Page 5 of Now That It's You
There. She surveyed her work, then nodded. Someone else would find them and claim them. Someone else would take them to a sick relative who’d smile and laugh and reach up to touch the plump, colorful shapes.
She turned back to the car and moved around to the passenger side, winded and spent as she dropped into the seat again.
“Feel better now?” Kendall asked.
“A little.”
“Probably better than that dead pigeon you almost stepped on.”
Meg turned in her seat to look behind them as Kendall pulled away from the curb. Get well soon! the balloon commanded the corpse of a gray and green bird.
Meg closed her eyes and slid down in her seat, wondering if pigeons mated for life the way doves did, wondering if she had any right at all to feel this undone.
Chapter 2
Kyle’s hands barely touched the steering wheel, his whole body looser than he actually felt. He’d had twenty-four hours to digest the news of his brother’s passing, which mostly left him feeling like a complete fuckup at this whole grief thing.
Shouldn’t he be tense? Or teary-eyed or ripped in two? He felt all those things, to some degree, but mostly he felt numb.
He’d left his mother’s house right after breakfast, determined to escape the crying and arguing and muffins that left greasy puddles in their cardboard box. He didn’t fault his family for their grief. It just didn’t look anything like his grief.
Turning the car down a narrow side street, Kyle realized he had no actual destination in mind. Instinct had taken him back toward the hospital, which made no sense at all. Matt was long gone from there, probably in a crematorium at the funeral home or something. He tried to picture it in his mind, hoping the image might tap into the fountain of grief he knew should be bubbling inside him.
Instead, he found himself wondering what a crematorium looked like.
You’re losing it, man.
He blinked to clear his head, turning to look toward the hospital even though Matt wasn’t there anymore. His eyes landed on a droopy balloon bouquet tied to a bus stop bench on the side of the road.
Get well soon! a shiny balloon declared over the body of a dead pigeon. Kyle stared at the balloons. They looked like the ones Meg had brought yesterday, but that was silly. They couldn’t be hers. His mind just wanted an excuse to latch on to an image of her.
He didn’t realize he was smiling until he caught sight of his own reflection in the rearview mirror. Then he felt like a dick. What the hell kind of guy smiles the day after his brother dies?
He tried focusing on the dead pigeon instead, hoping to conjure some tears even if they were for the wrong reason. Dammit, he owed Matt some show of emotion.
But the memory of that bird just led him to another one of Meg. Thanksgiving Day, more than three years ago. The weather had been dreary and the whole family had gone out for a post-meal walk. She’d spotted a dead dove on the ground, then looked up to see a second bird on the power line above. Her eyes had filled with tears, and Kyle stopped walking to make sure she was okay.
“They mate for life,” she’d said.
Matt had caught her hand in his, tugging her along. “Come on, you’ll get bird mites.”
But Meg had pulled her hand free. “Doves mate for life,” she’d repeated, looking from the dead bird to the live one cooing overhead. “That one must be the partner.”
Kyle remembered feeling something heavy and hot pressing against his chest. He’d looked at her face clouded with sentiment, and he’d ached to take her in his arms.
But he hadn’t, obviously. For crying out loud, she’d been on the brink of becoming his brother’s wife. The most he could offer was a squeeze of her hand as he moved ahead and fell into step beside his parents.
But he’d seen tears glinting in her eyes over pumpkin pie that evening and knew she was thinking of the bird.
He shook his head now to clear the rest of the memory. The part he’d wondered about ever since. He turned the car down another narrow street. He hadn’t realized where he was driving until that moment, but now it all made sense. Pathway Park. It was one of Matt’s favorite spots. He used to boast it was the best place in Portland to ogle joggers in skimpy sports bras and short shorts.
As Kyle pulled into the parking lot, he had to admit his brother had a point. A buxom brunette trotted past wearing something that looked more like an eye patch than a sports bra, and Kyle tried not to stare as he got out of the car.
Remembering the ducks that paddled the river looking for handouts, he rummaged in his backseat looking for birdseed or crackers or something to throw for them. He found a Ziploc bag of marshmallows and tried to remember how they’d gotten there. A camping trip with Cara; that was it. They’d made s’mores and snuggled under a green wool blanket just a few months before they split in August. The memory seemed hollow, like it belonged to someone else. Kyle clenched the baggie in his fist and wondered if ducks ate marshmallows.
He shoved the car door shut and turned toward the park. The air was somewhere between crisp and comfortably tepid, and he smelled crumbled leaves and river water flowing on the light breeze. His boots sank into soggy grass and the squish of it beneath his soles gave him an odd sort of comfort. He took a few steps forward, glancing at the blonde in a pink sports bra who bounced past on his right.
“Hey, there,” she called grinning at him over her shoulder. “Love that shirt.”
