The Bird Eater (13 page)

“Depending on how you look at it,” she repeated, unsatisfied. “Come on; I’ll make you something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know that sounded like a suggestion,” she said, “but it actually isn’t up for debate.”

“I don’t know, Cher.” He looked down into his cart: pizza, a bag of chicken nuggets, a few TV dinners.

“You don’t know what?” Cheri nudged his sneaker with the tip of her high-heeled shoe. “Whether or not I can beat a Swanson turkey dinner?”

“No, I’m sure you can.”

“Then what?”

He exhaled a breath through his nose, then looked at her again. “Miles strikes me as a bit of a, I don’t know…”

“A dick?”

“I was going to say intimidating.”

“Yeah, I guess he’s that, too. But I don’t know what Miles has to do with making you lunch.”

“He’d be there, wouldn’t he? At home?”

Aaron’s mouth went pasty at Cheri’s cagey smile.

He couldn’t deal with this, not now.

But this was Cheri Miller. He couldn’t just blow her off, not after how she had cried against his shoulder, how she had looked at him at the shop, how he had left her behind once before like she hadn’t mattered one iota, not one fucking bit.

“Who said anything about
my
place?”

Elbowing Aaron out from in front of the basket, she swung the cart around to face the opposite direction.

But he couldn’t go back to the house.

“Wait,” he said. “I don’t…”

His words faded like the last few notes of a song. What was he going to tell her, that he was seeing things; that he believed the place was haunted?
Did
he believe it was haunted? Logic screamed no, but his reluctance to head back down Old Mill told a different story.

“You don’t what?” Cheri arched an eyebrow at him, taking him in with a skeptical eye. Could she see that he was afraid? “What’s with you?” she asked. “You haven’t let Eric’s stupid stories get to you, have you?”

Aaron didn’t respond at first, but the moment he failed to answer she was shaking her head at his silence. He cut her off before she could say more.

“I’ve been having nightmares.”

It was a legitimate reason as any to avoid the place. There was something about it, a bad energy that was screwing with his chi. He didn’t have to believe the place was occupied by ghosts to suffer from bad dreams. He could blame it on memories, on faulty wiring, on shifts in the atmosphere or the incessant chirping of birds in the trees.

On frequencies.

“You’re having nightmares because you aren’t eating right,” Cheri said matter-of-factly, “and you look like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in God knows how long.” She gave him a look, one that was steadfast and weighty with conviction. “Maybe you shouldn’t be staying there. Too many memories all at once. A motel might be better.”

He didn’t respond.

“Or maybe it’s what I said, and your pizza and booze diet is making you nuts.” She pushed his cart away from the dairy cooler and back toward produce without another word.

Aaron trailed her through the store like a reluctant shadow, walking the aisles he’d already visited while trepidation weighed down his feet. He watched her toss groceries into his cart, flashing back to when she used to make him and Eric play house. She made Eric be the neighbor or the mailman while Aaron was always the husband—she and him, happily married homeowners at eight years old.

At fourteen she let him put his hand up her shirt, and for a second he’d seen his future flash before his eyes: marriage, kids, family vacations like the ones Eric went on every summer—Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, Florida beaches, and trips to Washington D.C. Holbrook family vacations never went much farther than Saint Louis or Little Rock; they didn’t have the money and neither did the Millers. Both Aaron and Cheri lived vicariously through snapshots Eric would bring up to the tree house, telling them stories about how he had seen a whale swimming in the Pacific, or how Mickey Mouse had scared the bejeezus out of a little kid on Main Street U.S.A.

“What’s Main Street U.S.A.?” Aaron had asked, but before Eric had a chance to answer, Cheri answered for him.

“It’s the street I’m going to live on when I grow up,” she said. “The street we’re
all
going to live on together, next door to one another, and we’ll be happy forever.”

