haunted by bad dreams and now she'd have to pay a stupid overdue fine, too. She didn't even know where the book was. Last she'd seen it, Charlotte was reading it by flashlight. Maybe Charlotte had it. She dialed her friend.

“Nah,” said Charlotte. “I left it at your place, on the floor. It probably got kicked under the chair. Fascinating stuff, though. Especially the part about why ghosts hang around.”

“Oh yeah?” Leah said.

“Yeah dude. The four main reasons — I don't know where the guy gets that stuff, but it's sure a good read.”

“Four main reasons?” Leah asked, her heart dropping.

“Yeah, didn't you read that part?”

“Not exactly,” Leah said. Her mouth went dry for the second time that morning. “I kind of skipped right to the part about how to get rid of your ghost. I just figured Nathan was here because, I don't know. Because he didn't know where he was supposed to be.”

“Huh,” Charlotte said. “Well, the guy says that's the case for some ghosts, but it's not like Nathan's death was a surprise to him. Could he have had some unfinished business?”