Page 48 of A Winding Wave of Magic
They were only seventeen when I was conceived.
“Oh,” I whispered, suddenly aware of what I was about to See.
It wasn’t my memory after all, but Gran’s. She had stood in this exact space, giving us space for what was about to happen. But there to witness it all before sharing what she saw later, after we lost my dad.
Jimmy pulled Sybil into his side. “I’m gonna miss you, baby. More than you know.”
He lowered his mouth to hers. A gust of wind blew through the cedars and firs lining the highway, whistling at the couple.
“‘Love that knows not death, love that grows from breath, love that must shortly slay me,’” I recited to myself while my younger self looked away, unable to stand her parents’ intimacy.
Beside me, Lynch startled and sent me a sharp look. Then he nodded back at the couple. “Watch.”
Sybil’s pale arms wrapped around my father, and they stayed like that while the little girl looked on awkwardly. Jealousy, I could remember well. I hadn’t changed yet, but it was coming. At that age, I hadn’t yet started pushing people away because of the chaos their minds would show me. Then I was still curious enough to know exactly what it was thatmade my parents so devoted to each other from such a young age, even twelve years after having a child when they were practically still children themselves. Through deployments, erratic military lifestyle, and the constant disapproval of both of their parents, their love had never wavered.
Finally, Jimmy released Sybil, and he turned to his daughter. To me.
“Well, blackbird, this is it,” he said, his slight Oregon drawl more pronounced in the sadness he was trying to mask. “You promise to write, honey?”
The girl nodded.
“Every day?”
Another nod.
“And will you sing your song every day so you don’t forget your daddy?”
Another nod.
“Let’s sing it so I know you remember.”
Together they crooned the famous Beatles lyrics softly to each other, Jimmy’s buzzed blond head bent to touch his daughter’s messy, jet-black waves. She looked nothing like him, I realized. I looked nothing like him, except for the ocean-blue eyes. A seer’s eyes, somehow inherited from a plain man.
After they finished the song, Jimmy pressed his lips to his daughter’s head, his brow furrowed as if in pain. He was scared but trying to hide it, having no idea that his daughter could feel that fear coursing through his touch, though she herself didn’t understand why or how or that it was happening at all.
“Sing that for me every day,” he told her. “And take care of your mother. It’ll be just like I’m there with you.”
“Daddy, don’t go,” she said, reaching her arms around his neck and pulling him close.
He picked her up and she tucked her legs around her waist like a small child, though she was nearly grown.
“Stay,” she begged. “I’ll protect you. Mama and Gran and I will protect you when they come to take you away.”
Jimmy just pressed his face into his daughter’s neck, teary eyes clenched shut, unaware that his daughter could feel every emotion he fought to master. Soon both of them were crying. When he put her down, she said nothing as he kissed her again on the forehead.
A Greyhound bus pulled up at the stop with a roaring engine and a screech of brakes. The doors opened with a huff, waiting for the Marine to step on.
“I love you, blackbird.” His voice caught as he picked his ruck off the sidewalk. “Don’t forget. Every day.”
Before stepping on the bus, he blew Sybil and the girl a kiss, then waved solemnly to Lynch and me. To where Gran would have stood, watching everything.
The bus pulled away while Sybil waved. The girl wrapped her arms around her waist, sobbing alone and into herself.
“Daddy!” I called with her as my voice returned.
But the bus kept going, and the girl and I cried together as we watched it disappear around the bend that would lead through the mountain and beyond.
The memory faded away.I was back on the couch with Lynch while he waited with a surprisingly sympathetic expression for my tears to abate.
