Bird box

It is colder, out of the woods, away from the house. The sound of the water is as frightening as it is exhilarating. Kneeling where she believes the boat must be, she lets go of the children’s hands and feels for the steel tip. Her fingertips find the rope that holds it first.

“Boy,” she says, pulling the ice-cold tip of the boat toward the dock. “In the front. Get in the front.” She helps him. Once he is steady, she holds his face in both her hands and says once again, “Listen. Beyond the water. Listen.”

She tells the Girl to stay on the dock as she blindly unties the rope before carefully climbing onto the middle bench. Still half-standing, she helps the Girl aboard. The boat rocks once violently and Malorie grips the Girl’s hand too tight. The Girl does not cry out.

There are leaves, sticks, and water in the bottom of the boat. Malorie sifts through them to find the paddles she has stowed on the boat’s right side. The paddles are cold. Damp. They smell of mildew. She sets them into the steel grooves. They feel strong, sturdy as she uses one to push off from the dock. And then . . .

They are on the river.

The water is calm. But there are sounds out here. Movement in the woods.

Malorie thinks of the fog. She hopes it has hidden their escape.

But the fog will go away.

“Children,” Malorie says, breathing hard, “listen.”

Finally, after four years of waiting, training, and finding the courage to leave, she paddles away from the dock, from the bank, and from the house that has protected her and the children for what feels like a lifetime.

two

It is nine months before the children are born. Malorie lives with her sister, Shannon, in a modest rental neither of them has decorated. They moved in three weeks ago, despite their friend’s concerns. Malorie and Shannon are both popular, intelligent women but in each other’s company they have a tendency to become unglued, as shown the very day they carried their boxes inside.

“I was thinking it makes more sense for me to have the bigger bedroom,” Shannon said, standing on the second-floor landing. “Seeing as I’ve got the bigger dresser.”

“Oh, come on,” Malorie responded, holding a milk crate of unread books. “That room has a better window.”

The sisters debated this for a long time, both wary of proving their friends and family right by erupting in an argument on their first afternoon. Eventually, Malorie agreed to a coin toss, which ended in Shannon’s favor, an event Malorie still believes was somehow fixed.

Now, today, Malorie is not thinking about the little things her sister does that drive her batty. She is not quietly cleaning up after Shannon, closing cabinet doors, following her trail of sweaters and socks through the halls. She is not huffing, passively, shaking her head as she runs the dishwasher or slides one of Shannon’s unpacked boxes from the center of the living room, where it’s in both of their way. Instead, she is standing before the mirror in the first-floor bathroom, where she is naked, as she studies her belly in the glass.

You’ve missed a period before, she tells herself. But this is hardly consolation, because she has been anxious for weeks now, knowing she should have been safer with Henry Martin.

Her black hair hangs to her shoulders. Her lips curl down in a curious frown. She places her hands on her flat belly and nods slowly. No matter how she explains herself, she feels pregnant.

“Malorie!” Shannon calls from the living room. “What are you doing in there?”

Malorie does not respond. She turns sideways and tilts her head. Her blue eyes look gray in the pale light of the bathroom. She plants a palm on the sink’s pink linoleum and arches her back. She is trying to make her belly skinnier, as if this might prove there could be no little life within it.

“Malorie!” Shannon calls again. “There’s another report on television! Something happened in Alaska.”

Malorie hears her sister, but what’s going on in the outside world doesn’t matter much to her right now.