Chapter 47

“Do you think it will ever happen?” Ray slips her hand into Marla’s as they travel up the ramp where she saw her first birds.

“I have great faith,” says Marla.

“It takes soooo long.”

Marla laughs. “What seems like forever ago, is like yesterday for me.” She accordions down to Ray’s height and check her neice’s Outsider. An unnecessary action, she knows, but an action that gives her a chance to touch the child that increasingly turns to someone else. “Remember when you thought birds had only one eye?”

“That’s why we came here.”

“I wanted to prove something to you.”

“That’s when we found the droplets.”

“We found the nest.” Ray’s eyes blur with the memory. “And the two baby birds.”

“A horrible way to proved something.” Marla’s eyes move under closed lids. She smiles thinly when she opens them. “We found hope that day, too. Remember?”

“Droplets.” Ray broke free from Marla and skips up the ramp. “And later, Trumble, and after that, Raincoat Man who turned out to be my Daddy-Long-Legs.”

“And don’t forget about the hydroponic garden with fresh greens.”Marla hoists her backpack and picks up her pace. “Wait for me.”

The two of them inspect the platform of what was the Green Line. The nest is no longer there. The bars where they collected the droplets are so shiny, it’s as if someone took steel wool to them and polished them clean.

“There’s nothing here.” Ray’s heart drops below her stomach, aching.

“Let’s think about that a bit,” Marla says. She runs her gloved fingers over and under the steel bars. “There’s nothing here. But, someone was.”

“The scratches are gone.” Ray’s eyes dance between fear and excitement.

“Exactly.”

The two continue to inspect the platform. Now concentrating on what is gone, besides the nest and the scratches. It’s then they see something Marla did not expect to see here, so far from the beach house.

“Look.” Marla kneels in a corner and pulls Ray down beside her. She points into the crevice. Almost entirely hidden in the shadows, Ray sees it and rummages in her backpack for a sample container.

“No,” Marla says, looking over her shoulder, now aware that someone else has been visiting this site. “Let’s bring Trumble and Taedan here.”

“What’s is it?”

“I have a few guesses. But what I do know for sure is that I don’t want to disturb whatever is there.” What Marla keeps to herself is that she doesn’t want to leave any clues that they were here either. “Let’s draw it instead.”

They both get out their notebooks and begin to draw. Ray flipping her pencil over and erasing as much as she sketches. Marla, just as often, scanning the platform and listening for footsteps.

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