Chapter 9: Terms

I did not answer on the train.

I waited until we were in the kitchen with the door shut and the radiator knocking in the wall.

Lou sat at the table.

Cal stood by the stove with his arms folded.

Sean hopped up on the counter and held his hand out, palm up.

"Tally," he said. "That's three times you've said you'll tell us when you're ready."

"Four," I said.

"Four. I rounded down to be nice."

"I'm not ready."

"Lena."

"I know," I said. "I know. I'm bad at this."

"You're terrible at this," Cal said, and it was the kindest thing he had said to me so far.

I went into the closet.

I came back with a garment bag I had hidden under the mattress.

Inside was a black wool coat, cut for a lean, tall frame, with the hem not yet finished.

I laid it over the kitchen table in the lamplight.

"Turn the collar," I said.

Sean slid off the counter and turned it.

Inside, stitched in gray thread, was a small bird in flight and a name beneath it.

Nightjar.

Sean made a noise I had never heard from a person.

It started as a cough and went up.

"No," he said.

"Yes."

"No. No. You're not her."

"I'm not her," I said. "I'm it. I'm the whole label."

I took a breath.

"It's me, an old sewing machine and a woman who ships my orders from a warehouse in New Jersey."

Sean sat down on the kitchen floor.

He sat very hard, with his knees up.

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