The Bird Eater Read online

  The road ended without warning, disappearing into a bank of towering pines. Aaron pulled off to the side of the road and they climbed out, Cheri leading the short hike down a steep embankment until they were standing on a small lakefront beach, water stretching out so far ahead of them, the horizon swallowed it whole. It was beautiful, secluded, a perfect spot for a secret rendezvous that Aaron still didn’t know if he was ready for.

  Cheri smiled at him, her mouth tinted cranberry red. “I told you it’s pretty.” She cradled her ICEE cup against her chest. “I bet if we had a boat we could follow the shore all the way back to Stonehenge.”

  Taking a seat on the bank, she pulled her wedge sandals off her feet, and patted the sand for Aaron to join her. He felt like a kid at his first boy/girl party—queasy with nerves, jittery, like he was ready to jump out of his own skin. Sinking onto the bank, he fiddled with the laces of his sneakers, not able to decide whether he wanted to pull them off or leave them on for a quick escape.

  “Will you talk to me now?” she asked after a pause, drawing her attention from the mirrorlike surface of the water to his face. “I can’t force you to tell me anything, but I wish you would.”

  He stared down at his hands, contemplating her request. He wanted to tell her everything, but he honestly didn’t know where to start.

  “How’re things at the house?” she asked. “I ran into Eric when I swung by Banner’s after work. He mentioned you were having issues with some kids?”

  “One kid,” Aaron clarified. “He’s got it out for me. I don’t know…”

  “Probably one of the house regulars,” Cheri told him. “I, um…” She shrugged, as if embarrassed by her oncoming confession. “I used to swing by there a lot. Just random drive-bys, mostly.”

  “Mostly,” he echoed. “What does that mean?”

  She cleared her throat and gave him an apologetic look.

  “You went inside?”

  “Never with anyone,” she said softly. “And always during the day.”

  A pang of aggravation ignited in his chest. That house belonged to his family; it was the scene of a tragedy, and what had Ironwood done? Broken out its windows and rifled through its rooms; made up gruesome stories and carelessly parked cars out on its front lawn. It turned his stomach to think that Cheri had been one of the people who had slunk through his house.

  “I missed you,” she told him. “It was the only way I could think of to feel like you weren’t completely gone.”

  “And the other kids?”

  “What other kids?”

  “The ones who would break in after dark.”

  Cheri pressed her lips together in a tight line and looked down to the sand. “They didn’t mean anything by it,” she said after a long while. “The house was abandoned. Nobody thought anyone would come back for it. Nobody ever comes back.” Her words faded, replaced by a helpless shrug.

  Aaron chewed on his bottom lip, afraid to ask the question balanced on the tip of his tongue, but he had to know. “And you? What do you believe?”

  “About the house?”

  Aaron nodded faintly, refusing to meet her gaze.

  “I think it’s a bunch of bored kids making up stories to scare themselves. I think it’s good that you came back, because now they know they were wrong.”

  “Wrong about me being the ghost,” he clarified.

  Cheri went silent, and Aaron shook his head at the memory of Mr. Bass’s words.

  You’re supposed to be dead.

  “I tried to convince myself,” she said. “But I never could believe it. I guess if I had, I would have eventually let you go.”

  Aaron swallowed, dragged his fingers through the sand. “There’s some truth to that rumor,” he told her. His stomach twisted as the words left his throat. It wasn’t something he talked about with anyone; it was a subject he even avoided talking about with Cooper, and Cooper had been there; Cooper had been the one who had pulled him back from the other side.

  He tensed when Cheri placed her hand on his arm. It was cold, frozen from being wrapped around the plastic cup.

  “What are you saying?” she asked, but all he could do was shake his head.

  His throat tightened.

  His muscles tensed.

  He felt like, at any minute, he’d get up and run up the embankment back to the car.

  Grabbing Cheri’s cup from between her knees, he sucked down some ICEE, willed it to give him strength.

