Spare

Now, while overjoyed to be home again, doing drop-offs again, reading Giraffes Can’t Dance again, I couldn’t stop…remembering. Day and night, images flitted through my mind.

Standing before her during my passing-out parade, shoulders thrown back, catching her half smile. Stationed beside her on the balcony, saying something that caught her off guard and made her, despite the solemnity of the occasion, laugh out loud. Leaning into her ear, so many times, smelling her perfume as I whispered a joke. Kissing both cheeks at one public event, just recently, placing a hand lightly on her shoulder, feeling how frail she was becoming. Making a silly video for the first Invictus Games, discovering that she was a natural comedienne. People around the world howled, and said they’d never suspected she possessed such a wicked sense of humor—but she did, she always did! That was one of our little secrets. In fact, in every photo of us, whenever we’re exchanging a glance, making solid eye contact, it’s clear: We had secrets.

Special relationship, that’s what they said about us, and now I couldn’t stop thinking about the specialness that would no longer be. The visits that wouldn’t take place.

Ah well, I told myself, that’s just the deal, isn’t it? That’s life.

Still, as with so many partings, I just wished there’d been…one more goodbye.

Soon after our return, a hummingbird got into the house. I had a devil of a time guiding it out, and the thought occurred that maybe we should start shutting the doors, despite those heavenly ocean breezes.

Then a mate said: Could be a sign, you know?

Some cultures see hummingbirds as spirits, he said. Visitors, as it were. Aztecs thought them reincarnated warriors. Spanish explorers called them “resurrection birds.”

You don’t say?

I did some reading and learned that not only are hummingbirds visitors, they’re voyagers. The lightest birds on the planet, and the fastest, they travel vast distances—from Mexican winter homes to Alaskan nesting grounds. Whenever you see a hummingbird, what you’re actually seeing is a tiny, glittering Odysseus.

So, naturally, when this hummingbird arrived, and swooped around our kitchen, and flitted through the sacred airspace we call Lili Land, where we’ve set the baby’s playpen with all her toys and stuffed animals, I thought hopefully, greedily, foolishly:

Is our house a detour—or a destination?

For half a second I was tempted to let the hummingbird be. Let it stay.

But no.

Gently I used Archie’s fishing net to scoop it from the ceiling, carry it outside.

Its legs felt like eyelashes, its wings like flower petals.

With cupped palms I set the hummingbird gently on a wall in the sun.

Goodbye, my friend.

But it just lay there.

Motionless.

No, I thought. No, not that.

Come on, come on.

You’re free.

Fly away.

And then, against all odds, and all expectations, that wonderful, magical little creature bestirred itself, and did just that.

For Meg and Archie and Lili…and, of course, my mother

Acknowledgments

The length of this list alone leaves me deeply humbled.

On the publishing side, thank you to everyone at Penguin Random House, U.S. and U.K., beginning of course with the sage and forbearing Gina Centrello, plus super-genius-editor (and all-around top bloke) Ben Greenberg. Thanks to Markus Dohle and Madeline McIntosh for the understanding as timelines changed, not once, but twice. Thanks to Bill Scott-Kerr, Tom Weldon, Andy Ward, David Drake, Madison Jacobs, Larry Finlay, Theresa Zoro, Bill Takes, Lisa Feuer, Katrina Whone, Benjamin Dreyer, Sally Franklin, Catriona Hillerton, Linnea Knollmueller, Mark Birkey, Kelly Chian, Derek Bracken, Kate Samano, Simon Sullivan, Chris Brand, Jenny Pouech, Susan Corcoran, Maria Braeckel, Leigh Marchant, Windy Dorresteyn, Leslie Prives, Aparna Rishi, Ty Nowicki, Matthew Martin, Anke Steinecke, Sinead Martin, Vanessa Milton, Martin Soames, Kaeli Subberwal, Denise Cronin, Sarah Lehman, Jaci Updike, Cynthia Lasky, Allyson Pearl, Skip Dye, Stephen Shodin, Sue Malone-Barber, Sue Driskill, Michael DeFazio, Annette Danek, Valerie VanDelft, Stacey Witcraft, Nihar Malaviya, Kirk Bleemer, Matthew Schwartz, Lisa Gonzalez, Susan Seeman, Eric Tessen, Gina Wachtel, Daniel Christensen, Jess Wells, Thea James, Holly Smith, Patsy Irwin, Nicola Bevin, Robert Waddington, Thomas Chicken, Chris Turner, Stuart Anderson, Ian Sheppard, Vicky Palmer, and Laura Ricchetti.

On the audio side, thanks goes to Kelly Gildea, Dan Zitt, Scott Sherratt, Noah Bruskin, Alan Parsons, Ok Hee Kolwitz, Tim Bader, Amanda D’Acierno, Lance Fitzgerald, Donna Passannante, Katie Punia, Ellen Folan, and Nicole McArdle.