The longer Aaron followed Cheri through Banner’s aisles, the more convinced he became that she was just as lonely as him. It was confusing. She had a husband, a business, a life. On one hand, he wanted to catch her by the shoulder and explain that he was married, too; that regardless of whether or not Evangeline ever wanted to see him again, he was determined to honor his vows because he was sure,
positive
, that they were going to get back together. They’d both heal on their own and realize they couldn’t live without each other. Things would go back to normal if he waited long enough, at least as normal as they could be with two people rather than three.

On the other hand, he knew it was bullshit—nothing but a pipe dream. Evangeline would never take him back, not after losing Ryder, not after the way Aaron had fallen into despair, drinking himself into a stupor rather than offering her comfort. Evangeline had turned away from him, had moved on inside her head long before he’d ever agreed to see a therapist, long before he chose to come out here to set himself straight. But the fact that he was alone didn’t give him the right to sweep into Ironwood and destroy Cheri’s marriage. It didn’t give him license to screw up other people’s lives.

“It’s just lunch,” Cheri said softly, reassuringly touching his arm as though having read his mind. “Okay?” A practiced sense of positivity drifted from her tone.

“Okay,” he said after a moment, the heaving of his heart suffocating any additional words. Because even though she said it was just lunch, Aaron knew better. He could see it in the way she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Or maybe she really was that concerned—a mother hen fretting over an egg twenty years lost; an old friend reaching out a helping hand while Evangeline exiled him from her life. Nine years of marriage and raising a kid for nearly as long, and she’d turned away from him as though she had never loved him at all.

Aaron frowned as he watched Cheri drop a few tomatoes into a plastic produce bag, remembering how Evan had stepped into his hospital room, her eyes downturned, unable to meet his gaze. Once he got back home, she tried to make things right, but Aaron kept to himself, drifting out of rooms as soon as she drifted in. She had tried to reconnect with him, had tried to tell him that she didn’t blame him, that it was an accident, that he couldn’t possibly believe this was his fault—but he did believe that, and he buried himself six feet deep beneath his own guilt. That’s when Evangeline started spending nights at her mother’s. She said seeing him that way made her avoid coming home. And then, after a night of bar crawling with Cooper and his old EMT buddies—after way too much drinking and Cooper asking him to slow down, only to end up driving him home—Aaron found an invoice tacked to the microwave with a corner of Scotch tape. It was for a storage unit a few blocks from home, taken out under his name with his credit card. She had left a stack of flattened boxes sitting against the wall next to the front door and a sticky note with Doctor Jandreau’s number tucked into his sock drawer. She had reached the end of her patience. She wanted the house back. If he needed time to fix himself, that was fine, but she didn’t want to be forced to watch; she had watched for long enough.

He still loved her, knew he always would. He wanted nothing more than to have her back, but he also hated her for what she’d done. Yes, he’d gotten carried away with the booze, but he drank because he hurt—he drank because if he didn’t, he’d have killed himself instead. Would she rather have had a dead husband too? How many times had he imagined her coming back from her mother’s to his dead body laid out across the bed? How many times had he considered getting his job back just to
accidentally
step into traffic so she could get the money? Insurance didn’t pay for suicide, but work-related death paid double.

“Aaron?”

His eyes drew themselves across the grocery store’s linoleum floor, pausing on the tips of Cheri’s purple high heels before meeting her gaze. She shook her head faintly, her hair sweeping across her shoulders, that same look of uneasiness assuring him that he could lie to her all he wanted, but she knew he was far from okay.

“After you,” he told her, crossing his fingers that the acceptance of her invitation would derail any oncoming questions.

Are you sure you’re all right?

Aren’t you supposed to be dead?

For a moment Cheri stood motionless, possibly reconsidering what she’d just put into play, potentially having second thoughts because she knew as well as he did that this wasn’t as innocent as they were both pretending it was.

This was crazy.

A bad idea, like calling Evangeline drunk.

It would end with the inevitable—a relationship stitched together by fond memories, recollections of the people they were but ceased to be.