  “I know it isn’t my place,” she said, “but I know fixing up the house is just an excuse. Maybe things would start to get better if you finally admitted why you’re really here.”

  He handed back her cup, his pulse vibrating the inside of his skull.

  Cheri reached across his lap, gently caught his left arm in her cold fingers, and flipped it to reveal his scar. He winced, instinctively pulled his arm back, but the jagged line of puckered flesh remained visible. It was her way of telling him she knew more than he gave her credit for, a way of saying that she noticed more than he thought.

  “Who is that?” she asked, nodding to the only color on that particular arm—the small golden owl perched on the branch of an otherwise dead-looking tree.

  He stared down at that scar as if seeing it for the first time, the mere idea of telling her how his world had fallen apart enough to make his face flush hot. What was done was done, what was gone was gone, but saying it out loud…that would make all of this real. He was terrified of losing hope. He wanted to wake up in his house and realize this had been nothing but a nightmare: Evangeline in the kitchen making eggs and toast, Ryder pushing cast-iron cars along the rug while the TV flickered with Saturday morning cartoons.

  Aaron leaned forward, his elbows hitting the curve of his knees. He pressed his hands to his face, pushed his fingers through his hair.

  “I killed my son.”

  The words eked out of his throat, wavy with pain.

  The silence was horrible.

  Terrifying.

  Unnerving.

  He waited for Cheri to get up, to turn away and climb up the embankment behind them and yell back at him to take her back into town. But rather than running away, she dipped her head to look up into Aaron’s downturned face, a hand sliding onto his knee.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  A sob welled up in his chest, pressing heavy against his heart and ribs, Ryder’s laughter echoing in his ears.

  Ryder running in the park, kicking a soccer ball ahead of him.

  Ryder jumping from couch to couch, pretending the rug was lava.

  Aaron holding him in the hospital for the first time, having carefully printed the name RYDER ISAAC HOLBROOK onto paperwork, somehow having convinced Evangeline to agree to a name Aaron hadn’t been able to shake, drawn to it by some inexplicable force.

  Aaron tried to regain his composure, but the more he fought against the sadness the more he wanted to scream, tear his hair out, run into the lake ahead of them, and breathe water until he drowned.

  What had he done that had been so terrible?

  What crime had he committed that had deemed him worthy of this pain?

  What made him so wicked, so fucking evil, to deserve this life of misery?

  “Stop,” Cheri told him, as if somehow able to hear his self-deprecating thoughts. She pulled his palms away from his face, his hands trapped in hers. “You haven’t talked to anybody about this, have you?”

  Aaron weakly shook his head. The people who mattered already knew: Cooper and the guys at work, Evangeline and her family—a family he had thought was his, too, until they no longer were.

  “Was there an accident?”

  The impact.

  Screeching metal against asphalt.

  Another jolt when the car hit a streetlight.

  Cooper murmuring beneath hi
s breath that the car had to be pried away from the pole because it had literally wrapped itself around it.

  Let’s not talk about it, Cooper often said. Let’s just forget it. At least you’re okay.

  “Yes.” The single syllable croaked out of Aaron’s throat, parched, forlorn.

  Cheri looked down, her hands squeezing his in reassurance.

  He held his breath, hoping to God she wouldn’t say what she was thinking.

  But you’re still alive. It could have been worse.

  Not sure whether he could handle another at-least-you-made-it speech.

  He knew it was coming—the way she pulled in a breath—but she exhaled it rather than saying a word, and Aaron was caught off guard by the emotion that gouged his chest. He had expected to feel relief, but all that came was an inexorable wave of grief, a heavy loneliness that made him feel emptier than it ever had. He had survived the accident, but he’d allowed the tragedy to erase him anyway.

  “And your wife?” she asked, her words hushed in the surrounding quiet.

  “I can’t cope, and she can’t watch me fall.”

  Cheri’s face twisted with sadness. She reached out, dared to press her palm against his cheek.

