Page 58 of Every Last Lie

I’ve seen this necklace before.

Tears rush to my eyes, and only then do I know with absolute certainty that it’s true.

Nick loved me the most.

The cemetery is near empty when we arrive. It’s quiet, the only sound the rustling of the breeze through the trees. My mother and father are out of the car, perched on a concrete bench beneath the shade of a maple tree. In my mother’s grasp rests Felix, my father’s arms around the both of them as an extra safeguard. Felix’s eyes are wide with wonder, staring quizzically up at a new face, one he’s yet to see. He smiles a toothless grin, and at seeing this, Maisie points and says, “Look, Mommy. Felix likes her,” and I say yes, yes he does, wondering if Felix can like Grandma, then maybe Maisie can, too.

“Maybe you want to sit by Grandma when we come back?” I ask, and Maisie shrugs her shoulders and says, “Maybe.”

“We’ll be right back,” I call to my father as I take Maisie by the hand, and he tells me to take my time.

“There’s no hurry, Clarabelle,” he says, though when we return, we’ve promised Maisie ice cream.But first, I’d told her,there’s something we have to do.

I haven’t been here in weeks. The land that was once bare is now a patchy green, Nick’s resting spot no longer looking so new. The headstone can’t be placed until after the ground has settled, and so for now it’s simply a depression in the earth littered with sprouts of grass. I lead Maisie over the sloping lawn to find her father.Where’s Daddy?Maisie has asked, a hundred times or more. Today I will sit her down beside his grave and tell her about Nick.

“What are we doing here, Mommy?” she asks as we come to the spot, and I tell Maisie to sit down beside me, and she happily obliges, dropping quickly to the ground. A red-winged blackbird perches in a nearby tree, black, button-like eyes watching Maisie and me. I turn to the bird, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the sunlight, and it calls to me, a lilting trill, its beautiful bold colors conspicuous in the green tree. Above us the sky is a brilliant blue that enhances the green of the trees, marred only by the contrails of a passing jetliner. There’s not a cloud in the sky as we watch the bird spring from the treetop and disappear into the afternoon, wings extended, soaring freely through the sky.

“You’ve been missing Daddy,” I say to her, and already my voice is quivering, and my eyes fill with tears. “You’ve been asking about Daddy,” I say, to which she nods her head and smiles, her eyes brightening with the belief that Daddy is here, as she peers over her shoulder, eyes scanning the horizon for signs of her father, sitting beside a tree or cresting a faraway hill.

He’s not there. Her smile fades, and her eyes grow sad.

“Where is he, Mommy?” she asks. “Where’s Daddy?” and this time I tell her.

She doesn’t cry. She stares quietly up at the bright blue sky, eyes set on that blackbird as it soars through the atmosphere, wings extended, merely drifting through the sky, disappearing until nothing remains of it but a speck of black amidst the blue.

“You know what I think, Mommy?” Maisie asks, and even before she speaks, I know she’s going to say something timely and brilliant, as only Maisie can do.

“What’s that, honey?” I ask, stroking her hair, and as the bird passes completely from sight, she smiles and says to me, finger pointing at the long-lost speck.

“I think Daddy’s flying.”

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