The Birds

The men trudge back toward their cars, embarrassed. Of course they’re glad the girl’s been found but they each lament in their own way that they weren’t the ones to find her. Henry’s careful, driving through the sheets of rain that’s begun to turn to snow. He leans forward, shoulders clenched and hands tight around the wheel—even Josh isn’t talking. His headlights glint off the wet and fog, and he can hardly see.

Inside the house, Kate stripped Maddie down in front of the space heater in the bathroom and wrapped her up in towels and warm blankets. Tess googled frostbite, hypothermia; the Mayo Clinic warned against the shock of hot water or a heating pad. Kate got the girl a glass of water, found chips and fruit, and Tess rubbed her arms up and down over the blankets that they’d draped over her arms. She seemed both more and less strong than any of the other children. Her limbs are leaner but they look better held together, hard and firm. She looked straight at them in the bright light of the bathroom, and both Kate and Tess had to work hard to look straight back.

Kate left Tess with Maddie and ushered the other children into her room. She stripped them down, too, dried them off with towels. She found them fresh clothes and brought them downstairs with the promise of more food.

The girl’s lips are chapped and her skin is sharp with cold, still. She’s not said much but she stares at Tess. Tess fixes her eyes on the girl’s bright red, tightly fisted hands and grabs hold of them with both of hers. My mom, she said once, and then a second time, while they were outside. Can you please call my mom?

The mother is a child, Tess thinks, as she steps back, as the mother-girl barrels past her and holds her daughter. She brings in snow on the boots that she still wears, the wind and wet from outside and the cold. Her face and head and pants are wet, and Tess looks behind her, toward the door, for Alice, aware she’s accidentally witnessing a thing that they shouldn’t have to share.

Alice unwinds her scarf as she walks slowly into the house. It’s soaked through with blood. The bones in her hands are fiery with cold. She doesn’t want to see Maddie before the force of wanting to hug her has lightened enough that she can see her and not grab hold of her.

“What’s happening?” Bea says.

“Who yelled?” asks Stella.

“It’s fine, ducks,” Kate says. “That was Madeleine’s mom.”

“She looks like a teenager,” says Colin.

“She’s not,” Kate says, though she’s not sure.

“Teenagers can have kids,” says Stella, and Kate goes to the stove to get her sweet potatoes boiling so as not to have to answer whichever questions come next. Upstairs, she hears what she imagines is the mother scream again. Alice looked pale and lightheaded, wet and worn out, and now, after Kate finds another bag of potato chips in the pantry and hands it to the children, she goes in search of her.