  “I don’t want to be this way,” he said. “I don’t know if I even care whether or not she takes me back anymore, I just…I can’t be like this. I can’t stay like this. I feel like I’m dying all over again. I just want things to be okay again. I want to be able to sleep.”

  She breathed out a sigh, stared down at the sand between them, fell into an elongated silence as she processed his confession. They sat that way for what felt like hours, when, without the least bit of warning, she stood, abandoning her shoes and her ICEE cup on the bank. For a moment he was sure she was making her retreat, but rather than walking back in the direction of the car, she moved toward the water instead.

  “Come on,” she said, catching her shirt by its hem and tugging it over her head.

  Aaron watched her strip, and despite his heartache, the thud of his pulse shifted from his chest to the space between his legs. The sun caught the honey glow of her shoulders as she wiggled out of her jeans. Her underwear was pale pink and lace trimmed, tiny cherries printed on creamy cotton fabric. Those cherries palpitated his heart, a pang of homesickness shooting him straight through the center of the chest. Cherries had been Evangeline’s thing, something he’d discovered long after Boone County was nothing but a bad memory. He’d forgotten that Cheri Miller was the original cherry girl until right then—Cheri with her lip gloss, with her favorite candy flavor, with the color of her hair.

  He stared at the curve of Cheri’s back, and despite the throbbing in his groin, he felt on the verge of panic because this wasn’t supposed to happen, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Miles. Evangeline. Ironwood and playing house. Buying ice cream with pocket change. Kissing among the trees.

  She unclasped her bra and let it fall to the shore.

  Aaron struggled for breath, somehow already in that lake, gulping water, twisting, drowning, grasping for the surface he’d never reach.

  Hooking her thumbs under the band of her underwear, Cheri paused, as if considering one final time, and then pushed them below the curve of her backside. Naked, she stepped into Bull Shoals, ripples radiating out across the lake’s mirrored surface, her skin glinting in the afternoon light. She waded in until nothing but her head was left, the past twenty-one years unraveling before him into little more than a boyish yearning mingled with fear.

  She watched him from a distance, waiting for him to follow.

  Stifling his anxiety, he did. He had to.

  Baptism, he thought. The atonement of my sins.

  He peeled off his clothing and swam out to her.

  Their limbs tangled together, hands dragging across bare skin. Legs around his waist. Their mouths centimeters apart.

  And then she whispered against his ear—“I’ve always loved you, Aaron. My heart has always been yours.”

  His heart swelled, threatening to crack open his chest, to tear him from rib to rib. Hearing those words was as overwhelming as it was serene—the idea that someone could love him, could accept him even after what he’d done. And yet he caught himself wishing that those words had come from someone else, someone who he missed despite all the hurt she’d caused, despite all the rage that had collected on his insides, petrifying his heart.

  Cheri melted against him as they moved beneath the water, her fingernails biting into his back, her head tilted toward the sky as if searching for God. But there was no God. There was no faith. No mercy, forgiveness, or love. There was only all-consuming anger that burned so hot it left nothing but grief-stricken devastation in its wake. So hot that it left Aaron a hollow shell of the man he had once been. Empty like a forgotten house. Terminal like a dead-end street.

  Afterward, she kissed him on the mouth, the shoulder, the neck, then drifted away from him and toward the shore. He remained in the water while she lay out on the sand, the sun burning water from her skin.

  When he finally surfaced from the lake, he avoided looking at her—diverting his gaze to the trees, to the shore, to the splendor of nature or whatever that forced-calm expression would lead her to believe. She sat up, and he nearly jumped when her finger drifted down the scar along his left arm, looking up at him—Venus without her shell. She looked expectant, waiting for him to say something akin to how, now that he knew she loved him, he could forget Evangeline, forget his old life, replace it with something fresh and move on, be happy, be whole again.

  “We should probably go,” he said.

  Cheri’s expression wavered—bated breath shifting to apprehension shifting to disappointment. She tried to force a smile, but her disenchantment was impossible to miss. Aaron had said the wrong thing because he couldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. She turned away from him as she dressed, tugged on her underwear, and brushed sand from the backs of her thighs.