But rather than taking a backward step, Cheri quirked the corner of her mouth up into the half grin Aaron remembered well, and then her fingers drifted across the knuckles of his right hand.

Twelve

After pulling up the gravel driveway, Cheri leaned back in her driver’s seat and stared at the Oregon plates on Aaron’s Toyota. He was sitting in his car, motionless, more than likely psyching himself up. She could relate: she had nearly broken away from him a handful of times during the drive up Old Mill Road. Nervous as hell, she told herself this was fate; this was the moment she’d been praying for since she was fourteen years old.

Let him come back, let him be alive, let him find his way back home, and when he does, let him find me too.

But she was still jittery. Going through with this meant taking a big step away from Miles, and in the death throes of marital faithfulness she had to ask herself, was Miles really that bad? She tried to dredge up happy memories—the day they met, the night he proposed, the afternoon they got married, but all compasses pointed back to Aaron Holbrook. The day Cheri met Miles Vaughn, she wondered whether Aaron looked anything like him—beefy, with strong arms and long hair. The night Miles proposed, she couldn’t help but wonder whether Aaron had already recited his own set of vows. And as she walked across Miles’s parents’ back lawn and stood beneath a crooked metal wedding arch, she imagined how much more beautiful Aaron’s wedding must have been, or would be, or was.

A year after Aaron disappeared, she made up a lie—her closest friend and first love was dead, and he had only been a high school freshman. Listeners would gasp and rub her shoulder and express their condolences.

How terrible, how tragic, it must have been awful, you’re such a strong girl.

She assured herself that the lie was the only way to move on, but even after she had buried him in her mind, his memory continued to haunt her every move.

Not having seen Aaron get out of his car, she nearly jumped when he knocked on her window. He leaned forward, his T-shirt gaping open enough at the neck to reveal a chest full of ink—a murder of crows flying up and around the curve of his ribs. His expression was obvious enough:
What are you waiting for?
She was waiting for a change of heart, a sudden burst of clearheaded reasoning, but it refused to come, urging her onward, whispering into her ear,
You’ve waited too long to let this pass you by.

If she drove away and Aaron vanished the following day, she’d live out the rest of her life wondering what if, what could have happened, what would have come of it if she’d only been brave enough to walk through his front door?

Aaron struggled with the sticky lock of the front door—grocery bags in hand—and when the door finally swung wide, Cheri stepped in behind him. He left her in the living room as she spun around, her gaze drawing across the walls, taking in the house she had visited a million times in her youth. It was little more than a shadow of its former self: dusty, the colors dulled by years of neglect, but it still looked miraculously the same. The furniture stood in the same spots, though the place was missing small details that made a house feel like home—books and trinkets, candles and plants. She assumed that the interior had been in too bad a shape to keep everything, though she noticed that he
did
manage to salvage the framed photos and the glass candlesticks she remembered well.

She eventually found her way to the kitchen, shaking her head with a faint smile. “It almost looks the same,” she said. “Just a little bit of paint and maybe some new wallpaper and it’ll be perfect.” It felt like they should have been up in his room, listening to her Cure CDs on a loop,
accidentally
brushing hands while he explained Gin Rummy rules and tossed back SweeTarts. But Aaron was avoiding her gaze as he put the groceries away. Apprehension coiled up her throat. Maybe this was wrong. Just because Aaron had haunted her into adulthood didn’t mean he felt the same way about her. For all she knew, he had forgotten about her completely until they ran into each other again. She was expecting too much. But he looked so forlorn, so sad-eyed and weighed-down, so beautiful with those ink swirls twining across his arms.

Cheri slid up to the counter and pulled a box of pasta from Aaron’s grasp, the fingers of her free hand circling the wrist of his left arm. He tensed as she slid a fingertip up his scar.

“Will you tell me about this?” She tapped the puckered flesh of a healed wound beneath the image of a small golden owl, the groceries momentarily abandoned.

“You first,” he said.

Her pulse hitched when he took a half step back.

“Me first what?”

“Tell me why you’re here.”

