“Two days, two days,” the Bird Lady trilled as she wedged the last bit of the scroll into the tight glass bottle neck. “Two days until your Wishing Day, dear Klara.”
Ava freaked out. Two days? But Ava had wished to go back in time with the goal of arriving three days before Mama’s Wishing Day. Three days, not two!
Everything was wrong! What was it Mama had said? Mama and the Bird Lady had both said it, that Willow Hill’s magic was “fluky.”
But where did that leave Ava? Communicating with the Bird Lady was a wash, and Ava had even less time to fix things than she’d anticipated.
Mama, she thought. I’m trying. Really, I am!
Longing washed over her: for Mama, for thirteen-year-old Klara and thirteen-year-old Emily, for wholeness and rightness and love.
She reeled as once again came a scattering of light and a whoosh of wind. This time, she arrived in a bedroom. A girl’s bedroom, with a pale blue comforter on the bed and an assortment of teddy bears propped against the pillows. Hold on—she recognized one of the teddy bears! He was in better condition than she’d ever seen it, but it was Johnny, all right. Brown button eyes, soft plush fur . . . Johnny the teddy bear, who belonged to Ava now.
Well, not in this now. But he would. Ava, in the present, had slept with Johnny all through her childhood. He’d been Mama’s, Papa had told her. Ava felt comforted when she held him.
If Johnny was here, that meant . . .
Yes. Klara. Her one-day mother was sitting at a small desk, doodling in a notebook. Ava peered over her shoulder, and her lungs squeezed together when she saw the hearts Mama was drawing over and over, filling each with a variation of Klara + Nate.
“Mama?” Ava said tentatively.
Klara kept doodling.
“Mama, it’s me.”
Still nothing.
“Klara,” Ava tried.
Klara’s back stiffened, but only for a moment. She shook her head.
Ava moved closer. She touched—or imagined touching—Mama’s arm, and goose pimples popped up all over Klara’s skin. Klara looked at her arm and inhaled sharply.
“This is real,” Ava said. “You’re okay. You’re not . . . going crazy or anything.”
Klara rubbed at both arms, the way someone does when they’re trying to warm up. She was unnerved, Ava could tell, but she still couldn’t hear Ava. Ava felt like crying. The Bird Lady had neither seen nor heard her, and now it seemed that Mama—Klara—couldn’t either. What was the point of her wishes if she couldn’t communicate with her mother?
Working yourself into a frenzy won’t help, Ava told herself. This is a puzzle. You have to figure it out. So figure it out!
With Aunt Elena, she’d had the sense, for the briefest of flashes, that she and Aunt Elena had connected telepathically. It was when Aunt Elena was trying to remember who could confirm her story about Emily being real. It turned out to be the Bird Lady, and it had been Ava who helped Aunt Elena find the answer in her mind. How had she managed it then?
Through focus, concentration, and single-mindedness of purpose, like the articles she’d read had suggested. She’d imagined sending energy from her mind to find energy from Elena’s mind—and it had worked.
She’d done the same thing with Klara, and it hadn’t!
What was different???
With Aunt Elena, Ava had told her aunt about telepathy. She’d asked Aunt Elena to try it with her as an experiment, and Aunt Elena had agreed. They’d both been on the same page. Also, they’d both been strongly connected already, because they’d been talking about the same thing and wanting the same thing.
How could Ava connect with Klara when Ava had no connection with Klara, not Klara as a thirteen-year-old?
But she’s your mom, Ava told herself. That. Is. A. Huge. Connection. And fine, maybe she’s not your mom yet, but she will be.
Ava gave a jolt. The letter Mama left for Ava before walking away from their family for eight and a half years! Ava had been disappointed in the letter when she first read it—and she’d been disappointed on her second, third, and all other future readings, too. Mama had told Natasha and Darya the good stuff, that was how it seemed to Ava, while to Ava, she’d basically said, “I’m weary now, my darling. Your sisters will fill you in.”
There’d been one other part, though. At the time, Ava hadn’t thought it was important. Maybe it wasn’t.
But maybe it was.
Mama, in her letter, had told Ava a story illustrating how stubborn Ava was. She’d told her how for an entire year—the year leading up to Mama’s departure, in fact—Ava as a toddler had insisted that Mama read one book and one book only to her at bedtime every night.
The book was called Love You Forever, Mama had written. Do you remember? It was about a mother and a son, and every night, the mother sang the son a song that went like this: “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.” It was a sweet book, and a sweet song, though part of the song always rankled me. You, Ava, will be my Ava even after I’m done living. For that matter, before! You, Ava, will be my baby forever. Please hear me. Please believe me.
In the book, the boy grew older and older, and when the boy was a man, there’d been a funny illustration of the mother creeping in through his window and rocking him in her lap even though he was huge. Then, at the end . . . and it made Ava feel teary even now . . . the tables had turned. The mother was old and feeble, and the son had held her in his lap. The son held his dying mother in his lap and sang the familiar song, changing the last line to “As long as I’m living, my mother you’ll be.”
Ava sang the song now. Her voice made no sound,
