“You can’t come.” She opened the top drawer of her dressing table, took out the passport her grandmother had dutifully renewed when Emily turned eighteen, but which had never been used. Was there even any point in taking it? She looked up to see the bird standing with a golden chain caught around its foot, and Emily lifted him gently, fastened the necklace around her throat. Then she picked up a silver brush, pulled it quickly through her hair and tossed it into the case. It was half of a vanity set from long ago, the matching mirror buried at the back of a drawer.

How many years? She thought of all the mornings when someone else would brush her hair, and then again before she went to bed. How quickly time catches up with you when you’re not paying attention.

A red dress on a hanger, asking to be chosen. Emily’s fingers hesitated, then moved along to take down a simple blue shirt. She zipped the case closed, looked around the room to see the compact and lipstick her grandmother had given her for her sixteenth birthday on the bedside table. A slick of red on lips, a touch of powder on the nose: Catriona Robinson was always so well presented, putting her best face out on show, but her granddaughter had never used the gift, instead hiding it in a drawer for years. Emily pressed the waxy color to her mouth, her hand hesitating for a second before she put the makeup back.

“One more clue,” she whispered to Milton. “Then I’ll be back.”

The bird fluttered its tail at her, hopped back to the window and flew away.

“Oh, what would you know?” Emily said and banged the window shut.

Back downstairs, she searched the house, trying to decide what a person takes on a trip to London and then, perhaps, who knows where. Her sketchbook, her pen. Twenty-eight years old and all of her life contained in one place. She’d never needed to go anywhere before, never had any real desire to leave.

Emily paused in the doorway of her grandmother’s study, saw Tyler hovering by the front door, asking her to please hurry up. She ran her fingers over the shelf filled with red leather notebooks, each of them containing the beginnings of an idea that eventually became a book. She looked but did not see a gap at the very end, thought there was no time to count them all, to see if one of them was missing.

Is this just another story? Emily wondered as she let the door swing shut behind her. She put her key in the lock and tried not to think about whether she would ever be allowed to return.

6

SPARROW

Passeridae

There was a man sitting on the station platform feeding a gathering of sparrows. He was whispering to them, but what he was saying wasn’t important. It was the way he spoke, the tone of voice, the pitch and volume and all the nuances in between—it told the birds he was safe, that he could be trusted.