  Tossing her hair forward, she exposed her back to him, her elbows jutting out in sharp angles as she worked on the clasp of her bra. Aaron narrowed his eyes when he spotted the patch of jet-black hair at the nape of her neck, so black against bright red it looked oily, iridescent as it shifted from sable to emerald to blue in the light.

  Aaron’s heart tripped over its own beat. Shoving sandy feet into his sneakers, he gave himself a little more distance—just enough to get a better look. Cheri tossed her hair back, her hair unfurling like inky black scarves out of a magician’s sleeve, hard quills jutting out of her arms, pinfeathers already sprouting greasy black feathers from their cuticle casings.

  Aaron stumbled backward, nearly tripping over his own feet.

  “Ryder?” She looked over her shoulder at him, confused.

  Aaron’s heart stopped.

  Cheri’s hair was the color of cranberries, just as it had always been, her arms milk-white and smooth.

  “What did you say?” he asked, nearly squeaking out the words.

  “I just…” She shook her head, looking unsure. “Your name. What’s wrong?”

  “You said Ryder,” he whispered.

  He had heard her.

  He had heard her.

  Cheri stared at him, bewildered, disturbed.

  “Was that his name?” she asked. “Ryder?”

  He turned away from her, a hand pressed over his face, his teeth clenched.

  “Aaron, I swear I didn’t…” She hesitated. “Maybe we’re taking this all too fast. I just want to make it okay.”

  A spark of resentment flared inside him. The moment her hand slid onto his shoulder, his anger erupted into full-on hostility. He veered around, misguided rage bubbling up to the surface. Cheri took a backward step, startled by his mask of indignation.

  “You can’t make it okay,” he snapped, immediately regretting it. He squeezed his eyes shut and loo
ked away, shook his head, muttered, “I’m sorry.”

  There was a long, drawn-out silence. A flock of starlings ebbed and flowed in the distance, the murmuration a fluid shadow that twisted like ribbon against a pale blue sky.

  Aaron wanted to scream at those birds, to beat his fists against his arms and legs and pummel out the rage. He was a time bomb—waiting to go off on anyone who dared get too close, who had the audacity to tell him things would ever be right again, to suggest that they could help him find that peace of mind.

  “Is that why you’re here?” she asked after a moment, her mouth drawn down in distress. “You want to drown in your sorrows out here, all by yourself?”

  When he didn’t answer, she turned away, silently sweeping the rest of her clothes off the sand. She was right—he’d die alone. He’d push away everyone who could make it better. He’d fold beneath the weight of his own misery, the barrel of a gun cold and acrid against his tongue.

  He’d made a mistake, but he could still make it right.

  “Wait,” he said, but nearly fell backward when Cheri turned to look at him, her mouth twisted in a ghastly leer, her eyes veiled by a scrim of milky sclera and her teeth full of blood.

  Aaron yelled, his eyes wide, disbelieving. He turned away, rushing up the embankment like a lunatic; that flock of starlings coming in close, sweeping in as though ready to dive-bomb them both before turning mid-flight and veering back up into the sky.

  She yelled after him. “Aaron, wait!” but he was already up the hill. When he dared look over his shoulder, he saw her wobbling up the first few feet of the grade, stumbling as she helped herself along with her hands. She looked helpless, probably afraid to be left behind, her hair flying around her face in damp strands, her expression a mask of wounded confusion. Finally catching up to him at the car, she stared at him for what felt like an eon, and when he didn’t say anything, she silently slid into the car and gently closed the door.

  Fourteen

  Cheri stared out the window as she and Aaron drove back into town. Watching the mile markers fly by outside her window, she bit back her tears. She didn’t want this to feel like a mistake, but there was something genuinely broken inside the man sitting next to her. He needed help, and she thought about reaching out to him, touching his hand to let him know that she wasn’t angry, just confused, but she couldn’t gather up the courage.