“What do you mean, why I’m here? You didn’t expect me to come see the house?”

“You know what I mean,” he said, and she grimaced at his reply. What did he expect her to say?

“Are you asking about me and Miles?” she asked, reluctant to meet his gaze. When he didn’t reply, she continued as best she could. “You think every married couple is thrilled to be together? Get married,” she told him. “Then you’ll know.”

Looking up, she took note of his posture. He was white-knuckling the edge of the kitchen counter as though letting it go would send him falling into the depths of despair. His jaw was set; she could see the muscles of his neck tense and relax, the tendons standing out like ribbons beneath his flesh.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head, pushed away from the counter, grabbed a couple of bags of produce and walked them over to the fridge.

Stepping over to the table, Cheri slid into one of the chairs and kicked her pumps off her feet. “We were happy before,” she began, “but then we got married and Miles opened up the shop. He’s there seven days a week, sometimes twelve hours a day. He’d rather be there than at home; says that I should be glad he’s working so hard, seeing as to how it’s next to impossible to stay in business around here; says that I should be thankful, because the longer he works the more money I can spend. Great way to make a girl feel guilty.” She shrugged. “But that’s Miles’s way. He means well. So I decided, fine, I’ll help out at the shop; that way we could spend more time together and I wouldn’t feel so selfish when I bought myself something nice. But all I do is get him and the guys lunch every day. I sit in a sad little office waiting for the phone to ring, and when it does Miles chases me out of there so he can ‘take care of business,’ as if talking about mufflers and brake jobs requires some weird level of privacy, so I go outside and smoke.” She laughed to herself. “I used to hate cigarettes. Remember how we presented the dangers of smoking to my dad on that mangled poster board Eric found behind the store?”

Aaron nodded from across the kitchen.

It had been a stupid idea, especially since Cheri’s dad was not only a smoker, but also a drunk. That particular bit of memory gave rise to a lump in her throat. Her gaze drifted to the twin bottles of whiskey on the counter. It twisted her up inside to think that Aaron had fallen victim to the same demons she had watched her father battle when she was a girl. She didn’t want to picture him that way—red-faced and angry, raging as the alcohol took control.

“Aaron,” she said, “I know something’s wrong. Why are you really here? Who the hell comes back to a place like this?”

Aaron faced the counter, turning his back to her.

“Right,” she murmured. “You’re fixing up the house. Sell, sell, sell.”

“I’m trying to kick a habit,” he said.

Silence.

Her heart tripped over itself.

Was that why he looked so bad? Was it more than booze? Was he a junkie?

She stared a hole through his spine, waiting for him to turn around and look at her again. When he failed to do so, she straightened where she sat and allowed her voice to cut through the quiet.

“What kind of habit?”

“One obvious one,” he said, slowly pushing one of the whiskey bottles against the wall.

Cheri swallowed, kneading her hands in her lap. “Just one?” She nearly whispered the words, afraid she was crossing the line with her inquiry, imagining him flying off the handle, telling her to get the hell out of his house—how dare she pry into his private life?

“Two,” Aaron confessed.

Her hands twitched in response.

“What else?” she asked.

“Ativan.”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, staring down at her hands. “Aaron,” she said, “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s an antianxiety medication.”

“Like Valium?”

“Sort of—more potent.”

“You have anxiety?” she asked, chewing on a nail.

“It calms me down, helps me sleep.”

“But…” She hesitated, afraid to push too hard. “You said you weren’t sleeping,” she reminded him.

“Because it isn’t working anymore.” He still refused to face her. “I’m trying to quit, but…” His words faded to nothing, leaving his sentence unfinished.

Another drawn-out hush.

“Maybe you’re working too hard,” she suggested, motioning to the kitchen that was in the process of being renovated. “You need to rest.”

“I need to take my mind off of it, not rest. I’ve been resting for the better part of a year, waiting for this to fix itself.”

Cheri frowned down at her hands, then glanced up at him again with anticipation. “What happened a year ago?”

