The last time Ana had moon-watched was with Russell on Dauphin Island in the Gulf of Mexico. Russell kept calling out the names of birds that passed. Not that he could identify them by their shape (they moved too quickly) but because he was great at vocalization—not his own but the birds’: He knew all their flight calls. Indigo Bunting! he’d shout. Boat-tailed Grackle, Snowy Egret. Ana was impressed—and a bit annoyed—at his ability to hear their calls in the dark. It was as if he were picking sounds out of the night that no one else knew existed.

Claartjia’s boyfriend shouted: There! I think I saw one! Just a dot!

He put down his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

Ana kept seeing them now, a steady stream of migrants, but said nothing. She could even make out a few of their forms. A woodcock, a few passerines. The night was full of migrants. If you saw thirty birds in one hour cross the moon, it was a heavily trafficked night—because you were seeing only a tiny fraction of the night sky (one one-hundredth of the horizon). Already Ana had seen about ten birds in as many minutes, and she knew, out in the darkness, beyond the moon’s face, the night was restless with birds. Millions of them, scattering all over the sky.

Pars saw another one. Then Claartija’s boyfriend. Finally Kevin saw something in the lens of the telescope. So small. So insignificant. He wasn’t sure what it was.

The dog sat beside Claartija. Then Claartija gave up, set the binoculars on her stomach, and lay on her back in the grass, her hand grazing her boyfriend’s arm. Pars kept watching; he was up to six birds now. Diana Olmstead sat nearby in her chair and observed them all lying on the lawn, staring at the sky. She fingered her prayer beads in the dark and gazed up at the moon as well. She needed no binoculars. She felt no need actually to see the birds. She knew they were there. Just because you couldn’t see something didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She fingered each bead between her thumb and forefinger. The night smelled of jasmine, of musk roses. She looked up at the platinum moon and knew they were out there—all of them—between the sea and the earth and the sky.

Twenty-Three

How is a story like a bird? It keeps us aloft. It flies. It goes from one place and lands at another, seemingly at random. But its movements are carefully choreographed, and if you look closely, you’ll know exactly where it will next perch.