Just before midnight, Henry and I escaped the party to sit on Lillian’s gallery roof. Henry drank champagne right out of the bottle while I sipped hot cocoa. We were twenty stories up in the freezing cold with easily ten or twelve zillion lights above and below us, sparkling and winking in all directions. I was on top of the world.
I huddled up to Henry and thought of the beautiful sculpture he’d given me for Christmas—the one that had spoken to me that day in his studio—saying it was for all the holidays and birthdays he’d missed. He called it Wild Thing, set it right in the front yard. Fred said it looked just like me and announced that, come spring, he was planting a flowerbed around it, with bleeding heart, love-in-a-mist, and heartsease.
I smiled, thinking about the laptop computer Franklin and Helen had sent me to write on. I’d also found a beautiful quilt under the tree from Bessie with the wonders of my new life stitched into the nine pieced squares: Mr. C’mere, Henry’s farmhouse, a log cabin, the Padre with a crooked halo, Fred’s red truck, Sister and Wil running through the trees, a pack of Juicy Fruit for Sheriff Bean, an embroidered representation of my journal with Zoë’s Memoir stitched on the cover, and a red and silver sequined heart with wings. For his present, I’d shown Henry the dedication page of my memoir on my computer screen. To Henry, it said, with love. First time I’d ever written that to anyone.
A chain of firecrackers went off somewhere, yanking me back to the present, and all of a sudden hooting and shouting and horns blowing down below us signaled the start of the New Year, making me officially twelve.
Henry jumped up and gave me a twirl, saying “Happy New Year” and then singing “Happy Birthday,” and as the New York night whirled by I thought about all that had happened in the last year—things happy and sad, mean and kind, terrible and wonderful, things beginning and ending, all in some measure all the time. I’d been trying all day to think of the word to describe that everything-all-at-once feeling, the one I’d had nearly all my life, the way I felt when I thought about Mama, or looked at my half-brother’s carved animals or the picture of his mama and our daddy, the feeling I saw in Henry’s face when he was remembering his dead wife or in Fred’s when he was worrying over Bessie, or in Hargrove’s when he set Sister free.
Bittersweet, it seemed to me.
Right as I was thinking that, Franklin came up behind us and whispered into Henry’s ear.
The crunch of gravel woke him as the long black car crawled up the snowy drive.
For several days, strangers had come to fill his bowls. Missing the girl, he slept lightly, one ear cocked, curled up at the base of the shiny new object in the yard.
The object was unmistakably the girl. An oval of delicate silver outlined her face, traced truly the shape of her wide eyes, sat atop her graceful neck. Fine strands of coppery hair blew back from her face. The metal sketched her arms, torso, legs. She seemed as light as air, running headlong, her arms flung back, fierce with life, and at the center of her chest spun a silver heart with two tiny outstretched wings, each cupped to whirl the heart in the slightest breeze. And bounding beside her, in sinuous silver, the cat.
The day the man set it there, the girl careened out of the house. The man stood smiling, letting her dance around it, open her gift before he twirled her in his arms. Soon after, they drove off together, and in the lonesome days since, silence had been the music of the day. Snow had fallen, spread its white blanket over the woods and trees. The place grew quiet as death.
Now a squat man got out of the car and buttoned his coat against the cold. He walked to the door and knocked, stomped the snow from his shoes. He peered in through the glass, shaded his eyes with one hand, then walked to the steps to survey the snowy yard. Seeing no one, he walked back to the man’s workshop. The cat jumped on the hood of the car and looked through the glass inside. Instead of a long box, a large, lidded pot sat on the front seat.
Hello, kitty, the squat man said, coming back up the path. Guess they’re still at the church. Terrible to be late to your own funeral, but we’re all behind, what with the snow.
Cars began pulling into the drive. The old woman who’d stuck the cat’s behind with a needle got out and walked around to help the old man with the cane.
The man drove up then, his helper in the seat beside him, and the cat’s heart leapt to see the girl jump out and run to him. He let her
