She smiled sadly. “That’s one of your mom’s favorite poems. It’s by Emily Dickinson.”
“It’s . . . nice,” Ava said.
“Who knows?” Aunt Elena continued. “Maybe there will be an Act Three in this play we seem stuck in. We can hope, can’t we?”
Ava opened the back door. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “We can all sprout feathers and hope.”
Aunt Elena clapped her hand over her mouth.
“What?” Ava said.
Aunt Elena dropped her hand. “Yes! That!”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know how I forgot. I can’t believe I forgot! But just now, it came to me out of nowhere!”
“Aunt Elena—”
“The Bird Lady! I was in the woods by the lake, and she called to me from her hideaway in the forest. Do you know the spot I mean? In the trunk of the huge oak?”
Ava knew nothing about a forest hideaway.
“She was looking for me,” Aunt Elena continued. “It was my Wishing Day, and the Bird Lady was looking for me because . . .” Wonder illuminated Aunt Elena’s face. “She told me what to wish for!”
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, Ava’s fingertips grew numb. That happened now.
“She knew I was unhappy,” said Aunt Elena. “She called me over, and I went to her, and she said, ‘You’re quite troubled, Elena Kosrov, but you needn’t be.’ Needn’t. Such an archaic word.” Her gaze went distant. “She told me I should wish to forget Emily.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There was a bird in her hair, and another on her shoulder. How could I have forgotten?”
Ava experienced the sensation of falling. Or of flying?
“The Bird Lady told me to forget Emily,” Aunt Elena said again. She looked at Ava intently. “If you can get her to admit it, you’ll have the evidence you’re looking for.”
Ava swallowed twice before she could speak. “Thanks, Aunt Elena. Will you say bye to Mama for me?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, just hurried out of Aunt Elena’s apartment and headed for the forest.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emily, Age Eleven
By the summer before sixth grade, Emily’s dad had taken to sleeping on the sofa every night. It was awful. Sometimes, Emily slept downstairs with him, on a sleeping bag on the floor. Emily suspected Nate wanted to as well, but felt like he was too old. Or maybe he didn’t want to upset their mother.
“You’re enabling your father to leave this family!” Emily’s mom told Emily. “You should be punishing him instead. If you let him sleep downstairs alone—if we all leave him down there alone—he’ll return to the upstairs bedroom, where he belongs.”
Emily knew that secretly, her mom wanted to punish her. One afternoon, Emily looked up from a sketch she was working on and caught her mom staring at her with slitted eyes.
You, her mom thought. If only you—
Then those thoughts blanked out, as if a lid had been slammed down. Sometimes her mom did want to punish Emily, but she was never proud of herself when she thought such things.
It’s not Emily’s fault, Rose, her mom told herself. If Dave would just support me when I need him to, instead of arguing with me about everything!
Except her parents didn’t argue about “everything.” They argued about Emily. It gave Emily a stomachache.
“Can I see your drawing?” her mom asked, approaching Emily with red-rimmed eyes.
Warily, Emily tilted her sketch pad.
“The willow tree,” her mom said. Her voice faltered. “It’s lovely.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Emily said. The town associated the willow tree with magic, and since her mom hated magic, Emily knew she wasn’t a fan of the willow. “You don’t have to like it. It’s not, like, the law or anything.”
Her mom’s eyes welled with tears, and she stalked away. They both tried to reach out to each other, and they both failed, again and again. Were some daughters simply not meant to be born to certain mothers?
No. Emily didn’t accept that. One far-off day in the future, if Emily was a mom, she’d make sure she did right by her daughter. If she had a daughter.
Tension continued to grow between her parents, and Emily, like most kids in her situation, knew the “talk” was coming. The divorce talk. She knew it was coming, yet when it did, it nevertheless sucked the air out of the room.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” said her mother.
“Nate? Emily? You’ll always come first,” said her father.
And, each in his and her awkward way, used empty sentences to explain that they’d grown apart from each other, that’s all.
The worst part was when Nate cried.
Emily wanted to cry, but she felt numb inside. Her parents’ claim that they grew apart from each other was true. They didn’t laugh anymore. Their conversations were strained. But if Emily wasn’t in the picture . . .
Her mom wanted to change Emily, to increase her chances of blending in with kids who colored within the lines. Her dad wanted Emily to be who she was, and to feel good about who she was. But how could she? If she was different—normal—her parents wouldn’t have been at odds with each other.
In August, her dad took a job all the way across the country.
“California,” he said the day he loaded up the U-Haul. “In California, oranges grow in people’s backyards. When you kids visit, you can have fresh-squeezed orange juice whenever you want. It’ll be great!”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” her mother said. “Nothing will ever be great again.”
“Rose . . . ,” Emily’s dad said.
Emily went to her dad and hugged him. She smelled his aftershave. She smelled his sweat, which was tangy. “Take me with you,” she whispered.
“What’s that, honey?” her dad said.
“Nothing,” she mumbled.
She and Nate stood at the end of the driveway and waved until he was out of sight. Behind them, their mom closed the front door with a bang.
At school, she felt pity radiating from the teachers and some of the kids. Curiosity, too. Several times she caught Klara Kosrov gazing at her, and for no reason, it made