He exhaled a soft laugh, tipped his gaze up to the ceiling.

“That much?”

“And more,” he said. “And as far as getting married, I
know
.”

Caught off guard, Cheri opened her mouth to speak, then shut it soundlessly. Her heart took another tumble. Heat flushed her cheeks.

“You want to get away from Miles, and all I want is for Evangeline to take me back. Sweet irony.”

Cheri looked away. She felt like she was going to vomit and spontaneously combust all at once. “That means I should go, right?” She clenched her jaw, waiting for it:

Go on, get out of here, go back to your husband, I’ll wait here for my wife.

“She won’t talk to me anymore,” he told her. “I called her a few days ago, drunk off my ass. She told me not to call her again.”

Cheri swallowed against the lump in her throat.

“I keep hoping for a miracle,” he said, his gaze fixed on the tips of his sneakers. “Maybe
she’ll
call. Maybe she’ll show up out of the blue, stare up at this old house from the bottom of the driveway and declare it perfect, give me another chance. Maybe she’ll burst in here and be charmed, arrange for movers to bring our stuff out to Arkansas, where we’ll live happily ever after, the end.”

Main Street U.S.A.,
she thought to herself.
You were supposed to live there with
me
, not someone else.

His words were killing her. Had he really come out to Ironwood just to wait things out?

“Except that’s never going to happen,” he told her. “And you know why?”

She shook her head, mute.

“Because nobody comes out here for happily ever after. This town is a ghost.”

“I don’t understand,” she said after a moment. “Back at the shop, you said you were only here to fix up the house, but now… Does that mean you might stay?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Seems like suicide. There’s nothing here.”

“So you’re going to leave…”

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

Cheri breathed out a sigh. His lack of commitment was aggravating. He was playing dumb because he was scared.

“Look, I’m not a mind-reader. If you’re waiting for her to come back to you, I shouldn’t be here. If you’re waiting, I don’t
want
to be here.”

“Want to be here for what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe I gave you the wrong idea,” he told his feet.

It was like a punch in the gut. She felt cheated. He’d brought her back here just to tease her. Or maybe he’d brought her back here because, like an idiot, she had insisted.

It’s just lunch
.

A lunch she’d daydreamed about for twenty-one years. Such bullshit. And now she’d never be able to look him in the eye again.

“I should go,” she whispered, slipping her feet back into her shoes.

Aaron exhaled a breath and shook his head. “No, don’t. I just…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “I don’t know. I’m fucked-up, Cher. Even if we could…”

Another unfinished sentence. Cheri waited for him to complete his thought, hanging on his every word.

“It wouldn’t be fair,” he finally said.

“Fair to who?” she asked.

“To either one of us. To you.”

So he was telling her to go, except when she said she was leaving he was asking her to stay. Cheri let out a slow, steadying breath.

“Aaron, if I don’t say this, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

She wanted to look up, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, afraid to see his expression, choosing to imagine that he was genuinely interested rather than standing there with a veil of immovable refusal across his face.

“I know we were young, too young to know anything, but when you disappeared…” She narrowed her eyes, resentful of the emotion that was creeping into her tone. She didn’t want to appear weak, not now, not the way she had in the shop’s lobby. She hated feeling vulnerable; determined to be stoic and invincible, like Aaron and Eric had been in her fondest memories.

“When you disappeared, everything sort of fell apart for me. It was as though you had taken a piece of me with you to wherever you had gone. I tried to let you go, but everywhere I looked there was a memory—you and Eric screwing around, the three of us in the summers when we were kids, the two of us…in the woods…just, everything. I always compared everyone to how I imagined you must have been. I always regretted not having a chance to tell you how I felt.”

Unable to help herself, she peeked up at him. He had gone so silent she wasn’t sure whether he was still listening, or whether he had left her alone in the kitchen and gone off to hide. But he was there, standing with his back against the counter, his eyes fixed upon her, an expression akin to pained fascination drawn across his face.