Page 109 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“What?”
He looked at me incredulously. “You think we have a perfect relationship? Christ. Nobody has that. I mean…we got in the biggestfight ever just a week before coming out here. We almost called off the whole wedding. Seriously.”
My mouth opened.
“Hardest day of my life. If you want to talk about fighting and drama—”
“But.” My lips dangled open in that idiotic shape they make whenever I’m wrong. “But.”
“But what?”
“But then…if things were so bad, why did you stay with her?”
“Oh, well, that’s easy.” Taz shrugged. “She’s my Person. When you find your Person, you don’t let them get away.”
He squeezed my shoulder, winked, and exited through the curtain, leaving me standing alone before it. Breath dragged itself in and out of my mouth. In, out, in, out. The sheet puffed in and out along with me, like an extra set of lungs. I spun around. Power walked to the bathroom. Shut the door behind me and started to cry.
—
BY THE TIME I WIPEDmy nose and walked out of the bathroom, Clarence had sorted out the sound system. The bridesmaids and groomsmen were now assembled into two lines behind the curtain. A new champagne bottle was making its way down the line. Everyone was nice and lubed up. Jazzed. Excited to marry the shit out of Taz and Helene.
The procession was led by a pair of high school groomsmen I recognized, part of the boatloads of people who had arrived while I hid in my cabin. After them came two pairs of friends I’d never seen before. Then Clarence and a long-limbed beauty, clearly a ballerina. Then Karma and Shelly. Shelly held her wife’s hand with three loose fingers, letting it dangle to the side. She stood at a slight remove, head turned, gaze out the window.
And me. Just me, no escort. Might as well be a flower girl.
The windows were open. Outside, I heard a chorus of birds. White-throated sparrows. Lots of them from the sound of it. The same call I heard that day in the woods multiplied half a dozen times. I smiled.
“What are you grinning about?” asked Karma.
I pointed to the window. “Do you hear the birds?”
She tilted her head. “Are those…? Those are the birds that Speedy likes, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
Clarence passed the bottle of champagne back to Karma, who accepted it with a wink.
“So.” My sister took another swig of champagne. “You a bird freak now, or what?”
“What?” I asked. “Oh. No, no. No, not at all.”
She wiped her mouth and offered the bottle to me.
I waved it away. “Theirs is the only call I know. Manuel and I used to sit inside this hollowed-out old tree trunk and listen to them.”
“You mean the Fort?”
“What?” I stared at Karma. “How do you know about the Fort?”
She shared that look with my siblings—the Youngest Child look, the one that said,Must be nice to be so young and stupid.
“How could Inotknow, Boose? You talked about it all the time. Literallyallthe time. Nonstop monologue on thecastleyou were building for yourself. I finally asked to go see it just because I thought it would shut you up, but you wouldn’t take me. You wouldn’t take anyone. You called its location ‘cassified.’ I think you meantclassified. It was cute. Annoying as hell, but still cute.” She ruffled my hair. “Guess some things don’t change.”
My brain tried to tick forward. “That doesn’t make any sense.Why would Henry and I build a place we didn’t want to take anyone?”
“Henry?”
“Yes. Henry. Our dead brother.” I sighed. “Or have you caught the same strain of amnesia that Mom has?”
