Page 138 of Mess With Me

“It’s a nice bird,” I say.

She wants to laugh again.

“Well made,” I clarify, grinning. “Usually these things are plastic.” I reach for a penlight and snap it on for her. “See that? That’s where the sound mechanism should be.”

“I broke it.” It sounds like a confession.

“It happens.”

She leans her head in her hand as she watches me, her hair falling over her shoulders.

I try not to look at her as I find the parts I need.

She’s silent for a moment as she watches me work. “You asked me what the bird is for,” she says finally.

I look at her over the glasses.

“Well, the truth is…Sam gave it to me.”

I pause for a moment. I’m surprised by this.

“It was my parents’ wedding. I was five. I knew something bad was happening, but I couldn’t figure out what. It was a wedding, and all the guests seemed happy. But my parents were fighting.”

I keep my eyes on my work, letting her continue.

“I liked to hide in the kitchen—the people there always seemed more…alive than anyone on our side of the doors.” She picks up a little spring lying on the table and squeezes it gently between her fingers. “I overheard one of them saying she’d never seen two people who hate each other so much getting married. It was a sham marriage, they said, done because of the girl.”

My chest aches. She blamed herself. Her child’s mind thought it was her fault two people hated each other and were stuck together.

“Sam found me under there. It must have been hours later. The big lights were out, and everyone was outside. He was eighteen. Too old and busy with his own life to be looking for a lost little girl. But I think he was the only one who noticed I was gone. He said if I came out, he’d let me play with one of these. It wasn’t special—they were in the wedding favors. But he’d seen me playing with them earlier, before my mother slapped them out of my hand.”

She laughs humorlessly. “After he pulled me out, he carried me around on his back for a bit. Said I could stay with him awhile. I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I remember, I was in bed with the blankets pulled up, and Sam was setting the bird on my bedside table. He said it was mine to keep, and that I should make it sing whenever I felt alone.”

I’m just placing a tiny battery in place, so the timing works out well as I tip the bird.

“Like this?” I ask. It gives off a little chirp.

Sasha nods, her eyes springing with tears. “Like that,” she says softly.

I imagine Sam left shortly after he gave her that. Left her all alone in that house. Not that it was his responsibility to parent her.

I come up to Sasha, bracketing her back in my arms. “There’s a little switch here,” I say, poking between the feathers. “You can turn it off if you don’t want it to make noise.”

Sasha turns and wraps her arms around my neck. I unhook the glasses from my ears, setting them down on the counter.

She rests her head against my chest, and a moment later, I feel the soft shake of her body as she cries.

I don’t know how to feel about Sam Macklin. The fact that he was the only one looking out for her back then should put him up a notch. But he put her in so much danger, too. He handed her over to Creelman like a fucking gift.

But I brush those ugly thoughts aside for now.

“Come on,” I whisper into her hair after she takes a long breath. “Let’s go to bed.”

An hour later, just as Sasha’s finally falling asleep in my arms, my phone buzzes. I carefully extract my arm from under her and grab it off the bedside table.

FORD: No sign from Lionel or Creelman. Lost comms on Macklin.

My stomach jolts. Fuck.

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